Edgewood JHS Visit

Today I observed Mrs. Millick's art classes. This observation felt a lot more natural for me and it's probably because she already has IU education students visiting during the week for P113 observation, so she know's how to interact and what to tell me and let me do. She is very organized and her room is so clean and inviting, the whole school is actually. The whole school also has a justice league theme this year so the classrooms and hallways are filled with superheroes and some of Mrs. Millick's projects were super hero themed, which I thought was pretty cool. She had prep first hour so I was able to observe her get ready for the day and ask some questions. She has two large rooms, one for 2D and one for 3D projects. She has a huge white board where she writes student objectives for the day and the standards those objectives fulfill along with examples of in-progress work and completed work for the project that day. I know the students probably don't pay much mind to it, but as a future teacher, I like that she is letting the students know what they're doing and why they're doing it. The only thing I didn't find effective was her daily bell work. The kids have one to one google chromebooks (or something along those lines) and she has one too, but it doesn't connect to a projector. So she uses her own iPad to connect to the projector but now the administration doesn't want her to use the school wifi on her personal device so she had to reconfigure it for her laptop and just a lot of new adjustments were going on this week. We were discussing one to one in class with Riley a bit and I have to say no students forgot to bring their chromebook and only one forgot to charge it, but there were major technical difficulties during every class period that took up to 10 minutes of her 50 minute class periods to figure out. So that wasn't entirely efficient. Then the actual bellwork I would've reconfigured differently. She shared a video about the new film coming out about van Gogh created entirely out of hand painted frames in his style. I think that's awesome, but the video she chose had some weird scene in the last 30 seconds that she should've stopped at. The video was introducing the actors to the video and showing clips from other films they starred in, and the last actor had a scene with cocaine that I just was a little over the line and wasn't necessary for the bellwork and wouldn't have taken a lot to stop before the end. I didn't notice any reaction from the students who even giggled at the word sexy earlier, so maybe it flew over their heads. When she started talking a tinsy bit more in depth about Vincent van Gogh, the laughing point was about him cutting off his ear. Now I totally understand that our natural reaction is to laugh at something that is unnatural to us, but I think she missed an opportunity to talk about mental health with her classes. I think Jr. High is when some of those issues begin to surface and using van Gogh as an opportunity to discuss some of those issues would've been good for the class to develop empathy and for individuals to realize there's help out there.

During actual work time it was easy to interact with the students and help them with their projects because there was a larger age gap, so I could assert some kind of authority and connect with them faster than I can with high school students during visits. So this was one of my more enjoyable observations, but it only affirmed the fact that I do not want to teach junior high. It's way too chaotic. Most of her classes were about 18-20 students, but one class was 34 and it was absolutely awful. So much can slide by, I was surprised she caught two boys in a tussle because I wasn't even trying to talk to a table of students and I didn't see it happening. It would just be too much.

Overall the experience was one of my best observations, but I don't want to do my mentorship here. At least what I got from it is some suggestions to give to other teachers I observe as what they'd like me to do or how I can help if they don't really have students come and observe often. The weird part about this observation was that two IU students came in at different times without her knowing they were coming in. It was awkward and I thought it was crazy that they were placed in an art class when they were both English education. It just makes me grateful I found CoT because I would be pissed if my field experience for a prerequisite class was in a class that's not even in my subject area. That just seems like a waste of time. They said their instructor said it was for instructional strategies so it didn't matter what subject matter, but they said they didn't understand how they were supposed to apply the instructional strategies they're learning if they're in a class they're not comfortable or knowledgable in. It just seems disorganized and pointless. Other than that my day was great!

I'm off to Fishers HS next Friday and Greenwood HS November 4th!