Going into my visit, I told myself not to have any expectations and to try not to have any preconceived notions about what I was about to see. I simply told myself to let it happen. I was there simply to observe, after all. Or at least I thought I was there just to observe. I was right to not expect anything.

My initial observations centered around the organization of the classroom. The classroom was set up in a way that the desks formed a semi-circle around the teacher. These desks were more like tables. They could seat two and therefore each student had a partner. I did not see very much partner work during my visit, but maybe in future visits I will.

Next, I saw the students all working on Chromebooks before class started. The teacher told me that the students leave the laptops at school and are not allowed to bring them home.They were doing work for other classes. The content of this work, I am unsure of. It was something that stood out to me nearly immediately because of rare it was to see a computer outside the computer labs in my high school.

My last observation lined up with Steven Levy’s ideas about starting the ideal classroom . The plan for the day was the students to ask us questions about VMI. The day prior, they had discussed as a class the questions that they wanted to ask and the teacher had typed them up. This was a student led discussion and the teacher was simply the moderator of the discussion. This to me was very similar to the beginning of PBL. In a sense the teacher guides the discussion, but allows the classroom to take over. This Q & A session not only had elements of PBL, but also it aligned with some of the skills that were expected to be developed by the VDOE. These skills include: posing and responding to questions, inferring and assimilating new ideas, and curiosity. As shown with the above, it is possible to provide enrichment, while satisfying the VDOE’s requirements.