Field Blog Hathaway Brown 1

I am spending my 10 hours observing at Hathaway Brown School. Hathaway Brown is an all girls school in Shaker Heights, well known for their science and maths programs. They are the oldest school in Ohio and it is a beautiful building. The school itself has a day care facility, early childhood education, middle school and high school all on the same campus.
Today at Hathaway Brown I observed two classes, the first was a Genetics High School Freshman class, the second was a Flower Dissection lab for the same age group. The first thing I noticed in the classroom was how small the classes were. The genetics class had 11 girls in it, which is considerably smaller than any public school classroom, but is similar to the class sizes I had at my school. The girls were asked to turn in their lab reports first in the genetics class but one girl said that she had completely forgotten to even do it, she was particularly distressed because it was the first assignment that she had ever forgotten about. The teacher, Mrs. McBeath, told her not to worry about it, but instead just email it to her as soon as possible. The rest of the class also comforted her and tried to make them feel better. This was good and it helped her calm down.
The comradary of the girls in both classes was an especially amazing thing to see, they all helped each other out a lot and were really into doing things as a group and helping each other as much as they could. This is good because it shows that they have been taught to work well together and these kinds of actions will help them in later life. They were very talkative but were well-behaved and participated in everything the teacher asked them to. They were also aware of Ohio Laws on education and teaching, especially comparing their school setting and a public schools', which is interesting because it shows that they are aware of the world around them, which many students are not.
In both classes the teachers used PowerPoint to explain their points and go through material. Some of the girls had laptops and used these to have the notes up on them too so that they could also make their own notes.
The genetics class started with Mrs. McBeath going through terms they had done last class and the students had to call back the definitions. This acted as a good review for them so they all remembered what they were doing before moving onto the Punnett Square. Mrs. McBeath went through the Punnett Square using a real life example of Mendel's laws and his pea experiment, which gave what they were doing practical meaning. They then repeatedly practiced this technique on worksheets that were given out. After each worksheet the class went through the answers and the Punnett Squares were done on the board.
Ms. Homany took the lab class on the flower dissection. Tables in the classroom had name tags on them, which I found interesting and I'm not entirely sure why they were there. The lab started by going through notes on plants that were made beforehand, the class followed using their lab notebooks. Each person dissected a flower of their own and worked through questions that were already in their lab books. I helped out one group who were doing a dissection and was amazed by the general knowledge they had and their proactive working. They all enjoyed what they were doing and were very diligent.