Observations

Happy Friday Everyone!

This week, as part of my graduate program, I spent all day Tuesday and Thursday observing other teachers. On Tuesday I observed teachers from my host school, and on Thursday I spent the day at another high school that is participating in the program. It was interesting and refreshing to see other classrooms, and I have pages of notes to shuffle through. Overall, there are three main points I want to discuss, observing teachers from my host school, observing teachers from the other school, and observing non-mathematics classrooms.

The school year has been going on for a little over two weeks now, and for the most part I have stayed in the same room Monday-Friday. Therefore, I was excited to get out and see other teachers. The math department at my host school has been working closely together over the past few years, thus, their classroom setups are fairly similar. Every classroom had tables or arranged desks into groups of 4 to allow for group work. Also, each room had similar “group norms” posted on the walls to remind students of the classroom expectation. Similarly, teachers also shared similar instructional styles and routines. Nearly all teachers start the lesson with a “Get To Know You Question” (GTKYQ) which is usually a silly (or sometimes morally complex) question for the students to bond over for a few minutes. Another similar trait among the math teachers is the use of random call on cards with the students’ names on them. This allows the teachers to quickly check for understanding in the classroom, and prevents any bias that exists in teachers picking volunteers. After the GTKYQ, the mathematics begins with structured group work. The only main difference I noticed is some teachers have decorated their classrooms much more than other teachers in the department. For example, one teacher in particular has much more color and many more posters throughout their room. Apart from that, I did not notice many differences between the math teachers.

Because of the similar styles of the math department at my host school, I noticed a lot of different techniques and teaching styles at the other school I observed this week. This school is actually broken down into the high school and the middle school, so I was able to observe a variety of grade levels. In my time there, I observed two high school classes, a lower level algebra class, and an AP Bio class. The algebra class was the first class of the day and had roughly half a dozen students enrolled. Furthermore, the lesson consisted of independent drill and practice worksheets. I was disappointed there was no group work, discourse, or mathematical discovery going on in this classroom. Next, the AP Bio class was completely different. The students in this class were much more talkative, and they worked in groups to complete a lab for the duration of the period. This was a nice change for the previous class I had observed. However, it is important to note that these were two vastly different student populations, and while all students are capable of the same learning opportunities, there are different stigmas and expectations assigned to different student groups, for better or for worse.

I spent the rest of Thursday observing middle school classrooms. Personally, I am not quite sure what age group I want to teach, and I have recently become interested in the middle school grade level, so I was excited to spent this time in the middle school. When I walked into these classrooms I immediately noticed differences from the high school. The walls had much more color and decorations, the desks were arranged into groups, and the teachers had much more energy. The mathematics classroom particularly stood out to me, because it closely resembled the math classrooms at my host school. It was reassuring to see similar teaching methods being used in this different school and different grade level. In general, I found the middle school lessons to be much more interesting and engaging. That being said, I do wish I was able to observe more than one high school math class, so I could have gotten more of an understanding of the high school math department.

Another interesting aspect of the observations was seeing other disciplines, besides math. Overall, I observed economics, AP bio, 8th grade social studies, and 8th grade ELA. Interestingly enough, all of these classes utilized group work and discussions for the majority of their lessons, which I was excited to see. It has been a while since I was in a high school class other than math, and it was refreshing to see that many pedagogical philosophies apply to different disciplines. It seems that most classrooms are moving away from the traditional classroom setup, and allowing students to work together to construct their own knowledge. Hopefully this is a trend that will continue!

It was enriching to see these different classrooms, and in fact, I have more observations scheduled for next week so I am sure I will learn even more! In the future, when I am a teacher of record, I hope I will be able to continue the act of observing other teachers to compare and contrast different ideas, and to learn more about my own practice. It can be easy to get bogged down by the work of teaching and get stuck in your own little corner, so I plan to keep my mind as open as possible and always look for new experiences.

As always, I welcome any and all comments, and thank you so much for reading!