Exploring the Field

The first class I experienced at Beechwood Middle School was Mr. Smith's language arts class.  The class itself was racially diverse and had many different types of students.  Mr. Smith was very enthusiastic about his job and the class listened and respected him.  The classroom had a good setup with a lot of posters and an organized board.  One thing I noticed was that Smith put all of the important upcoming dates on the board.  If they had an important assignment or a project due, it would be written on the board.  Another thing I liked about the class was that they all had access to computers.  All of the students had an equal opportunity to do research on the internet.  Some examples of work that they did was book reports, vocabulary, reading short stories and group quizzes.  Mr. Smith let me read one of the essays that a student wrote and I found that very interesting.  Mr. Smith had the ability to make the most boring things exciting which I found inspiring.  He never lost the attention of his students and somehow kept them involved all the time. He did this by changing the pitch of his voice and keeping the students active during class.  This resulted in good class participation and the students seemed to be comfortable in the classroom.  Overall, I believe that Mr. Smith was an outstanding teacher with great enthusiasm for his job.  He also cared about the students and their performance which is in my eyes the definition of a good teacher.  The second classroom I visited was Mr. Miller's math class.  He connected with his students by telling jokes and having fun with them.  Although it was nice, the classroom was not as comfortable as the first.  The class was again very racially diverse but it was not as under control at the beginning.  Mr. Miller got the students involved by letting them come to the board and work on examples.  They were learning how to graph equations and most of the students seemed to grasp the material well which reflects well on the teacher and their teaching style.  The class seemed to appreciate Mr. Miller and respect him while he was teaching.  In conclusion, both of the classes that I observed seemed to be very engaged and the teachers were nothing but helpful and respected by their students.