Observing a Veteran in the field - Schruz High School

This semester, I am observing at Schurz High School on the city’s northwest side. I have had the opportunity to work with a wonderful, veteran English teacher, who is a team lead in her department. As the semester goes on, and we as teaching students continue to learn solid teaching practices and techniques, we get the added benefit of seeing the application of these in the classroom. This has taught me quite a bit about the creation and  implementation of lessons and concepts, and how these teaching techniques and practices play out with actual students, instead of simply how they would work in theory.

My teacher gave me the lay of the land when I first entered the school and I quickly saw how great the school climate was. What I mean by that is when I walked down the hall, teachers and staff smiled at me, they said hello to my cooperating teacher, they asked how we were doing, THEY EVEN KNEW EACH OTHER’S NAMES! This may seem unimportant or not a big deal, but the attitude of a school staff towards one another says a lot about how close the teachers are with one another, and how supportive they might be of their fellow educators. I noticed the same from the students. They seemed like happy, (mostly) chill high school students who didn’t mind being in school. Again, may not seem like a big deal, that is until you’ve been to a school (or schools) that doesn’t have this sort of environment. I was encouraged by this fact as a beginning teacher because it made me feel more confident that I would be able to implement different ideas and concepts that would be met with less resistance or apathy.

The first day I was at Schurz, my co-op teacher implemented a lesson that incorporated many of the techniques and ideas we have been discussing in class. She talked to me about how she planned on pushing the kids to learn with this lesson, how she targeted their zones of proximal development and established what that zone was through constant assessment, both formal and informal. The lesson began with her giving out a benchmark test to her students, evaluating their progress towards mastering subject/predicate recognition. She has gotten her classes to know upon entering that there will be a handout, usually a bell ringer, which they are to take and begin as they come into class. This is definitely a technique that is valuable to a teacher and one we have talked about to establish that there is always something for the students to be doing in class.

She moved into a handout she passed out when the students had finished the exam, in which they would be examining the mood of an excerpt. She had the students practice on their own, and then asked for volunteers to come up and write one of their examples on the overhead, which most students seemed open to trying. She modeled what she was looking for first and the students seemed to “get it”. She then went on to have a discussion with the class about the importance of mood, and how different moods can dramatically affect the way a reader interprets a text. The students were sort of unsure of what exactly she meant be mood affecting interpretation, which she planned for, since the concept requires some critical analysis. To scaffold the concept she was teaching about mood, she incorporated two video clips (movie trailers) into her lesson that were of the same movie, Mary Poppins, and how the moods of each clip varied based on the way the trailer was presented. The students responded well to the clips and her strategy seemed to work the way she planned it.

 To have her students demonstrate their newly acquired (or enhanced, depending on the student) skill, she then played 15 second clips from 5 different songs, and had the students write descriptive verbs (from a sheet she gave them a while back) that they thought described the mood of each song. This was something that the students truly enjoyed and got every one of their attentions. She seemed pleased with their demonstration of knowledge and was able to informally evaluate the general understanding of the concept that the class had. Her lesson, while simple, engaged her students in a myriad of ways, had them reading, writing, talking, and listening with few incidents, and both formally and informally assessed her students. Upon reflection, I was quite impressed with not only her classroom management (something she believes is one of her strongest attributes as a teacher), but with the ease it seemed she was able to perform all of the things I just talked about.

Seeing a quality teacher in action, from the planning stage to the execution, was certainly beneficial for me. I was able to see how a veteran goes about creating a lesson with her students in mind and about scaffolding an entire lesson from beginning to end. Most of all, I was able to see how to incorporate multiple demands (assessment, strategy, time on task, etc.) of a class into a well-timed and thought out lesson. I cannot wait to get more involved with her students in the class and to try and execute my own lesson that I can only hope is as effective and well-received as hers.