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.