Getting ready for blast off....
So today was the first day at my practicum. I was surprised how close this school was to where I live. The sprawl of several cities has merged some of these small towns willing or unwillingly into a mini-metro with several distinct school districts nearly on top of one another. This is different from many local school boundaries in the same district. The second thing was this school is much more serious about security and access than several others I have visited and walked through in the past. I had to be buzzed in, sign away my first born (it's ok with his behavior lately, no problems there j/k), and was escorted to the room by the secretary. I also noticed not many kids in the hallways. Only 3 or four (in a school of about 400 total kids in high school) wandering the halls but to and from the bathroom or their lockers. The last thing I noticed before even entering/while entering the classroom is a strict no backpack policy. My cooperating teacher informed me it was due to OSHA/fire marshall regulations about blocking the aisles/tripping hazards. I also made a small mental note that in a "secured" building, if everyone is just carrying what they need for class, anyone with a backpack at times not ~8AM or ~3:30pm is fairly suspicious though.
Finally I entered the room. I saw that the room was divided into two not quite equal parts (about a 60/40 split). The larger portion of the room was a lab area with benches coming off the walls. The smaller half was aligned with desks in fairly organized row, a central "teacher" bench in front of the classroom, a mounted projector, white board and a computer cart with my cooperating teacher's laptop. There is a five minute transit time for students between their scheduled classes. I was shown a seating chart. I was explained that today was a presentation day for the near end of a unit on energy. They were doing the histories and engineering of how certain power plants around the country.
The cooperating teacher called for the students to sit down. I should ask who set this up initially but Google drive was used for the students to share their presentations. Generally the students were questioned if they used an acronym and didn't define it in their presentation and would occasionally question if they did not explain. It was unique to say the least because I think most presentations were done in under five minutes. My cooperating teacher obviously knows his students and reminded them several times about the "allow" button for sharing at one point asking "Does anyone listen to me?" (I tried not to laugh). He obviously knows his students by this point in the semester (I asked). There's some back and forth with some underlying history I didn't quite catch. One thing I started to notice was there was more and more talking the closer to the lunch break, so I heard the quote, "Talk during a presentation and lose points". It got quiet, but the obvious tattling began between presentations and all one student said in reply "He said no talking during, this is between" and the teacher confirmed.
Today I learned about what period I don't want to teach: the one with lunch on the day of an early dismissal, especially when you have the "B" lunch. The students were obviously anxious to go to lunch all day. Then after returning from lunch they were anxious to leave early. I think this was possibly great planing (or fortuitous accident) that I got to see these presentations today. Instead of fighting their tendency to want to be elsewhere and give them something new to do, I saw letting them summarize what they have done. In 2 weeks, when I return to this day on the blocks, I would like to see how it is different.
And the struggle begins....(Course if I pull the sword out I'm king off all the Brittons and my life gets easier)
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