Field Post 2 - Beachwood Middle School

On the 13th February 2014 we went to Beachwood Middle School, it is a particularly small middle school with a lot of diversity, it is also very wealthy. I went to do different classes, the first was Chinese, the second, English.
In Chinese they started by having 5 minutes to study before doing a short test on vocabulary. Just before giving the test, the teacher went through spellings, calling on students for the answers. After the test they learnt to count from 1 to 10, and their homework was explained to them. This is what I observed and interpreted during the lesson:

Observation	Interpretation
Each child has Apple laptop given by school	Rich school, many resources, so good environment
Chinese themed room	Immersive environment
Personal teacher pupil relationship	Allows teaching to be personal and more adventurous
A-not good for one, amazing for another	Individual teaching, more personal
Need “Good penmanship”	Accuracy is important, teaching an art as well as a language
Use workbooks	Organized, pre-planned lesson
Matching pictures, reciting and writing out to learn new material	Many different ways to make it more interesting

Before the class started I spoke to the teacher about what she thought about teaching and she said, "I love my job, but only in this district, nowhere else." This is interesting, because it shows that where you work as a teacher affects your experience as a teacher, but also how well you can teach.

The students started by looking up their own word of the day from reading that they were doing in English. They then worked through grammar rules with the teacher, finally moving on to a conflicts paper. This is my T table for this class:

Observation	Interpretation
Teachers desk at the back	Not important
Colourful boards around the room and Word of the day board (“Absurd to Pedagogy”)	Interesting and challenging, some words on the board I didn’t know, worrying for me…
New student asked to read and teacher questioned to work out where she was in the syllabus	Trying to integrate new people
Do work then go through in class	Methodological
Some desperately want to answer, some just don’t talk (then get called on)	Genuinely interested, or teacher wants them to be engaged

I preferred to watch the Chinese lesson because I felt it was more engaging than the English lesson that seemed to mainly work through a blue packet and wasn't as individualistic.