Field blog Hathaway Brown 3

Today I observed a 9th Grade Biology Lab. It was taught by a teacher I hadn't met yet called Mrs. Spano, who I discovered is loved by her students. They were doing a lab on mitosis, to do this they were looking at some slides and working their way through a handout in pairs or threes. She then walked around the class helping students individually. Before this, however, she began the class by doing a short explanation of mitosis and of what they were going to do.

What I wanted to focus on in this blog was a conversation I had with one of the students at the end of class. One of girls whose mother works at John Carroll came up to me to ask if I liked John Carroll and to thank me for coming to class. She seemed genuinely thankful for me being there, which was odd but nice. She then told me how much she liked these biology lessons, what the classes were normally like and how often they had class. She explained that Mrs.Spano gave "the best presentations ever" and when I asked her why she replied that they were fun and interactive. She explained that the presentations always had fun anecdotes and pop culture in them and that she included the class in them rather than just lecturing. This seemed to get her very enthusiastic and really engage her in the topics she was learning. She then told me about the classes that were labs in ratio to the lecture classes and said that they tended to have lab every 6 classes. These labs, she said, tended to be more exciting and more in depth with a lot of joking. In essence this girl had a great classroom experience and loved her teacher.

Whilst I was talking to Mrs. Spano before class she told me about her feelings towards her class. She explained to me that this was her favourite class because they were fun and wild, but in a good way. She explained that she connected best with this class because they were freshmen and therefore close to middle school age. Mrs. Spano then told me about her teaching background, she started teaching in the middle school for a long time and then changed to high school teaching. She loves teaching the high school just as much as middle school but freshmen, she said, was a good mix.

I also spent some time in a senior class, but they were extremely preoccupied because today they had a pep-rally and carnival weekend going on. This is something the seniors planned and seemed to be an extremely exciting thing which all, students and teachers, participated in. This meant that most of the classes were extremely hyperactive and excitable. Something which I picked up on but also something the teachers worked around. They knew their students would be excitable and so did activities that made sure they were moving around a lot, they also didn't lecture very much and encouraged discussion. This made it a more friendly work environment and meant that the students didn't start to become agitated.