Productive Classrooms

On Tuesday, my teacher had me observe another teacher because his class had a test. I was at school for two hours, observing the time students were waiting in the cafeteria before school and observing an Algebra I A class with Mr. B that lasted an hour and thirty-five minutes. His class was taking a pretest to assess their prior knowledge of topics in Algebra on individual laptops and then were going through lessons on multiplication, addition, subtraction, and whole numbers on the laptops when they were through with the pretest. There was an inclusion teacher in the classroom named Dr. L who works with Mr. B to allow the special education students to be able to keep up with the rest of the class. So there were two teacher in the classroom for about sixteen students.

First of all, Carolina High School is very strict on not allowing students to be in the hallways during class. As a result, Mr. Delaney (my mentor teacher) absolutely will not allow his students to go to the restroom during class. However, Mr. B had students who just got up from their seats and walked out of the door without even saying anything to him. During the course of the class, three different students did this--some of whom were gone for at least ten minutes. There was also one student who was talking to a student across the classroom and wandering around the classroom for over half of the period, barely getting any work done. There were a couple students who had closed their laptops and were not doing any work at all. Another was playing a pinball game. I tried to encourage individual students to get back on task by telling them that they were doing a good job on their work or telling them that they could do it, but that didn't help. There was one student who came into class late (because of testing) when there were about fifteen minutes left, but neither teacher set up her up to at least some of the work. During the entire class, neither of the teachers asked the students to get back on task more than once or twice. There were probably only a few students out of the entire class that stayed on task the entire period.

I definitely learned a lot from this experience. Mr. Delaney's students are much more focused and well-behaved. He addresses problems when they arise and doesn't let students get away with things, while the other teachers I have observed use the method of trying to simply ignore the problem. From these observations, I have learned the importance of establishing an atmosphere in which students feel like they are expected to be productive and to stay on task when they are given a some independence in their work. I will remember these experiences when I have my own classroom to remember that it is important to not ignore every problem, hoping that it will take care of itself. From the beginning, I will be clear with my students that I expect them to learn in my class and to be on task. I will make sure that it is clear that I will not tolerate students not doing work during class and to explain the importance of everyone participating and taking an active role in their learning.