High school reflection

My biggest fear going into the high school setting was that the students wouldn’t respond well to my presence there. I worried that they wouldn’t be engaged, that they’d lack energy. When I got there a lot of my fears seemed to come to fruition, but looking back I wonder if what I saw wasn’t simply painted by my expectations.

                I’ve heard from other students that the divorce from your first placement always makes you look at the new placement with tampered eyes. I left the high energy world of middle school to something more laid back. I’m willing to admit the shock of change got the better of me for the first half of this placement. It made me really think about expectations and how they can interfere with how you actually perceive reality. I think I’m starting to understand that engagement is not just hands jumping into the air, and laughter, and smiles. Engagement can be a lot more mellow and harder to see. When I worked with those kids they seemed to enjoy the book, they responded to my questions after some probing, and when given tasks they performed them to their abilities.

                Middle school taught me patience, I had to learn to calm them down and keep my cool, and high school taught me patience in a different way. With high school I had to sit back and let them come to their answers on their own whereas I felt like middle school students genuinely wanted to have an answer as quickly as possible. High school students seemed to pull back more and see what the right answer is. This was particularly hard for me because I had to actively fight that impulse to just give them the answer. I hated those long silences, and I’m glad that I managed to keep myself from giving them answer when the silence got to be too long.

                To change gears a little bit another thing that I found to be beneficial for learning was that my cooperating teacher took one of the mini lessons Cindy and I did and taught it herself. It was a great way to see how our lesson looked on the outside so we could study what we did right and wrong. There were instances where I felt like we modeled well, and then likewise modeled poorly, and we got to see where we could improve. While yes I probably won’t do that specific lesson again, I would definitely do a variation on it, and seeing an experienced teacher give her take on it was eye opening.

                Over all I’m happy I went to the school I did. I’m definitely going to miss it, even with the weird national anthem video they play before the pledge of allegiance. It was a school that took pride in its students and had high expectations. By the end I was proud of the connections I made with my temporary students and look forward to spending time in a classroom a lot longer.