4th Hour, Day Five

Jamie has prep during 4th Hour, so I sat in with Mr. Johnson's class because I wanted to get out of her hair and Schultz said that he would be a good one to sit in with. Before I got into his classroom, I totally forgot that he teaches Latin.

I know next to nothing about Latin, but I enjoyed his teaching style. He's very dynamic, walking around the room with the PowerPoint remote in his hand as he goes through the vocab words for the day. I wouldn't put up with the chatty clique in the back of the classroom. I assume that this is an elective and it does seem that most of these kids want to be here, but I think that Johnson's laid-back style lets the chatterboxes get the best of him.

3rd Hour, Day Five

English 11 again. This class is much more laid back than the first section. Jamie had her students do a little assignment where they placed the characters from Raisin on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. The kids in this class seemed to understand it more than the kids in the other section did. I think that Jamie might do things better the second time around, but these might just be smarter kids. Who knows?

2nd Hour, Day Five

Jamie's Second hour is English 11. There are a lot of guys in this class, probably 25/30 and it seems to be a struggle to keep them under control. Jamie has a good style of keeping the kids in line by being quiet, threatening to send people out of the classroom and acting upset with the offending student. The kids respond right away. These seem to be good kids even if they are more rowdy than Schultz's 11th graders.

I guess Jamie isn't teaching Death of a Salesman, which is a shame. I would like the chance to compare her teaching style to Schultz's.

After a quiz, Jamie got the kids into a discussion on the play A Raisin in the Sun. They participate well and seem attentive, even if the ones in the front row are watching the TV announcements like a bunch of slack-jawed yokels.

1st Hour, Day Five

Schultz was home with a sick daughter today, so I'm jumping in early with Jamie. Her first hour is 10th Grade Skills English.

Teaching these kids seems to require a lot more patience and hands-on fun. There is a special ed teacher that Jamie team teaches with a special ed teacher that walks around the classroom and helps keeps things in line.

Jamie teaches off of a PowerPoint slide show and her students have note sheets that have little PowerPoint-style square frames. She tells them exactly what to write down and gives them tons of time to do that.

I asked Jamie what gets a kid into the skills class. She said it was a combination of developmental and motivational problems. I was surprised to learn that Louis, a kid a know from the playground program is in this class. Which group does he fit in to?

After the lecture the kids went to the computer lab to work on a paper. Its amazing how computers make it easier for people to screw around. Louis was listening to music through some website and there were kids messing around with the webcams and all kinds of crap.

I'm thinking that Louis is one of the motivationally challenged kids, because in spite of all of the distractions he made for himself in the computer lab, he still had two paragraphs written, putting him ahead of most of the class.

Right after first hour is something called tutorial. I guess it is a time for study halls, homework make up and clubs that seems like a big waste of time. Apparently it's kind of controversial.