Observation #1 - The Story

            I arrived at Central Fall’s High School earlier last week, on Thursday.  That day I had decided that I would stay for the entirety of the school day and make my keen observation within the livelihood of the educators and students of this public educational institution.  I met with Dr. Buddy Comet who courteously toured me through the English department of Central Fall’s High School.  For that day, I would only need to memorize three routes—I was assigned four classrooms, with two of them being adjacent to one other.  As I met with each instructor, I was greeted with a warm but authoritative presence, wished good luck on my journey, and explicitly told that I was lucky to have a diverse array of classes to observe.

            The first
period bell rang and I was on course and seated in Mr. K’s 9^th grade inclusion class (a class composed of students with IEPs and those without).  The students pile in, talking amongst each other about winter break and their lack of interest to partake in any further academic activities.  To this I thought, “Well, yes. I would be on the same boat figuring that vacation was near. But I want to at least take something away from school before I leave.” I continued to scan the classroom and happened upon numerous posters plastered on the walls. “Weekly Vocabulary Words: What do YOU want to know?”  “Quotes to remember.” “The Five Key Essentials to a Story.” “The Four Conflicts of a Story.” As Mr. K finished his attendance, I turned to him and asked who created all those posters.  He admitted to the idea having been conceived by the English Department as a part of Central Fall High School’s curriculum, but he stressed it was in fact the students who were in charge of what was being placed on the posters.  This was an excellent but scary idea, I thought. The power of learning was led by the educator, Mr. K, but the information was being produced and processed by the students.

            When class officially began, students were readily reading silently for what seemed to be ten minutes.  While there were some students who preferred to talk amongst themselves, Mr. K made sure to throw a suggestion, such as “How was your football game? You want to do better next time by reading about those athletic characters, right?” or “What about those news stories overseas; wouldn’t you want to find out what happened this morning?”, which enticed the students to eagerly gather themselves and indulge in their reading materials.  It was a quick exchange, but Mr. K had a great sense of direction with where he wanted his class to go during the prelude phase to his lesson.

As the ten minutes came to a close, all the students were handed an article on women in the Middle East.  Where I thought they would be more than confused with the sudden thrust of the article some of the students surprised me as they recalled being given a similar story to read during the beginning of the month.  Mr. K called upon the students one-by-one to read the article aloud, and had immediate engagement from the back of the classroom about how they perceived the living conditions of women in the Middle East versus women in America.  The students in the front of the class were quiet and looked rather puzzled at the analysis of the text as the period moved forward.  But once again, Mr. K with his full understanding and control of the lesson took those few students who were struggling to comprehend the text and brought the text to them.  He negotiated their livelihoods on school sports and extracurricular activity with the inability of the women in the Middle East to having those same privileges.  And slowly, one-by-one, those students in the front were able to grasp the concept of his lesson: investigate, compare, contrast, and negotiate.

The bell rang and Mr. K pulled me aside and explained to me that each classroom in the building had been assigned students with IEPs, and that the IEP educator was on maternal leave.  This pressed and passed on the responsibility of teaching those students to the regular educators, who were also trained and qualified to teach students with IEPs.  He admitted that it was a format that needed more work, as it forced more work on the part of the regular educators, but it also more crucial to fix the issue as those with IEPs were beginning to drop lower in their comprehension of the material, and their grades suffered due to this.  He wished me luck in my next observation, and told me to keep what he had passed on to me in mind.