Day 1

My observations of a CF class started with an empty room. I say empty because the students were still at lunch not because the room itself was bare. To the contrary, the wall furthest from the entrance was covered with examples of students work, school rules, and subject guidelines. In the midst of those decorations were numerous book cases filled with textbooks and various supplies. The front of the room had a massive white board while the back of the room had three huge windows allowing for plenty of sunlight to enter the room and provide positive energy. As I stepped further into the room I could see the side closet to the door was the teacher’s territory. Even though the wall there was pretty sparse, his desk was covered in student work (i.e. papers, diagrams, etc.) and his own belongings. I quickly ascertained this information without processing it because the teacher walked in a minute after I entered the classroom.

 The history of technology teacher is one of the long time vets of the school having started working at CF High School in 1990. I call this an impressive feat since he is among 10 of 85 teachers who are still at the school after the mass firing in 2010. When the whole teacher body is taken into account (i.e. new and old) there has a 110% turnover rate since he started. With his vast experience in the school he was able to breezily answer many of the questions we needed to observe during the half hour time that the students were eating. His answers are as follows;

1.       Number of students in a class: 25-27 max.

2.       Late students: During first period half will be missing, by lunch time only 5 missing, and by the end of the day everyone who could come would be there.

3.       Student body: Race plays a much bigger factor in the class than garner, social class, or sexual orientation according to the teacher I spoke with. He said how most of the students are Latino, but that is an umbrella word with.

4.       Special needs students: He never mentioned if any of the students I was observing had any social needs, but he did elude that the school has many students with IEPs.

5.       Student’s age: They range from 10^th grade, which is typically 14-15, to 12^th grade, which is typically 17 to 18 years old. So he has a wide variety.

6.       Behavior: In his class “the students have no choice but to behave.”

7.       Sub groups: He created his own labels for the students based on where they sat. The gamers, or the students with hoodies who stayed up all night playing games, sat in the back furthest corner. The loners sat in the back corner closer to the door. The more dependent female’s state towards the front and the rest were just grouped in the middle.

8.       Number of students who meet objectives: If he gets 60% to understand he is happy.

My initial impression was this teacher knew his students and his trade, but had low expectations of his students’ performance and high expectations for his students’ behavior. Oddly, I found the reverse playing out.

When the students walked into the class room they were instructed to take out their materials to get ready for the period. Most did this right away, which was impressive given that they just came back from a rowdy walk through the halls on their return from lunch. The teacher started the class by asking everyone what their favorite color was (despite being told I was observing a history of technology class earlier, it turns out he was teaching psychology).  He went around the room so that every student had to say their color. He moved onto asking why they felt this affection towards a certain color. Then he asked the students what color represented certain words, i.e. word: jealousy; response: green. He did this for twenty minutes while getting a good amount of student participation. However, who participated varied. I found the left side of the room and the front participated more than the back right side. The back corner especially, would listen but often broke out into their own chatter. Now the left side of the room would have their own tangents, but because the teacher would just walked near those students the chatter died quickly. Also, the students in the back corner would occasionally take out their cell phone and text, despite being told by the principle there is supposed to be a strict no use policy in class. Even though not all of the students were engaged, a high number of the students were. Interestingly, the area the teacher walked near correlated with more student engagement.

Behavior issues continued with the students in the back corner when the teacher switched to a student activity. Three of the four students did not have the handout from the day before that was needed for them to actually work on the assignment. The teacher knew that, but didn't offer them any new sheets until Lou confronted him about it. During the ten minutes the students went without their worksheets they seemed more than content on missing out on the lecture. I almost wonder if the teacher gave up on them for the day or if he was trying to teach them a lesson. All I know is those students probably didn't get much done after I left the room where as the students working within the range of the teacher were probably going to be finished.

 I now want to get back to my earlier point about behavior and performance. The classroom was conducted in a more relaxed atmosphere especially given how the teacher used heavy humor and sarcasm during his teacher-lead discussion. So, his definition of strict is different than mine, in that, I would not have appreciated the chatter, cell phones, and chronically unprepared students. However, maybe he has found this is the best he can get and that is all the control there is. Maybe he already tried to get better results with those students. Maybe he is trying a new method with them. I am not sure, but it will be interesting to read others blogs to see how well the student body behaved. As for student performance, his expectations for the students was low in my book since 60% is a D on a test. However, I thought he did a good job communicating the information and getting the students to see where he was going with his lecture. If I had to guess I would say 80% of the students were with him throughout the whole lesson and during certain times he even had all of their attention. Although, come test day, actually being able to measure the retention is a different story and maybe that is what he meant. Still only being in the room for about an hour really doesn't provide me with a full story.

Unfortunately, because the visit was so short I do not have a clear vision of the school yet. I hope my next visit will clear up some of my observations and provide new ones.