Classroom surprises

My coordinator asked me,  “Have there been any surprises that you have observed or experienced in the classroom in general, in students, in yourself?” 

We get surprised when something happens differently than we expected.  One expectation I had is that a lesson plan has a lot of weight, and when applied to different classes of similar ability, would get similar student responses most of the time.  It seems that this has happened only about half the time between the two periods of 9^th and 10^th grade geometry classes.  The other half of the time, one or the other class is very inattentive and /or noisy, but it isn’t consistently one class.   I’m guessing that by planning for the diverse learner and applying it to the whole class, we would have our contingency plan for those days when the students have trouble settling down.

Another expectation I had is that a new building with new technologies would have more teachers using the technologies.  I’ve visited schools in older and newer buildings, and not noticed much difference in the use of technology.  So far, the document camera is the most frequently used technology.  I expect it’s been adopted well because teachers don’t have to change their processes much when using it.  I am interested in seeing how many teachers use Quizdoms, but it seems that only one out of a dozen teachers that have it uses it.

comparing schools

I spent today observing classes at a different HS in a different district.  Their school schedule has six 55 minute periods on Monday, four 90 minute periods Tuesday through Thursday, and six 50 minute periods plus Advisory on Friday.  I observed Algebra 2, Algebra 1, Geometry, and Pre-Calc classes.  I was interested in finding out what the differences might be between the districts, how the school culture compared, how the different classes ran on 90 minute schedules, how teachers engaged their students, and just observing more math classes. 

The school has 1400 students, compared to 1700 at my HS.  There’s about 40% free or reduced lunch, similar to my HS.  The hallways felt less crowded and quieter during passing, but the classrooms were more crowded.  Students seemed less extreme in their dress.  All classrooms had their desks facing forward, spaced apart, compared to a variety of layouts at my HS.  The building was about 35 years old, compared to 2, and I was cold much of the day.  The classes had fewer PCs for students, but there was a computer lab.  The rooms were more decorated, with more posters and math terms.  There were Word Walls in 2 of the 4 rooms.

The first thing I noticed was that the teacher was modeling Cornell notes and all students looked engaged.  I heard that this was being promoted by the district, and some incoming 8th graders already knew this note taking style.  The textbooks were all published by Glencoe and available online.  One teacher projected the online text book, so that highlights and writing could be made (virtually)on the pages. 

Today’s lessons were more direct instruction than constructionist, and 2 of the 4 teachers had short quizzes as their warm up.  With a 3rd teacher I saw a Partner Quiz where the purpose was to communicate with a partner and review the material in the chapter.  There appears to be a big emphasis on testing in this district.  All classes had assignment cover sheets, where all assignments for a unit were tracked and self- graded as well as teacher-graded.  The assignments were turned in on the day of the test and all teachers gave the assignments the same weighting of the grade.  One assignment cover sheet even listed the State Standard that the lesson tied to.  The district provides the chapter tests, and the school has a goal of all teachers teaching the same section of unit at the same time.  Two benefits of this are that students can transfer from one class to the other with minimal disruption (especially important in a high transient population), and ensuring low-performing teachers are covering the material.  The second reason seems poor to me, but that’s another blog on another day.

It was helpful for me to see the best practices that the district had put in place, a couple of which I plan to replicate.  The district appears to be more organized because of the best practices.  The student engagement was generally higher, but I didn’t get a feel for whether there was a richer learning experience.   

The Pre-Calc class I observed had 37 students, the size was a result of the budget cuts.  The teacher had just come from Utah and said that she was used to that, and that it wasn’t unusal for the schools there.   The style of teaching she had suited the larger size and it did not seem to stress anyone I observed.