When I first entered Ms. Donahue’s class, the first thing I noticed was that the students were seated in a circle to encourage more discussion, rather than facing the front for a lecture styled class. My partner, Brad, and I didn’t know what the conversation was about at first, but we later learned that the class was discussing their plans to go to the local middle school to try and figure out how to reduce waste from lunch food. They developed an elaborate system to figure out which foods the students were not eating, so that they could pass along the data to the school board to stop serving those foods. I was very impressed with the participation that was coming from most of the students, and the students that weren’t speaking up were encouraged to by Ms. Donahue.

Another thing I noticed was that the teaching assistant was walking around the classroom collecting trash from the students. This could have been done in an effort to instill good habits about recycling or trash disposal, since the current class goal was to figure out how to reduce waste. However, I think the students would learn this better if the students were told to dispose of their trash on their own, rather than have someone else do it.

One thing I truly respected about Ms. Donahue was that she did not tolerate the use of cell phones from her students. She warned them that if she saw anyone using their phone, she would take it from them and give it to the front office. She eventually did so when she caught one girl on her phone.

When we returned to the class on the second day, the students were conducting a simulation of their project at the middle school. My partner and I posed as middle school students at lunch, and we brought our “food” to a table where several students asked us which foods we did not eat and why. We then disposed of our “food” into one of several buckets, where the buckets would later be weighed to see how much of the food was going to waste.

HR: None

Last week, my partner and I made our way into the Rockbridge County High School and into Mr. Simms Developmental Psychology classroom. Throughout our time there last Tuesday and Thursday I was able to see many promising things from the way that he was teaching his subject. From the use of Project Based Learning to the friendly and inviting atmosphere, everything seemed to mesh together perfectly for the way he wanted to teach and the most efficient way for the students to learn.

When we first arrived to the class, we were greeted by smiling students and happy conversations (something that I, personally, was not used to from my time in High School) and many of the students using laptops and other forms of technology to do work. The assignments and discussions that were being given out to the students during our time there seemed extremely fun to do and gave the students more than enough choice in what they wanted to complete for them. This was mixed in with games, such as the three truths and one lie game that we were able to participate in, that were used to successfully build an understanding of the subject at hand.

Ultimately, throughout our two visits last week, there was a great deal of PBL being used in the classroom, most notably an assignment where the students were to quickly research different types of therapy for an assignment, as well as a great deal of progressive teaching that broke the norm of teaching that many classrooms still use today.