Observation paper

CJ Scholl

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Observation Paper!

CJ Scholl! ED 310! 10/31/2014!

Observation paper

CJ Scholl

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Being a teacher takes a lot more then being able to stand up in front of a class

and talk about topics you know about. Too many people think this is the job of a teacher. Teacher now more then ever have a big job on their hands. We need to take pride in our jobs and teach the ways we all know we can. During my teacher assisting semester so far, I have been able to see quite a few things I like but I feel I have witnessed even more things that I would do much differently in my own gym or classroom. I observed two different classes, one observation was my own with my CT Ms. Stevens and the other was a world studies class with Mr. Bustrum. The P.E. class I observed was a mixed class full of 7th and 8th graders. In the class I observed their were more 7th graders then 8th graders, there were I think 34 7th graders and 5 8th graders. This is an average sized class that we have for P.E. at crossroads. The world studies class was an 8th grade only class. The class size was about 23 students. I decided to use an all 8th grade class because of the P.E. class being mostly 7th graders. Both teachers are great teachers, but both have two completely different styles of teaching. Ms. Stevens my CT is a very structured teacher. Her routine is; the students go right in the locker room and they get changed, after they change they come out to their attendance lines, they must sit in their attendances lines with no talking and wait for attendance to be taken. After the attendance is taken they listen to the focus of the lesson then to what the warm up will be (if there is one), and go out and do it. If the students are not being quite and respectful while they are in their lines they are given one warning, and if after that they continue to talk and be disrespectful they are sent down to the SRC (Student Resource Center). Down there they will write up a plan on

Observation paper

CJ Scholl

how they are going to fix the issue that they are having in class, and what there consequences will be if they do not. Mr. Bustrum the teacher that I decided to observe for my other observation is a much more relaxed teacher. He is a very laid back teacher though he still demands respect. I do not know a lot about his discipline management style, but i did get a pretty clear look into how he classroom is run. He gives the students 3 minutes before class for talk time. They get to Chit Chat as he called it. He told me it lets them tell there friends about whats going on and hopefully they get it all out then instead of during teach time. After the 3 minutes were up he got right into the teach time and the students seemed to have respond very well. I have many questions about this and I will talk about them later in the paper. It took me quite some time to think about some question I wanted to address with my observation. I remember we talked about in class not going into the observation knowing your questions. I still really wanted to know my questions before I went in, but I could not think of any so I went in without knowing. It was a little hard because I had to take a lot of notes to remember everything I saw. After the observation I had a much better look into what I wanted to address with my questions or ideas of focus. My first question was How do the teachers differ in style? So I know that I went over the teachers different style a little already with the first descriptions. Ms. Stevens like I said is a very structured teacher. She has a very specific way she likes her class to be ran. Before she was a P.E. teacher she was a languages arts teacher for many years. I can see that she ran her classroom like a tight ship as well. She like all her ducks in a row and quiet. She take no slack from her students.

Observation paper

CJ Scholl

She has no problem with sending a student down to SRC, sometimes to a point where she might do so too quickly. She teaches very linear which is good for students to follow, but when we teach P.E. it is good to mix it up a bit. It keeps the students on their toes. Fitness is a very complicated process and doing the same routine over and over again will cause your body to hit a plateau, where you will find little gain. Though teaching very linear is great for a classroom teacher it is not always a great way to teach P.E. Though she deals with very little behavioral issues, kids are afraid to express themselves in her class. Her students act very good and are afraid to mess up. In a P.E. class the students need to feel comfortable to make a mistake, though I feel that might be my basis opinion coming out. Mr. Bustrum, though a very different teaching style but still demands respect. I really like the ways that he teaches. I think it may be because he is a younger guy and not so old school. Mr. Bustrum is very laid back. He allows the students to express themselves more, you can tell that the students are more relaxed and will try to answer questions they may not know the answers to. There was a few times during the class when he was doing some explanation on the life of river colonies, where the students were talking over him and not listening very well. He held his hand up and waited for their attention before he went on. After he got their attention he then continued to teach and they did just fine after that. I had stated earlier that there was something that concerned me about he ways. I wonder if the same thing where to happen if he had a class full of 7th graders. Then again maybe he teaches this way because he knows he can with 8th graders. Being in the middle school with both 7th and 8th graders it is fun to see the great differences in maturity level with the two grades.

