Part One: Our third visit to our class was our most recent and the first that we were able to participate in an all be it small way, leading a discussion. The reason I feel that this is the case is because as a teacher who knows what they want, it is hard to make room for others. Our class unlike many of the others, has a very set curriculum that has to be followed so it can be hard to be accommodating. In our third visit we interviewed the students to see what they had thought about nest fest, their wishes, wonders, and what they liked about it. It felt more like I was just being a mouthpiece for a conversation that was really happening between the teacher and the students, but I was able to make the most of it. I would encourage the students to specify exactly what they meant and give as much detail as possible. I felt that this would give better feedback for future nest fests. I would also write down what the students were saying. This also gave me another avenue to benefit future nest fests in that I was trying to capture the essence of what they were saying, by making sense of their thoughts rather than just writing down exactly what they said. What we were doing was reflective of the standards that we went over in class. All of the answers that we collected went on a poster board in a manner to celebrate all of the individual responses and validate their answers.

Part Two: My idea for what the students should do for an activity would be an application of what they have learned at nest fest and more importantly to harness the drive for the environment the conference has instilled. Our proposed unit involves a project that would take several weeks to complete and then a final presentation in front of peers and then in front of school administrators. I think a good way to do this would be to have students build the confidence and courage for such a large undertaking they should start small with their nest fest observations. This would take the shape of students taking the observations they discussed in small groups and standing in front of the class to share the. What this would do in addition to preparing them for our proposed unit would be to meet several of the EL principles. Principles such as student-engaged assessment- cultivating a culture of engagement and achievement as their opinions and wished would be validated by the platform they are given to share them. It would also demonstrate leadership-fostering a cohesive school vision as students would be working together towards a common vision of improving nest fest for future Eagle Eco-Council students.

During my time in the classroom, I was able to participate in the third visit that we conducted at Rockbridge County High School in Mr. Simms’ class. The participation was in an assignment based on eugenics, a form of genetic modification that allows a child’s parents to pick what genes that they want the child to have before they are born or to find out what kinds of diseases they could have a high risk of so they can make the choice to have children or not. I and Ron were placed into a group together and were given the chance to work on a small piece of paper on what aspects of being human we thought were genetic or environmental in the development of a child’s brain and being. Things like appearance, attractiveness, OCD, autism, criminal tendencies, alcoholism, etc. were posted on the form and we were required to fill them out to the best of our knowledge on the subject and then explain why we thought this way in the class discussion that followed. The class discussion was laid back, as we have seen from many other class visits, and allowed for students to speak, debate, and defend their points and why they would choose to have a child or not. I personally thought that this was an effective way of teaching the subject as it was able to get the students fully involved and many of them seemed to be more than fully invested in the subject matter by the end of the class period.

From what we have collected over the past three visits to Mr. Simms’ class, it has become evident that there is an extremely effective way of teaching that I never saw in my time in high school or even in my first few years of college. The ability to teach a subject through classwide research and discussion was something unheard of in the environment that I came from where the factory-like lecture was king and that was the only way of teaching a subject to the students. After seeing how Mr. Simms runs his class and treats his students, it has shown myself that the most effective way to teach the lesson plan that Ron and I wish to do is to involve the class fully in the discovery and research of the topics and to let them voice their opinions on the minor subjects that come up in the lesson. Not only would this allow for the students to gain a deeper grasp on the subject, but this would also allow for the EL Principles of the Responsibility for Learning and Collaboration and Competition to be met. By creating a group based final project for the section, Ron and I would allow the students to compete with their ideas on the subject and to take responsibility for their learning by having them effectively research and present the subject as a group.

During my third participatory classroom visit, the students were tasked with compiling all of their data from their research experiment at the middle school. Specifically, they were working on putting their data onto a poster using two different types of graphs. Mrs. Donahue informed us that the students were having trouble concentrating, which was obvious as soon as we stepped in the class. To help with this, my partner, Brad, and I roamed around the classroom helping the students with their work. My partner and I had a strong leadership role in doing this because the students turned to us for help when they encountered difficulties. Additionally, there was one group of three students that spent the majority of their time talking and joking rather than doing their work. Brad and I stepped in and practically annoyed them to the point where the only way they could get us to leave was to do their work. Overall, this classroom activity exemplified the EL principle Student-Engaged Assessment, because the students were doing their own research and data compilations, and they had to become the leaders of their own learning.

My invented idea for a learning activity for the class is a group presentation on a selected environmental issue. Students will be split into groups of two, and they will then choose an issue such as single use plastics to discuss. This will be an effective activity because they will have to conduct their own research on their selected environmental topic, and they will have to present possible solutions to the class. This activity incorporates the EL principle Collaboration and Competition because students will be working in groups to conduct their research and do their presentations. This activity will also be useful because Mrs. Donahue wants Brad and I to give a brief lesson about public speaking, so they will have to incorporate what we teach them into their presentations.

Being able to instruct our own mini lesson on participation day gave me a lot of insight on what the role of a teacher fully felt like. Instead of just helping students with their own work, Chris and I led a presentation on public speaking. While overall public speaking is an important trait to have, it directly impacted their current science project presentations. To begin, the powerpoint we presented took strategies from chapter 2 “Design and Plan” in order to grasp the attention of the class. This strategy consisted of connecting the project to popular culture and listening to responses. We gave an example of a person exhibiting good public speaking skills and one showing bad skills. By using President Obama’s image, it presented a familiar face that could gain more attention from the students. The goal of this slide was to allow students to note what they saw within the images. This reflection exercise proved the students already had a basic knowledge of good public speaking characteristics. The biggest takeaway that I got from the our presentation was, will students actually implement what they have learned? At the very end of the powerpoint, we chose two students to practice the five focal points given during the presentation. This practice included stating their name and two fun facts. Chris and I were looking for good posture, inflection, confidence, pace, and eye contact. I initially thought of this so students could fully grasp the information we delivered to them. This idea derived from chapter 7 “Engage and Coach” because it is important for teachers to focus on teaching moments. By allowing the students to give their own demonstration of what they learned, it allowed for the class to add corrections. I thought it was important for the class to comment on the volunteer’s performance not just us as teachers.

Moving from our participation session into planning our own learning activity, the concept I wanted to focus on was the usage of good public speaking. I think it is important to build off of the foundation Chris and I have already built. Moreover, there was a feeling within me that if the student didn’t practice the points we gave them, they wouldn’t adopt them. Because of this, we chose our two disciplinary domains to be English and Science. This also made sense because they were already giving presentations for their current science project, so it will only be beneficial to them. The next step in the process was to brainstorm ideas that would allow students to gain knowledge from a project-based learning assignment, but also enjoy what they were doing. Since the class was already learning about the different kingdoms, I thought it would be interesting to continue on one of them. Reflecting back to my sixth grade science class, I remember we did a project on insects and this fix within the animal kingdom. To ensure some authenticity from chapter 2 ‘Design and Plan” I wanted to make sure students conducted a good amount of research to add onto the English portion of the project. By allowing students to capture insects, research them, and present their findings, I think many educational areas will be covered