Week Eight Journal Entry

On Friday, my last day, the students in Mrs. T's mythology class threw a party for me, complete with food and their presentation of an original poem. I'm inserting the poem here. Those knuckleheads really did a nice thing--they almost made me cry.

In accordance with recommendations in the UAH student teaching handbook, I observed various English teachers throughout BJHS this week. I saw and heard some very impressive students and some very impressive instruction.

• Mrs. H. teaches writing in such a wonderfully structured way. I would love to spend more time in her classroom, and I would love to borrow all of her instructional materials.


• Mrs. K's AP students were were very impressive. Mrs. K. asked them to write three sentences describing natural settings. After about five minutes, the students shared their sentences with the class. Some of the sentences were so good, I think it would have taken me a week to write and edit something like that.


• Mr. P's Creative Writing II class was also very impressive. On the day I observed, the students were "workshopping" a poem that a fellow student had written. The students' comments were a testament to their incredibly mature reading skills. I told Mr. P. I didn't know any teacher or class was conducting this type of writing workshop on the high school level. Every student in the (admittedly small) class gave the author constructive feedback. No one said, "I don't know," or "I just really liked it." While there was positive and negative feedback, the negative comments couldn't have been easy for the author to hear. She handled it like a veteran, though.


• Mrs. B. teaches the lower-level learners in an applied English class. Out of 23 students in the class I observed, she has 19 IEP's. I listened to Mrs. B. read a chapter from The Grapes of Wrath to her students. She lead the class discussion with patience, compassion, and humanity. I was amazed that, in a class with this many IEP's, the students were perfectly behaved. It would have been interesting to observe Mrs. B's class at the beginning of the semester as she established her discpline plan.

Tomorrow, as week nine begins, I head to Hampton Cove to begin observing Ms. B's eighth grade English classes. Hampton Cove has a reputation as a good school, and I've heard that Ms. B. is very nice, so there are two things to be thankful for. I believe a couple of things will be tough, though. First, unlike BJHS, I will be coming into Ms. B's class at a point in the year when the students and the teacher already know each other. There won't be any get-to-know-you games to help me learn students' names. Hopefully Ms. B. will be able to give me a seating chart to help in this regard. Second, we are heading into the final quarter of the year, and the students will have spring fever. To exacerbate this problem, these are 8th graders, who probably feel like they're "so over" this middle school thing. Oh, well. I'm about to graduate, and I may have a touch of spring fever myself. We'll have to work through it together.