Day 6 at Classic City High School: 3/18/2015

This was the first time back at Classic City for a month.  I wasn't able to go for so long be the school was closed for two of the weeks and I needed to study for an exam one of the weeks.  I was really nervous when I walked into the school because I was worried that Bill wouldn't want to work with me since I had been gone for so long.  I wouldn't blame him if he was mad and didn't want to work with me because I did leave for a long time.

I walked into Mrs. Smith's class as usual and waited for class to start.  The students that were always there, were in their seats working away by the time class had started.  I remember thinking that these students are more productive than most students I have worked with.  Mrs. Smith was talking with another teacher so it was about five to ten minutes into class before I was addressed.  Bill wasn't there so Mrs. Smith had be work with *Starla.  I was nervous because the last time I had worked with a girl was my first week and it didn't go as I had planned.  Luckily Starla was very welcoming to me.  She opened up to me a little bit talking to me about work and everything she had to do.  She said she loves to read outside of the classroom, but doesn't really get the chance to read as much as she would like because of work.  I was really impressed by this, because, even though I am an english education major, I have not loved reading at home until this year. We got through the critical thinking part of the assignment and then we had to do vocabulary.  Starla did not like to do vocabulary.  She said that it was really repetitive and that she didn't really learn much through the website.  I was impressed, once again, by her because of her want for higher level thinking tasks.  She doesn't like just looking at vocabulary on the computer screen.

Class ended and I waited for the students to leave before I talked to Mrs. Smith.  Talking to Mrs. Smith at the end of the class has become my favorite part of going to Classic City.  I think she is so insightful and can tell me so much about being a teacher and all of her different experiences in the teaching profession. We started talking about Starla and how open she was with me and her wanting to learn on a higher level.  Mrs. Smith wasn't surprised at all and was saying how she doesn't like that she can't really push her students as much as she would like.  I then brought up the book that I had read in class: America's Unseen Kids/Teaching English/Language Arts in Today's Forgotten High Schools. The more we talked about the book the more Mrs. Smith agreed with it and wanted to read it.  I offered to bring her the book the following week so she could read it and she was thrilled.  I was excited to give her the book so we could talk about it more.