FieldBlog5: OHS2

On day two, I chose to sit in on two new classes, as well as two Global Citizenship classes. I began my day in Mr. Mangan’s AP United States History class, or APUSH. APUSH is a lecture driven class where Mr. Mangan has notes on an overhead and tells the stories with great detail. The classroom is set up in a classic way with desks arranged in rows and columns with about 20 students facing one direction. There are flags and movie posters around the room of to give the walls some color. A well placed table lamp sits in the back of the room on a bookshelf and gives the room a movie like feel when the notes are being taken. Opposite of Mrs. Cirino’s class with open discussion and videos, this class was all business. The students knew what to expect with pen and paper ready before class started. Mr. Mangan does a great job at telling the stories by using voice inflections, relating historical situations to ones his students face, and a deep arsenal of dad jokes. His deep voice changes in tone frequently, not allowing students to get lost in the ongoing talk. These changes in tone sometimes cause the class to let out a few laughs between note taking. In addition to his voice inflections, Mr. Mangan fires dad jokes at the class. The jokes are not followed by much laughter because they are usually pointed toward the classic movie or history buffs, which fits me perfect. Sitting in on this class made me think of Summer Hill because it was the opposite of what I imagine classes there would be like. Having a open floor plan where students are encouraged to share and allowing chance for conversation would be my thought of a well functioning free will classroom. Yet the classic rows and columns seemed to be doing wonderfully. The students in this class seemed to want the structure of the class. When Mr. Mangan went off topic and tell a joke or two, the students would look at him funny and get right back on topic.

The next class I observed was a freshman World History class. This class was lead by Mr. Saulter, who began the class with the question, “Should you always support a friend?” He repeated this question twice and then followed it with “What could be some long term consequences of helping that friend?” The students needed some corralling to get on task. Being a class clown himself in high school, Mr. Saulter knew how to joke with the class to get them to start writing about the discussion questions. Next came the discussion. Listening to every comment being turned into a joke seemed frustrating to me. For Mr. Saulter, it was perfect. He was able to direct those jokes back into the question of helping a friend. Connecting relationships students brought up between classmates gave Mr. Saulter the chance to lead the questions into World War 1. He jokingly compared the two to Great Britain and Canada's relationship. The difference between trying to get senior to share their thoughts, and trying to stop freshman from talking was major. It truly took patience to be able to work with their minds. After that class, I had the chance to sit and realize that that patience will need to be learned. I don’t think I have the fast come back mind to joke with students like Mr. Saulter did. I will need to find a strategy that works for me when I have classes like this one.