During my last visit to Mr. Simms’ and Ms. Trombetta’s classroom I had the opportunity to lead a class discussion about what the students thought of lawyers. Did they see lawyers as amoral, greedy, manipulators who were willing to do whatever it took to win their case and make their money? Or did they see lawyers as advocates who pioneered for the societal issues they believed in fighting for? To be honest, the discussion was pretty painful. I barely got any response from the students and, no matter what I said, it seemed as if they had no idea what I was talking about. I think that the biggest issue with me just jumping into the classroom in the way that I did was because it didn’t match up with the way the classroom is traditionally run. It very much felt as if I had disrupted the culture and the norms held within the classroom. Just from my speaking to the class I could tell that the class took a more insular approach to inquiry, discussion, and instruction. I knew from my previous experiences with the class that they had experience with reflection and discussion, but in my experience leading that reflection and discussion I really struggled with engaging student interest and curiosity (there didn’t really seem to be any, honestly). I came away from leading that discussion with more questions than confidence. I couldn’t help but wonder, how do you engage with a student, pique a student’s curiosity or interest, if they don’t realize that they could be interested in the subject?

My own learning activity that would support my team unit would definitely be geared towards really trying to discover what the students would like to be involved in or learn. Ms. Trombetta’s lesson plan appeared interesting to me, and maybe it would have been more interesting to the students if she would have led the discussion instead of me, but in regard to this particular unit I didn’t see any student contributions to the lesson plan. That is the main thing I would like to include in my learning activity – student contribution. Honestly, I would prefer to simply have a conversation with students and hear about what aspects of their learning experience they’ve enjoyed most far in Mr. Simms’s and Ms. Trombetta’s classroom. I would like to create a big poster board on the wall with different sections including favorite topics, favorite activities, favorite forms of media, etc. I want to hear directly from the students so that we can work on something together. Sure, I would be guiding the students, but I would want them to know that they are the driving force of their own education. This way the class and I can have a starting point from which we can begin putting ideas together about a larger activity culminating in a goal of their choosing. Ideally, I would create a big poster board that would keep track of all of the brainstorming activities we would do so that we could keep track of our progress.