Personal Reflections I Had While

¶ … personal reflections I had while visiting a classroom that had a veteran teacher and while visiting another classroom where a fairly new teacher was leading the students.

Classrooms with Novice and Experienced Teachers

I was welcomed into the novice classroom and took a seat in the back. Naturally the students in this 8th grade English classroom were curious about the visitor in the back of the room and the teacher should have introduced me. But he did not introduce me and so students were a little nervous and restless.

After the bell rang and the class was getting underway, the teacher spent time writing a list of words on the board. With his back to the class, he did not see the disruptions and antics of students who were waiting for instructions. I was thinking that he should have had those terms on the board before the students came in. But when he finished and turned to face the 24 students, he asked them to take out a piece of paper and a pencil for a writing assignment.

About 5 minutes had already gone by and I noticed that when he talked to the class he did not wait until it was totally quiet and everyone was paying attention to his instructions. While his back had been turned towards the class, some male students switched seats, obviously wanting to be closer to friends. After he asked students to take out pencil and paper, and while there was a great deal of shuffling and commotion (and students were lined up at the pencil sharpener to get their pencils ready for writing), he took role, based on a seating chart that by now was not accurate because students had changed seats.

The pencil sharpening stunt is an old familiar one to teachers of young children because some boys (especially boys) turn the crank on the sharpener for far longer than is required. They are making noise and that is their goal. Finally, all were seated but as they wrote down the terms on the board and began looking up the definitions in their dictionaries there was constant talking, mingling, rudeness towards some of the girls in the class and basically this class was chaotic.

Meanwhile in the experienced teacher's 8th grade social studies classroom students came in quietly, took their seats, and the teacher greeted each one as they came in. She took roll quietly and quickly based on a seating chart. She never turned her back on the class but rather she made eye contact with every student and walked around the room handing out an assignment sheet. She announced that this was a take-home assignment but they should begin working on it in class "right now." As she worked her way around the room to check on each student personally, she never turned her back but always continued looking around, scanning the room for problems. The assignment was to write about "Why the Emancipation Proclamation Changed America." Students raised their hands when they had a question, and they got right to work.