Journal Entry 2: 10/11 Visit to LHS

Time and again, I've heard that even the best laid lesson plans can blow up in your face and that teaching is the art of dealing with the unexpected. It was in this spirit that I chose to face quite a surprise: My cooperating teacher had forgotten about my visit and was on a daylong fieldtrip. Dressed, primed, and ready to go at 7:30 a.m., I decided to improvise and save the day from disaster. I spoke with a student who was also waiting for my teacher, and he was kind enough to take an interest in my plight. He brought me to the classroom of Ms. B. and--despite receiving no prior notice--she agreed to let me observe her for the day. In the periods I observed, three texts--two of which were closely related--were taught: The Scarlet Letter; Arthur Miller's play, The Crucible; and a handful of Shakespeare's sonnets. The classes Ms. B. taught were for Juniors and Seniors at different levels of academic drive and ability, from an 11th-grade honors class to a class with "8 or 9" kids with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs).

NOTEWORTHY OBSERVATIONS FROM THROUGHOUT THE DAY: • Use of technology: Ms. B. had a shot of one class's group work on the dry erase board saved from a prior session. She was able to put this up on the smart board and save the work of rewriting it all from scratch. • Class management: One student raised his hand and discovered halfway through replying that he needed help. He asked Ms. B and she said "There are four students dying to help you (they had their hands raised to help); Pick one of them." This was an interesting approach. Ms. B. did not herself help and she did not choose a student who was volunteering; rather, she told the floundering student to select a classmate himself to tap as a resource and "get unstuck." • Scarlet Letter trading cards: Four groups of students were handed slips with "Pearl" or "Hester" or "Dimmesdale" or "Chillingworth"on them and told to come up with selective descriptions of the characters based on the text that traced their evolution from beginning to their current position in the text. • Out-loud reading of The Crucible: Ms. B. picked someone to read stage directions and nominated others to read character's parts. Plays can be great vehicles for group reading. • Sonnet exercise: Ms. B. handed out sonnets grouped by themes of "passion" or "jealousy". The students were told to read the poems line by line and decipher their meaning. In the next class, they would silently act out tableaux vivants that would accurately depict what was going on in the sonnets. I thought this was an innovative way to teach Shakespeare, but I wonder how the tableaux will look. It was difficult for me to imagine how student would be able to dramatically enact the action of a sonnet in a silence. Ms. B. said it was her first time trying this. I'm dying to see how it goes...

Books used at LHS: I asked Ms. B. to name some texts taught in English classes at LHS and got a pretty extensive list off the top of her head. Some of the works they teach (besides the ones already named above) include the following: The Kite Runner • The Glass Menagerie • Brighton Beach Memoirs • The Things They Carried • Lord of the Flies • Maus • Tale of Two Cities • Frankenstein • Macbeth • Othello • Pride and Prejudice • Sense and Sensibility • Jane Eyre • Les Miserables • Ethan Fromme • Jekyll and Hyde • Death of a Salesman • The Great Gatsby • Huck Finn • Slaughterhouse Five • Hamlet • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close • One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, etc.