Observation 1

Observation 1

The school that I observed at today was Coventry High School. This High School looks like an average high school, the hallways are covered in positive posters, artwork that the students have made, and trophies that the teams have won. The room that I was in was Mr. Gome’s 9^th grade English class.  The walls were covered in positive posters, and posters that have pictures of famous authors on them.  I feel this is a good thing because without this posters the room would have no color and would just be plan white walls.  The furniture was arranged in a very unique way, the students desks were placed on each side of the classroom with a big opening in the middle, and the teacher’s desk was in the far left hand corner of the room.  Mr. Gomes placed the desks in this way so that he has more space to walk the classroom and interact with all of the students.  I like the way that the chairs are arranged because it helps the classroom have a better vibe. Also, all of the students seem to enjoy the seating and none of them have to sit very far from the teacher, or where the action is so that they all are able to see what the teacher is doing. In my opinion the only thing that is missing is that the classroom needs more color, but other than that nothing seems to be missing from this room.

            The school as a whole makes me feel very safe, there were police officers near the front door, and all of the doors even the doors of the classrooms had the safety feature of locking as soon as the door closed.  The room that I am observing is a 9^th grade classroom, there are about eighteen to twenty students in this classroom, seven of which are girls and the rest are boys.  All of the students are Caucasians. As far as quality, most of the students were paying attention when the teacher was speaking, and some of the students answered his questions and others remained quiet. After about forty minutes of class time went by, the students that were quiet seemed to become more comfortable to speak in front of the class. The class was about an hour and a half long, so even the students that didn’t speak in the beginning had plenty of time to join class discussion before class was over. None of the students in this particular seemed to have any disabilities.

I didn’t spend an entire day with the students or the teacher, but during this one class period Mr. Gomes kept the students attention and kept them engaged.  He answered any question that they had and he encouraged class discussion, whether they were discussing the book that the class just finished Of Mice and Men, or if they were talking about the two short videos that they watched during class. All of the students could participate if they wanted to, most of the students did and the few that did not were not forced to talk or answer questions if they didn’t want to.

The power of energy in the room comes from the teacher, when he got very excited about something or a topic the students seemed to also get excited and want to learn about it, even the students that were quiet.  Like I said previously as class went on more and more students joined in on the different discussions, so the power of the classroom began to interchange amongst the students and their teacher Mr. Gomes.

 I wish that my 9^th grade English teacher was like Mr. Gomes.  He never forced students to speak that didn’t know the answers or might be too shy to speak. My 9^th grade English teacher would always call on a student on the spot and never practiced wait time, and my teacher would always show how annoyed he was when a student didn’t get the answer right away. Mr. Gomes never did that to his students, he made them feel like every answer was a good answer even when it wasn’t the exact one that he was looking for. This observation, in my opinion went very well and it was very informative to see how a 9^th grade class is run.