Off We Go Into The Wild Blue Yonder...

Sorry I’m late on this blog, my computer crashed and my iPad has a virus and I had to rewrite some of my essays that were due and study for my mid-term exams. Today is the first day I’ve had to actually work on my stuff from EDU 250. It’s just been one of those weeks.

            Well last Monday we finally went to visit the high school, and as I suspected it was the best visit of the three. Before I start rattling off about how great the class I observed was I’d ask for a moment of silence for our brothers and sisters who went behind the Iron Curtain and were assigned to the Soviet math class… now that that’s over let’s begin.

            The class was much different than what I expected of a history class. History has always been described as one of the most boring classes besides math but what I observed was one of the most interactive classes I’ve seen out of all our observations and a number of my own classes in high school. The teacher was enthusiastic about the content she was teaching which always helps in keeping a student’s attention. The teacher used a projector hooked up to a laptop for the PowerPoint notes and for videos. The videos were very helpful for the subject she was teaching on, textile mill operations, about how the mechanisms operate and their importance. Being a history nerd who has a good understanding of important historical events and inventions; explaining how a textile mill works with no pictures, diagrams, or videos would have been hard for anyone, including myself, to understand.

            The teacher did not lecture the entire class but instead it seemed she taught by asking questions to the students. I don’t know how to phrase or word it other than say it felt like there where nonstop questions the entire class time; which worked to the teacher’s advantage since almost all of the students seemed to pay attention, knew the content, and were VERY involved. The class seemed very lively and the students actually liked the class and the teacher. The teacher was also at times comedic, we’ve all had that teacher that attempts to be funny and flops, but she genuinely could make a joke and related to the students appealing to what she knew teenagers like and hold valuable.

            The teacher it seemed had a loose teaching plan that allowed for more student interaction and took into account of possible setbacks. The teacher took her time and made sure she covered everything before moving on. The teacher also tied together the past and the present to make the content relevant to today. A great example would be when she was teaching about the Tariff of 1832 which she tied the events to the U.S. trade agreement in the Far East Asian nations. The teacher also had an interesting way with students keeping notes which I could not put any better than Colleen did in the last paragraph of her blog.[1]

The teacher, after the class had finished the lesson for the day, then worked in groups on an in class project. The students were given a paper with some questions on it and then three primary source documents from the biggest and most read newspapers of that time about the different economies of the industrial North and agrarian South. The questions weren’t read the article and answer the questions but were thought provoking questions to create discussion on the subject between the students. The whole time the teacher was walking around the class answering questions and making sure the students understood what they were reading.

Overall the class was great and it was the best one I observed and only helped reinforce my decision to teach high school. It also made me realize that I need to step up in my teaching methods seeing how well she handled her class. The three things that really made me think about how I planned to teacher were:

                               I.            How she used the tech, particularly using it when simply reading and talking about a subject won’t help the students understand the content.

                            II.            Her use of questioning to keep the students active in the class but never putting pressure on a student who didn’t get the answer right or didn’t know the answer but would just move on to the next person.

                         III.            Finally her relaxed teaching plan taking into account setbacks and allow for student interaction.

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[1] http://ccockman.blogspot.com/2015/10/back-to-high-school.html