Day 4 at Classic City High School: 2/4/15

     I walked into Mrs. Smith's class and it was practically empty.  There were only four students in class. Two students started doing their work before class had even started and then the other two were on their phones before they had to put them away.  Mrs. Smith was shocked by how little students were in class because she typically has around eight students on average on any given day.  One girl was new and it was her first week at the school.  When Mrs. Smith went to talk to her she didn't really listen or look at Mrs. Smith.  It was surprising to see because all of her students respected her so much, but this girl was new and didn't know how the classroom worked yet.  Mrs. Smith had to tell the girl to look at her while she was speaking and to respond so that Mrs. Smith knew that she understood what she was saying.  Then class started and Mrs. Smith told everyone to start their assignments and to put their phones away.  A different girl, *Clare,  would not put her phone away.  Mrs. Smith recognized that something was wrong and that it was not just Clare trying to be disrespectful, so she let Clare work on different work that she had to do and listen to music.

Watching Mrs. Smith interact with her students amazes me.  She never once lost her temper or raised her voice.  She kept calm and talked with a serious tone to let the students know she wasn't messing around with them.  It seems that the students know that she won't deal with nonsense and when she gets serious with them they respect it.

After she dealt with the two girls she told me that I would be working with Bill again if he showed up to class.  Although he was a few minutes late, he did show up.  I didn't want to be quiet like I was the first time I was with him so I made a more conscious effort to talk.  Our assignment was to write the standards in our own words and then send them to Mrs. Smith, then we would make a poster about the standards.  Bill was very quiet at first and I had to ask him multiple times what he thought and would help him with what to say.  He seemed to be more receptive to my advice as the period went on.  I would tell him to fix a few grammatical errors or to add a period to the end of a sentence.  We then started the poster, but only got done with one standard by the time class was over.  Before we went back to the classroom Bill said "thank you" to me.

I was ecstatic.  I was so happy that I had to try to act casual and not smile too hard as we walked back to class.  I feel like I finally made an impact.  Hopefully I will start to have Bill more and more as the semester goes on because I feel like we will start to talk about things other than school.  He is a quiet guy, but he is very smart and I think he has a lot on his mind that I would be happy to talk about if he felt comfortable.  I am excited for my next day at Classic City so I can carry over this optimism and continue to do well.

Day 3 at Classic City High School 1/28/14

     My third day at Classic City with Mrs. Smith was spent observing her teach class.  I enjoyed watching her teach class because I was curious on how she taught.  I got to class a little bit early, but most of the students were already set up and ready for class to begin.  Mrs. Smith had to remind the class that we had five minutes before class actually started.  I took this time to look at her white boards to see what she had written on them.

     One white board had two lists of names of students that had perfect attendance or was recognized for academic achievement.  The names on the board would be awarded a gift certificate to a local restaurant or business, such as Zaxby's or Target.  I thought this was such a neat idea.  They use positive reinforcement rather than negative reinforcement.  I prefer this because I think awarding those who did what they were supposed to do is more effective than disciplining those that don't do what they were supposed to.  Then on the other board there were two lists. One list was positive actions and the other was negative actions.  Mrs. Smith had decided to start a class dojo where the students choose which actions get points and which actions lose points.  The points would then be added at the end of a week and depending on the amount of points you had you got certain privileges.   The positive actions included participation, not being on the cell phone, and helping others.  The negative actions included being gone from class too long, not being on task, and being on your cell phone.  I thought it was a great idea for the students to choose the actions because then they were able to say what they felt was important to recognize.  The students seemed to really like this idea and were eager to start the program.

     Mrs. Smith then started a powerpoint about clauses and phrases.  She was very good about not going too fast or too slow.  She made sure everyone had the notes before she went to the next slide.  She also made sure that everyone understood what the slide meant.  It was fun to watch the dynamic of Mrs. Smith and her students.  I could tell that they really respected her and wanted to please her.  It was also apparent that she respected them as well.  She would give them a hard time if they used words like aint while talking to her.  She told them that college professors wouldn't give them the time of day if they talked like that, but she also told them that it was okay to say it in informal settings.  She didn't condemn  them for using words that they were raised with.  It was things like that that made me realize that they respected her because she respected them.

     I really enjoyed observing her teach because it made me realize that I want to be somewhat like her.  I want to be able to joke around with my future students.  I want them to respect me and I will respect them.  Mrs. Smith is an incredible teacher who I hope I can be like in the future.