As I returned from my Winter Break, it was time to begin my observations of Miss Silverleaf in Peacebloom High School, a suburban/rural school.  I found Miss Silverleaf in an interesting position.  She had been notified that she was to give a standardized test and a take-home essay test for her final exam.  There are two things that I thought was interesting regarding this situation, the surprise and the format of the exam. 

Although the former was not a surprise to her, the latter was.  Until this point, she had not been notified or forewarned of this part of the exam.  This, in conjunction with the discovery that she needed to be three chapters further than what she thought she needed to be, put her in a bind.  To help alleviate this problem of time constraints (as she has three weeks to do this and review for the exam), she planned library time for the take-home portion.  She then asked the class if they wanted the extra class time, and offered ten extra credit points if they didn’t, since this would help her, but make it more difficult for the students. 

I am not sure that I am completely comfortable with this.  Perhaps because I have never experienced this sort of offer, I have never though about offering extra credit to alleviate a problem of the teacher.  Is this ethical or professional?  I would suppose that this is more professional and ethical than just giving the students the assignment and not giving them time in class.  Indeed, this also allows students to have control of what the classroom does and forces them to make a rational choice between two considerable options.

The other issue was with the structure of the final exam.  The exam is seemingly a copy of any of the recent MEAP Social Studies tests.  Although this idea may not seem to unappealing, the teachers were given no additional resources that help teach the students the skills required to work through the questions posed, let alone understand how to read and come to terms with the test.  Since this is Miss Silverleaf’s first year teaching a general education history class, she has not the experience with this specific system, nor the resource base to accommodate the test and the training.  Although I know little as to what is out there for material to help teach the skills needed, I did suggest that there had to be some sort of guide in the internet that would help, or old MEAP tests that she could work through together with the students. 

Overall, I think this experience with a standardized test for the whole history department has been unpleasant.  The amount of effort Miss Silverleaf will have to go through in order to prepare her students adequately for this test is, in my opinion, atrociously high.  The amount of time that the students will have to spend (probably 3-5 days, in my estimation) in order to get the skills and have a familiarity with the test format could be much better spent either reviewing old material, or examining other topics in history.  Although some blame must fall on Miss Silverleaf, I would also tend to cast some blame on the administration for not adequately supporting her and giving her the materials needed to help her students gain the skill set needed to perform well on the test.

This week, I had a couple of interesting things happen to me which I think should be made a note of.  The first was watching something Miss Silverleaf did, and the other was an event between a student at Peacebloom School and I.

First, on Tuesday, Miss Silverleaf talked with her 2^nd hour class (9^th Grade Geography), about the situation with North Korea.  Although I disagreed with some of her terminology regarding Kim Il Jung, I understand why she stated it as she did.   What gave me more trouble, however, was her reluctance to have, or even attempt to have, the same sort of discussion with her 4^th hour (10^th Grade US History).  I asked her if she would, and she looked me straight in the eye and stated, “No, I am too much of a chicken.”  Essentially her reluctance (from my understanding resulting from the consequent conversation) stemmed from her already stretched nerves regarding that class.  Indeed, compared to other classes, her fourth hour is rowdy, but I would claim that I would have done so if I were in her shoes.  Although I cannot make the universal claim that I would have done so for every class regardless to its “obedience”, I would have done so.

Hmm, I guess I would have to say that each student should be educated, at least at part, in the current events, what is happening and why (as far as can be figured out at that point).

The other event was during Miss Silverleaf’s 2^nd hour today.  The class was starting research for, and working on, a project dealing with an issue of the Middle East, which meant we went to the library.  While there, I was wandering around, assisting the students or shepherding them back onto task.  At one point, I was talking to a student and a paper airplane landed in front of me.  Noting this was a breach in the rules, I picked up the airplane and looked at the student who was to be held accountable.  I found him not more than two feet away.  I picked it up and told him that this was not appropriate and it should be put away, then I gave it to him.  Although he was appreciative that I didn’t get him in trouble, was this the right thing to do in the circumstances.  I figured that it wasn’t that big of a distraction, I didn’t have much, if any, official power to punish the students, so a simple statement should do well in discouraging him, and it did.

Today was my first serious observation of the Peacebloom High School with Miss Silverleaf. Out of the many things that I took note of, I would like to take notice of an assignment that Miss Silverleaf started in one of her classes.

Essentially she broke the class into two groups of roughly equal sizes, and assigned one with being “anti-imperialist” and the other being “imperialist.”  She provided the groups with one article pertaining to each side had them read that article.  Tomorrow she stated that she would have the groups meet and discuss their “point of view” and then they would have to chose a spokesperson to explain their point of view to the class as a whole.

While an excellent idea to begin with, I don’t think that this would go far enough in forcing intellectual stimulation that Miss Silverleaf would hope to get out of this.

Before that particular section of her US history class, we discussed the idea of behind the lesson.  She hoped that the students would “get into it” and hopefully start a debate.  Indeed, on the assignment board, she labeled it as a “debate”.  However, with the instructions that she gave the students, I do not this sort of debate that she and I hoped for would materialize.

I do wish I could be there tomorrow, to see how she reacts and prompts the students to debate the issues.  I will be sure to ask her on Thursday, when I come in again, how it went, and to try to debrief her on what she thought went wrong.

I would propose that a better way to promote the debate would be to turn this into more of a project than another assignment.  Indeed, telling them that I would expect them to role play their imperialist or anti-imperialist roles and perhaps attempt to break them into smaller groups for more effective classroom management would be, I think, more appropriate.

Indeed, as I have said, rather than in earlier works of this edublog, I intend to make this more of my own musings, what I can use, what I don’t want to, what I can improve in the world around me. I also intend to post things that I see as important stepping stones in my transformation from a student to a teacher.  This idea has a great deal of merit, I just believe I would run it differently.

I had my “first” encounter with students today in Peacebloom School*. Yes, I had encounters with students before, thus it really isn’t my “first”, but it was the first time with students from this school, and under the tutelage of Miss Silverleaf*.

Today was a relatively unusual day, as it was “Cabin Time” day. The usual schedule was modified and classes shortened to provide forty minutes for students to talk amongst themselves about the problems facing the school. Minutes would be taken by the student facilitators, which would then be brought to the student council, which would then attempt to work with the administration to bring about a resolution.

Although I thought this was a reasonable idea to begin with, I noticed that the youngest members of the group, the freshmen, did not participate. I asked Miss Silverleaf afterward why she thought that was and, simply, her response was that they were not used to this sort of open dialogue, and do not know how to make this sort of thing work for them. This rang true to me, as I don’t think the freshmen were used to this, indeed, I was not expecting this sort of equalized dialogue that was used, at least in the High School level, however, I do not think the topics discussed were geared towards them either, especially regarding how things ‘used to be’ and how they changed, in the students opinion, for the worse.

This is, however, an interesting tool that I might be able to utilize in some way. Directly giving the students direct power to talk about changes that can happen in the school is healthy. More directly, I can use this in my classroom, for example, if something drastic happened in my school or in the world. This would allow me to still give facts that are known, and allow the students to form their own opinions on what it is that should be done next and help students with higher forms of thinking and expressing themselves. The biggest flaw that I can see in this sort of activity would be the large amount of student participation that would be required for this to be a success.

*Pseudonyms, of course, are used.