Week 1

Monday and Tuesday were dedicated to meetings and room/class preparation. From these meetings, I was able to see how teachers collaborate wholly and also within groups (divided by subject: English, Math, etc.) to strategize methods for enriching education to better benefit the students. I found the subject-divided group session the most interesting; during this session, English teachers from various grades partnered to discuss areas in the curriculum that students were having the most difficulty with and strategized methods for improvement.

Wednesday was the first day back for students. In order for students to be familiar with all of their classes, the block schedule was minimized to 35 or so minutes so that students would visit each of their classes (both even and odd) on this first day of class. During even days, Mr. Barrett and myself have 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th periods; all of these classes are 10th grade Honors English, and 4th period is an Independent Research class that has mixed grade level students. Odd days consist of 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th periods; 1st period is 10th grade Honors English, while 5th and 7th are 10th grade English, and 3rd period is our planning period. By Friday, I had met all of the students and even learned a few names. While I initially found the odd/even schedule days confusing, they actually offer space for well developed lessons as well as give students a nice mixture of classes throughout the week, which creates a schedule that is more intermittent and less repetitive, as they would have if they had the same classes day after day.



Here is a video clip that relates to the 6 word memoir project to give you a feel of what it's about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQT6PfISRoM&feature=related