Field Experience Visit #2

I had my second field experience visit earlier this week at South Miami Senior High School. Below are three questions that I asked my clinical teachers, her answers are briefly summarized

Q: Do you plan new lessons each school year or do you re-use them?

A:  Ms. X said that she changes the novels she teachers some years so that she doesn’t get bored. Ms. X also attends workshops every year, and she takes the knowledge she learns that she likes, and changes minimal things within her lessons.

Q: Is there a limit as to how many students you can have per class?

A: She said that the limit is 25. However, if two teachers are in a classroom the limit changes to 50.

Q: What are the most common academic barriers you see within your classroom?

A:  She said that it depends on the classroom, even in the honors classes, but she said she notices barriers of access. For example, a lot of them don’t have internet access or they lack experiences. Ms. X also said that a lot of students are on free or reduced lunch, and so those demographics usually lend itself to students who haven’t been exposed many cultural experiences which can affect their academics. She also said that there isn’t a lot of reading material at home, and their reading skills suffer.

A few techniques that I observed my clinical teacher doing and would use in my classroom are using proximity to my advantage. She would walk over close to the student and they quickly got back to their work. I also noticed that when a student was not on task, she was able to re-focus her student by using appropriate levels of dominance and let them know that class-time was not for socializing but for learning. 

Upon arrival to the classroom, my clinical teacher was shouting at one of her students, I felt that this was inappropriate and could have been dealt with in a better manner. Another example of her inappropriateness, is that she was guiding her students through an assignment and she told her students that if they could not come up with an example of a paradox, they were “brain-dead”. I was shocked that she said that because I felt that it was beyond rude and I would never say that.