Quick Description of School and Classrooms:
Quick note on the class levels: I'm not sure I recorded them all correctly. I think I got the teachers names right though.
When we arrived at James Rutter Middle School, the five of us were given a quick overview of the school by the principal - who really impressed me with her level of involvement and honesty about the issues faced by the school. James Rutter is a title one school that feeds into the Florin High School.
Each class had 5 apple computers off to one side of the room.
It
didn't appear that the computers were getting much use (although I did
see one kid playing games during lunch). One of the teachers said
that
they were still waiting for some of the software that they wanted -
which was expensive. She also said she wanted to use the
computers for the class to do some math problems related to the stock
market (for statistics I assume).
Rutter also happens to be the first school that I have visited that
maintains the traditional schedule and not a block
schedule. Even though my own high school had the traditional
schedule, the classes seemed very short after going to all the schools
with the new block schedules. Ironically, most of the classes I
went to that day were intervention classes that ran for two periods -
so the classes were roughly 2 hours long anyway (with a quick break
between
hours).
From the report card on their website, I learned that they have a 30% ELL population and a 62% low income student population. Not surprisingly, it rated below the state average on most of the test scores. However, the school still has an art program and a band class, which I found encouraging. Also, they met their improvement goal last year, so hopefully they aren't a target for state takeover.
I also found encouraging the fact that most of the math teachers in the school choose to have lunch together in the staff room every day (I joined them on my second visit). I think this shows some amount of camaraderie in the face of a challenging student body. On the other hand, when I mentioned that I thought the real hardcore teaching is being done in the poorer schools like James Rutter, one of the teachers made an offhand remark that she had put in her time and was ready to move on (presumably to a more upper-middle class school).Seating,
Teacher Movement, and Participation:
Miss Jones 7th Grade Math Intervention: I came into the class during the second of 2 periods (the intervention classes last for 2 periods - which means they lose an elective). The class started off with some interactive problem solving, where the students would work on a problem and then the teacher would demonstrate how to do it (sometimes in parts). The teacher mostly sat at the front of the class on a stool next to the overhead projector. It was a small class with only 18 kids in a room with 36 desks, and the kids were kind of spread out in the room with no particular pattern or methodology evident. A couple of the kids sat together at a desk in the corner, but I didn't have time to ask the teacher what their situation was. A couple of times during the individual problem solving the teacher went out to look over a couple of students' work - but this was pretty much an exception to an hour spent at the front of the class.
In my opinion the optimum situation would be to use power point (or
something similar) instead of an overhead projector, and use a
remote to advance the slides. That way the teacher can wander
about more and tutor/motivate by proximity. I also have some
ideas about using a table PC with a wireless connection so that the
teacher can even write on slides from anywhere in the classroom - but
that's a subject for a different report.
During a practice test the kids exchanged papers after every problem. This seemed to involve a lot of popping up and down out of seats since the kids were so spread apart. Maybe this wasn't such a bad thing though, since it got them moving once in a while. I'm kind of surprised in some ways that schools expect middle school kids to sit in one place without moving for an hour at a time.
As far as class participation is concerned, the bulk of the students
were pretty quiet. One boy tried to answer just about every
question, but he had a tendency to get most of the answers wrong.
Miss Jones did one thing at the end of class that I thought was kind of neat. She played a game of Simon says using math problems like "raise your hands if a square is a rectangle." It seemed like a nice break in the tedium after 2 hours of one class.
Linda Chin Pre-Algebra Intervention: In this class the desks were arranged in squares of 4 so that the kids could collaborate on problems. This seems like an especially helpful arrangement for ESL students. She had 21 students. The teacher had a very closely tracked point system where students get points for answering problems, helping a neighbor, and all sorts of things (with deductions for certain bad behavior as well). It's time consuming but it seems to help keep the kids on task.
During lecture the teacher tried to keep the kids on task by asking
them to repeat things that were just said. During problem solving
she wandered around the desks to answer questions. I was fairly
impressed with the amount of effort she put into keeping the students
as focused as possible. However, if the problem was at all hard,
few of the students tried to do it on their own - they just waited for
the teacher to do it on the overhead.
Her class seemed like a pretty tough crowd to teach. There were some fairly obvious ADD students (rocking in their chairs) mixed in with students who might have had a fairly poor understanding of English. The teacher never raised her voice, but the kids seemed to accept her authority pretty well, and when she asked students to move or sent them outside (which happened twice), they did it promptly.
Mr. Vale Pre-Algebra Intervention: This was a very small class with only 12 students. They were seated in the standard row arrangement, which to me seems to take no particular advantage of such a small class size. The teacher tried to walk around a bit during the warm up exercise to help out the students. However, to write on the overhead during lecture time he sat behind a large desk, which seemed to me to present a barrier to interaction with the students.
One kid in the corner of the class wanted to answer every problem (and she did have most of them right), but the teacher tried to get everyone involved. I was especially impressed with how the teacher worked with students who struggled when they were asked to give an answer. Instead of moving on to the next student (or the kid in the corner who had all the answers), he would work with the student to help them through it. I thought this was a good way of showing them they could do the work rather than just passing them over when they struggled a bit, and it showed them that they weren't going to be let off the hook by giving up.
Mr. Fuentes Math Intervention:
Out of all the teachers I've observed so far (and I've seen a lot in
the last couple of months), this teacher seemed to be the one who was
most on a mission. I was really impressed by his level of
commitment. On top of being very interactive (and pretty
authoritarian even by teacher standards), he had an unusual emphasis on
student posture. He wanted all the students to sit up straight
with both feet on the floor. I have to say, I've never been quite
so careful about my own posture while observing a class. I'm not
sure I would be able to carry off his style personally, but I can see
how a lot of kids would probably do quite well under it.
He had a class of 18 students arranged in a fairly standard row pattern. However, he told me that he also uses group patterns on days when the kids aren't doing tests (which they were doing when I was there). He also mentioned that he has 7 RSP students, 9 with AD/HD, 3 504 special plans, and 4 borderline ELL students. This was another tough class in a school full of tough classes, but he seemed to be up for the challenge.
Out of all the classes I've observed so far, this was also the only
class I've been to where the teacher made my presence a big part of the
class for the day. He introduced me to the students, had me give
some of my background, and then put me through a verbal quiz on simple
math operations in front of the class. It was a very different
experience from what I've become used to making observations.
After putting me through the quiz, he had the students stand and verbally answer simple math problems as a group. These were problems like "Subtract 6 from 70", after which the students all say "64" after which the next question might be "take the square root". Then he had them take a timed test on simple operations. Although this was theoretically below where their current level was supposed to be (it was a 5th grade test really), I thought this review was a good confidence builder, and probably needed by a fair number of the students since only maybe half of them completed the test after several time extensions.
The teacher also asked me my opinion about the class, which struck
me as an unusual amount of commitment to self improvement.
Unfortunately, his style is so different from what I'm used to or how
I've always imagined my own teaching, I'm afraid I didn't have much to
give in the way of feedback. Still, I feel like I personally
learned a lot from this teacher, and I would consider using him as a
resource when I start my own teaching.