::OBSERVATIONS::

Following One Student Around the School:

Student Name: James

James is a graduating senior who plans on attending Lincoln Tech to be trained in the auto repair field. He is an African American male who is clearly part of the “cool, popular crowd”. He is quite bright and hardworking when he is focused and interested. He is especially interested and talented in math. However, James is also one of those students who can be quite unmotivated and lazy often coming in late to school, being absent, and in danger of failing some classes or not graduating.

In first period (political science), James comes into class with ten minutes left in the period. He seems quite tired and sleepy. However, in the hallway, he is quite alert and talking to his friends.

In second period (english), there is a substitute teacher. Students are for the most part well behaved. James is part of one of the groups hanging out by the computers and playing games.

In third period (health), there is a study hall as the girls are listening to a speaker. The boys are kept in the art room. Here I have a chance to talk to James about his academic performance and general school experience. He says his favorite classes are math and art. He has a funny exchange with the art teacher (Ms. L) about how she failed him in art and how he is still bitter about it. We play chess and it is a very close match (I eked out a close victory in the end!). In addition to playing chess, James is also tutored math afterschool and played for the basketball team in the past. He tells me about his plans to just graduate and to go to Lincoln Tech to be an auto mechanic.

In fourth period (elementary functions), James comes in a couple of minutes late after hanging out in the hallway. James sits up in the front row and far away from his friends [later I find out this is his assigned seat]. There is a warm up on the board in which students must “multiply out the following quadratic equations from vertex form”. The teacher, Mr. S, is very quick and energetic and helps students through the warm up. Students are then to work on 15 problems in their textbook. Students for the most part work in small groups. James works by himself. Mr. S circulates the classroom and has firm, sharp, assertive discipline tactics to keep students on task. His comments include “you are wasting your own time”, “stop talking”. As he monitors the group work, Mr. S. helps students by asking specific guided questions or modeling the thought process (“break it down”) for solving the math problems. At one point, James asks for help and gets individual help with the problem. James is finished with the problems in a short period and at this point moves to sit near his friends. For the rest of the period (10-15 minutes?), he socializes with his friends.

In sixth period (physics) after lunch, James is sitting with his friends at a table (as the room is set up with small tables of four-five students). He seems to have a lot of energy and is awake compared to the first period. The class is fairly empty. However, Mr. G has a hard time controlling the noise level of the students and engaging them into the lesson. His classroom management techniques include yelling at the students in a loud voice “you will lose points for distractions” “stop calling out” and “I’m not putting up with any noise”. The lesson planned for today is read from the textbook and answer some questions as a class. At one point, James contributes an answer to the question “why cars are uneven?”. Three people are sleeping and most of the other students are having side conversations during the rest of the time. At point, James’s table engages in playing footsie with each other. Mr. G continues to read the article from the text. Students are asked for answer questions about the article in the textbook for the last five minutes of class. No one in the class starts working on the assignment. Mr. G sits at his desk, and tells students “whoever talks writes” or “stop talking”. Talking still continues until the end of class.

Following James was a good learning experience for me. I think I could see how the content matter as well as the quality of teaching makes an impact on the student. Clearly there was a difference between how James learned and behaved in the math class versus his other classes. I think James had great potential to be a student who excels in all his classes if the quality of teaching was improved in all of them. I can’t blame James as much as I can blame his teachers for his poor academic experience and achievement. I am glad though that he had a good teacher in math because that was clearly the subject he was most interested in. I think most teachers in the school have a negative impression of James based upon his lack of participation in their classes and his association with the “cool popular crowd”. However, I think following him around broke down those stereotypes for me and helped to see him as an individual. Oftentimes, students become a mass of nameless faces. The more you get to know a student personally and understand where they are coming from and where they want to go, you can become more understanding and helpful in helping them get to reach their potential. I think a lot of kids like James could fall through the cracks, even though he is quite bright and has so much potential.