Observation paper

CJ Scholl

Both Ms. Stevens and Mr. Bustrum and good teachers but in very different ways. They both had no issues with picking out each other flaws though. As I talked to Ms. Stevens she went real into depth about how Mr. Bustrum has some issues with his teaching style. She told me that last year he taught some sections of P.E. which is in a much more open environment and with both 7th and 8th graders. She went on to talk about how the students would walk all over him and then do very little of what he asked. when he would bring them in for teach time they would talk over him and pay little attention. In the last week as I got to talk to Mr. Bustrum more and got to know him better he started to tell me many of the issues he had with the way Ms. Stevens teaches. He went on to tell me that she runs such a tight ship that students do not get to express themselves. Which is a very important part of P.E. Along with different teaching styles we need to look into how it should change over time. In the book love and logic it talks about some teachers thinking if the students would just act like they used to so they don't need to change the ways they teach. I feel that Ms. Stevens is one of those teachers, though she gets very much out of her students I really that if she was to change her ways she could get eve more. She is very black and white with the rules of the school and her classroom. I really feel that each student is their own and we need to treat them as such. Not all students respond well to the same punishment. We need to have some sort of a individualized behavior plan, and that is on us as teachers. We must know our students well enough to know how to handle situations. My second question come from the book as well as it speaks on how the teacher looks on the students, do they start with a clean slate everyday, or do the teachers carry on their thought to the next day. Ms. Stevens does a very good job with this question or

Observation paper

CJ Scholl

more of an idea. She starts everyday like its the students first day. She keeps little to no personal perception when dealing with students other then knowing how to address them. She understands that some students just have a bad day and can be in a bad mood so she makes sure that all students get a fair chance and are treated as equals. I can appreciate this very much because there are many kids who are great kids but can many times be misunderstood. We have a student who is perceived as a bad kid because of a few mistakes he has made. When teachers are having a hard time with him they start to attack him and he turns off right away. The teachers then get upset and will send him to the principle right away they don't even let him go to the SRC. I truly think because we treat him well and like an equal is why we have little to no trouble at all with him. I think it is great that Mr. Bustrum is the same way. He treats everyday like it is a new day. I think he understands that these kids the same way Ms. Stevens does. While I was in his class I witnessed a young man need to get talked to for acting out. Instead of lashing out and sending him away for someone else to deal with he asked the students to work on their maps and he left me in charge as he talked with the student out in the hall. When he came back in the student was calmed down and went right to work as he was asked. After class I asked Mr. Bustrum what he talked with him about. He went on to tell me that he just calmed him down and spoke with him like a person. Many of these kids at the middle school age just dont understand what there action convey. He said after he explained the problem with the student he understood then calmed down and was easy to deal with.

Observation paper

CJ Scholl

I really like that both of the teachers I observed are on the same page with personal perception on the students when it come to behavior and discipline. Like I had said before many of the teachers in the building do not. If a students is bad one day they are labeled as a bad student right away and stay that way and it will even fallow them into the next year. The first few days after being in my placement I had teachers in the lunch room telling me which student I need to "watch out" for. I feel that this is very unfair to so many students. Each day should be a new day for the students to try harder. To continue on this topic of I want to talk about another interesting thought the book brings up. If students feel that their rights are being violated they will have a hard time responding to your request as you please. If students are coming into the classroom knowing that you as a teacher already has a bad mood towards the student how do you expect he or she to do as they are asked. They will walk into your class every day feeling like they have no rights and what they think means nothing. We need to give our students some power in our classes. Show them respect to gain the respect from your students. My third question I have is from a friend in class that after talking with him I felt I really liked. We have talked in class before about shared control of the class. I have also had many discussions on it in other classes as well. Though in P.E. this is very easy to address and use; I guess the only way I can think of in a classroom is by have the students do their research and teach different parts of a unit with of course the close watch of the teacher. Ms. Stevens does a great job with this concept. I have taken something from her book in this section that I will do with my students assuming I am in this age group or higher. She will let the athletes that are playing a sport lead the warm-

