4th Hour, Day Seven

I spent 4th hour in another computer lab with Schultz's class. As they finished their papers, I worked on my plan for the discussion. At first I felt like I had to be able to make stunning and eye-opening revelations and so I had a very hard time writing the questions. But when I decided to scale my expectations of myself back a bit, I found myself having a much easier time with it all. I'm not an expert on the text right now, but if I give it one more read and the movie a watch I think I'll be good.

3rd Hour, Day Seven

Jamie taught the comparative analysis essay assignment again. I think that she did a much better job of explaining it the second time around, especially the bit with the secondary sources.

We took the kids into the computer lab and had them work on the essay. They seemed to be working a lot harder than the second hour group did with their fancy laptops, except for that one kid watching family guy.

2nd Hour, Day Seven

During 2nd hour, Jamie had her students start work on the comparative analysis essay that that Schultz's kids were working on on Wednesday.

There's a big difference between the way that Schultz and Jamie are working this essay. Schultz's students are only using primary sources, but Jamie told her kids to use at least two critical essay, which I think only makes the assignment unnecessarily hard. This assignment could totally be done with the primary sources only, but teaching them how to find the journals and stuff will help them down the line, especially if they ever take a college lit course. I never used an online journal finder thing until I was a freshman in college, so these guys will be way ahead of me.

1st Hour, Day 7

Today I made the transition to working with/following Jamie full time. Jamie is in her first year teaching at Jefferson. I think she taught for a year or two out in Colorado before this, and before that she went to Gustavus, like me.

The first hour class is completely unfamiliar to me. I guess there are two groups of kids that switch between Jamie and a Social Studies teacher. We took both groups to the computer lab and had them work on putting together MLA Works Cited pages for their papers. It was simply enthralling work.

Actually I kinda liked it because I got to be hands on with the children. Jamie was frustrated because some of the children had so much trouble formating the Works Cited pages, but I can't blame them. I always have to have my MLA guidebook in my lap when I make one and I know that plenty of college students do the same.