Seminar - Observations

This last week was filled with observations in the classroom. I came in for two days last week and I would say that half of my time between the two was spent observing in classrooms. I love doing classroom observations because I feel like I am a detective. Teachers who have a student in their class with some kind of problem are usually very busy teaching the whole class that they can't pay attention to what could be going on with the student. Teachers have guesses about what is going on (and are usually right), but it helps to have another set of eyes.

I was given a student to observe in two different classroom settings. The suspicion was that the student was not performing to their best potential in one class and was doing fine in another. Something that I believe service teams do not always realize is that the problem could be a number of things. It could be that the student is not motivated, or it could be that the instruction and curriculum do not match with the student's learning style. I have found that it is very unlikely that a school will assume responsibility for why a student might be failing. This was definitely the case in the classes I observed. There were a few other students sleeping, hardly any engagement, and the style was mostly in a lecture format. Had I not observed and given extensive support for my observations, I feel like this student would have been labeled as being lazy.

It is for this reason that I like working in a high school. High schools are typically run by traditional lines of thought and I feel like I can offer a good perspective. Anyway, so after my observation I was able to write up my observations as divided by "Student," "Instructor," and "Curriculum." Then I wrote down what was happening at what point in the classroom for each of these categories followed by the duration of the tasks. What I discovered was that the entire class period for both classes was spent in a lecture format. If we have a student with special needs and clearly they are unable to focus for 45 minutes of a lecture, something else needs to change. When put in a group setting or the tasks were applied to real life situations, the student perked up. Frankly, I think that all students in the classroom would have benefited from that kind of instruction.

Too often I think that we expect students to be like every other student and "toughen up." The reality is that all students do not learn the same way. It is backwards to expect them to do so.

That was primarily the excitement for this last week. I also had my counseling group and had great feedback on the activity we did the week prior. Unfortunately, one of the people who I thought would benefit the most did not attend. I am hoping to have another update this week. The social worker really liked the idea that I brought to the group and has asked me to bring some other practical tools/skills that they can use for this week. I feel like my philosophy on "doing" and "practicality" in schools has gotten a lot stronger.

I'd also like to briefly mention a presentation that we heard in class yesterday for Mental Health. I will be updating this blog with my whole thoughts about it, but it was on social-emotional learning. It was exactly what I think I would like my future research to go into. I strongly feel that social-emotional skills need to be taught in the schools so that they will be better prepared for life after high school.