Observation paper

CJ Scholl

ups sometimes. They are to use the warm-up that their coaches do with them. It has been fun to see the different athletes show off as well as teach they warm-ups they use everyday in their sports. The only thing i have a hard time with, and I have asked Ms. Stevens about it. What about the non-athletes? She went on to tell me that they dont like to lead warm-ups anyways. I disagree with her right away I feel like many of the students who might not be athletes still like to active and can lead a warm-up. We have a student who is a yoga girl, she loves yoga. I would love to have her lead a warm-up sometime. In this lesson I did not get to see shared control, but I know we have just from her being my CT. Mr Bustrum class again like in Ms. Stevens class I didnt get to see any shared control. I did sit and talk with him about the idea at lunch the day after I observed his class. He acted like this was a completely new idea for him. So I continued to give him ideas about how it could be used and then it seemed to make a connection in his head. He went on to tell me that when he was going through school they did not have a lot to be said about shared control. The first time he heard of it was when a student teacher was in the building with a teacher in the social studies department as well used it. He went on to tell me what she the student teacher did to share control. Each day she had a pair of students start off the lesson. They lead what we would call the anticipatory set. So the students would have to do some research on the topic for the next day and they would get the rest of the class excited for the lesson focus. I thought was a really cool idea. I would be interested to see how well it works but from what I heard it worked pretty well. So I went on to push Mr. Bustrum on the topic and asked why he doesnt use it. He said he just knows it will take a lot of planning to get a head and have the

Observation paper

CJ Scholl

students ready for it. He said with just having twins he has been real busy at home. Which I can understand, but I hope when i get my own job I can manage my time better and be ready to give all my students a chance for success. I was a little upset to hear that Mr. Bustrum didnt use any shared control and talked like he was too busy to use it. I hope after my questioning it might open his eyes up a little bit and he might get back to it. I think he would really like to use it. He is young guy and is will to try new things. Going into this question I already knew Ms. Stevens used shared control in her gym, thinking about this know I wish I would have asked is she ever used shared control when she was a languages arts teacher. Right alone with the readings; if you don't give control they will try to take it. I think this is why shared control does so well in classroom. Like I stated before giving respect is how you gain respect. I feel like this goes right along with changing with the times. We need to teach these kids how they will learn best. This project was really not as bad as I was thinking it was going to be. When I saw we first had to do it I thought of it as a waste of time, but after getting into the observation and now even more as I reflected on what I saw this experience has turned into a great and very education paper. I enjoyed getting feed back from another teacher. Especially a classroom teacher as a P.E. teacher we dont see a lot of classroom interaction. One thing I wanted to add to this paper was an experience I had a week after my observation. We had to do a writing with our P.E. students and it was on the 3 Rs, Respect, Responsibility, and Relationships. We had them relate the 3 Rs to experiences they have had in P.E. class both positive and negative. The aspect I want to talk about was the fact that the very same kids that I have in the gym act completely

Observation paper

CJ Scholl

different in a classroom setting. I am not saying that all students act different but many of the kids that are full of energy and active, who I thought I was going to have an issue with in the classroom where very good in the classroom setting they sat in their seats and said nothing just did their work. I found it very interesting to watch the change when the environment changes. No two teachers will ever be the same but I do feel we as teachers need to come together and teach in the ways that place the students in a situation for success.

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Works Cited

Observation paper

CJ Scholl

Fay, J., & Funk, D. (1995). Teaching with love & logic. Golden, CO: Love and Logic Press Inc.

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Hardin, C. J. (2012). Effective classroom management models and strategies for todays classroom. (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

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Perhamus, Lisa (Fall 2013) EDU 310-05 Organizing and Managing classroom environment. Class discussion.