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