All Hands on Deck! – Blog Post 4

Game changing. This is the term I’d use to describe visit 4 with Mrs. Holton’s 9th grade honors English class. Being in the observational seat is neat for a moment, but the tectonic shift of being boots on the ground and having the opportunity to interact with students one on one is when the boys become men! The day of the visit, the class was acting out scenes from Romeo and Juliet and Casey and I had the humbling opportunity to mentor them regarding how to make each scene more interesting. The students could have easily blown us off and said “they come 4 times the whole semester… why would I listen to them?”. However, they looked at us being older as a tool they could utilize and applied each piece of wisdom we threw their way. This included making boring scenes more fun with voice changes, Over the top body language, and passion during all times of the performance. Regarding Boss’s view on classroom culture that can be “waiting for instruction or leadership”, the students are always well led and instructed, but they looked for advice and by utilizing Casey and I, they found that and more! In chapter 7 boss talks about being able to engage and coach, and being the first time that Casey and I were allowed to interact, we took advantage and applied both. We first engaged the students by introducing ourselves, and then when they knew more about us, we were able to coach them with ideas that we thought would make their rehearsals more exciting than before. What is essential here is that before we coached, we were sure to build that relationship between ourselves and the students. Regarding lesson plans for the future, this visit was the icing on the cake and showed Casey and I that our idea of creating an interactive activity was by far the best thing we could do with the students of Mrs. Holton’s class. By trusting students to work on groups without being specifically told what to do, the creativity was out of this world and I’m eager to see what they produce in the next few weeks. In closing, my Role in the classroom is someone who couldn’t be happier to share my learning experiences with the students to inspire them to be better than myself. My Rapport is someone who is approachable and passionate about helping the next generation thrive. The Routines I put into action are being someone that is consistently humbled by the opportunity to be there and along with this sharing my positive energy like the strongest of forest fires! Very, very excited for what awaits Mrs. Holton’s class.