Introduction To Fieldwork

Throughout the duration of this course, our goal has been to obtain an understanding of the fundamentals of modern teaching styles in the American public school. In doing this, we began by looking at how education has evolved over time, specifically how the growing world of technology has made its way into the modern classroom. We’ve studied multiple academic sources, paying special attention to works by John Dewey in order to understand the need for new teaching methods for developing generations of students.

After weeks of preparation, we were given the chance to step into a classroom at Rockbridge county High School to apply what we had learned. We were fortunate to be paired with Ms. Donahue, an incredibly dedicated and hard-working teacher, and her Environmental Science class. Their goal was to figure out how to reduce food waste in the local middle school by traveling to the school and collecting useful data. Our objective was to assist in any way we could, and in doing so we learned different things about teaching, but we both collectively learned about the current generation of high school students from a new perspective.

Ben Solis: The biggest thing I learned from interacting with Ms. Donahue’s class, as well as the sources provided by MAJ Hodde, is that all students learn differently. Students were broken up into groups of three, and my job as appointed by Ms. Donahue was to assist each group as best I could. Some groups were extremely focused and required little assistance, and they were extremely open to feedback. Other groups required closer attention, which is where I learned that some students just need a little push to get motivated. I also learned a tremendous amount simply by observing Ms. Donahue. As a student in high school, I never payed attention to my teachers style or how they conducted them self in the class, only what they had to teach. As a cadet at VMI determined to learn about modern teaching philosophies, I observed that Ms. Donahue worked extremely hard to captivate her somewhat uninterested class. She didn’t allow any distractions in the class, and she made sure that every student was utilizing their full potential.

Brad Smith: The opportunity to interact in a fieldwork environment with an actual high school class was an experience unlike anything that I had imagined myself doing before. Up until the time that I began fieldwork, I had never seen myself as a teacher, and definitely had never considered teaching in a high school classroom. However, upon entering the Ms. Donahue’s classroom for the first time, I immediately gained more interest in the topic. During one of the group work sessions that we were present for, I found the challenge of getting students to understand a topic or idea, and the feeling of success that you experience when they do very fulfilling. Additionally, I learned that even in a teaching position, you are constantly learning new things through that position, whether it is through helping a student overcome a challenge, or going on a field trip with the class and learning about the local area and environment.

 

After our time in the class, we began working on our teach-in and unit pre-proposal. Our goal was to ensure that our presentations contributed to the goal of the class: the preservation of the environment.

 

CLASSROOM PORTRAIT

Outside

Nestled deep in the heart of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, lies the small town of Lexington, Virginia, home of Rockbridge County High School. The surrounding area offers ample outdoor activities and a welcoming environment, but is sparsely populated, with only 36,586 residents in the county. Additionally, Rockbridge County is relatively poor in comparison to Virginia and the rest of the nation, with an average income of $48,550. This provides unique challenges for the school systems in the county, as many students qualify for the National School Lunch Program. Because it is surrounded by mainly rural countryside, Rockbridge County High School has only 976 students, with a student to teacher ratio of about 13 to 1, allowing for excellent student-teacher interactions in the classroom. This impressive student to teacher ratio is not all that Rockbridge County High School has to offer though. Rockbridge County High School also boasts an impressive graduation and Standards of Learning testing scores. In comparison with the rest of Virginia, which has a 90.5% graduation rate, Rockbridge County High School has a 92.4% on time graduation rate as of 2015. In addition, Rockbridge County High School has posted above average scores in most testing categories, which include English, History, Science, and Mathematics. Additionally, these Standards of Learning scores are major factors obtaining accreditation through the state, and as a result, Rockbridge County High School is fully accredited. Rockbridge County High School’s graduation and testing rates should be taken with a grain of salt however, as graduation rates and test scores are significantly lower for lower income students.

Inside

Impressive student to teacher ratios, graduation rates, and testing scores are not all that Rockbridge County High School has to offer however. The high school also offers some great people in the form of teachers and students. After having spent time first hand in Ms. Donahue’s Environmental Science class at Rockbridge County High School, one immediately begins to discover how truly great these classrooms are. It is here that we see students working on a project to reduce food waste in Rockbridge County middle schools. As students work on analyzing data that they have recently collected in a trip to a local middle school, Ms. Donahue is seen going from group to group, offering encouragement and advice, and pushing her students to think critically into what their data really means. It is moments like these, she says, when students really begin to understand concepts and create projects, that make up for days where the classroom can be a little hectic. In addition to this project based learning approach in Ms. Donahue’s classroom, Ms. Donahue and other science teachers at Rockbridge County High School also take their students on field trips to share the results of their findings, enriching the communities that they live in, and offering tangible results to students for their work.

Whether it’s the statistics or the people and work in the actual classrooms, Rockbridge County High School has much to offer to Rockbridge County residents. Additionally, due to the hard work and dedication to teaching of Rockbridge County High School staff like Ms. Donahue, Rockbridge County High School will continue to flourish and thrive, offering opportunities to its students to learn and grow well into the future.

Our Unit

As a final contribution to our Fieldwork class, we created two works pertaining to our proposed teaching activity for Ms. Donahue’s class. The first is a “Models of Excellence” card to give the students a general understanding of the activity, and the second is a unit pre-proposal to give a more in-depth view of the unit.

 

Single-use Plastic Debate Proposal

Background

We plan to conduct a unit based around the harms of single use plastic, and plastic litter and waste. The culminating event for this unit will be a debate that is to be held by the students. Students will use the background information that they learn in class before the debate, as well as information that they research on their own for the debate, to decide the usefulness of a ban on single use plastics. The classroom will be split into two equal groups to debate if a ban on single use plastic should be implemented. One group will argue for the ban, and the other group will argue against it. The groups will be randomized so no matter which argument the students sided with beforehand, they will have to argue for whichever side they are placed on. This unit will not only improve the student’s understanding of the harm that single use plastics are doing to our environment, but help improve public speaking skills and research ability as well.

We wanted the students to be as successful as possible with their arguments, so we found two very insightful artifacts to help them form their case.

Due to our unique at-home-learning situation, we were unable to conduct our lesson in-person for the class, and we had to adapt to the circumstances. As a result, we communicated with Ms. Donahue electronically and we created a virtual lesson plan. Below is a short video in which we present the introduction to the classroom debate activity, and introduce primary texts to be used by the students.

 

Final Journal Reflections

Ben Solis

As my time in Fieldwork comes to an end, I realize that I learned significantly more than I had originally anticipated. My time with Ms. Donahue’s Environmental Science class showed me a lot about how students learn with such unique goals. It was interesting to be with a class that went out in to the field, like Brad and I, to not only collect data, but to learn outside of the classroom. I can genuinely say that I have developed as a student because I have seen from a new perspective what it is like for a teacher to try to teach a class that isn’t completely motivated, and it has made me strive to be a better listener in my own classes.

I was initially extremely nervous to step into the high school class, considering I was a high school student not too long ago, and I would have most likely been too ignorant to listen to what a couple college students a few years older than me had to say. This was not the case, however, when I did enter the classroom. The respect the students had for my partner and I granted me a big confidence boost, and I was more eager to do whatever I could to help, even if that meant being persistent to the point of annoyance.

I was truly disappointed when we moved to an online learning environment because Brad and I were really looking forward to the opportunity to give our own lesson. Our plan was to give a lesson on public speaking, then watch them utilize what we had taught in their debate activity. I felt that I had a lot to offer for this lesson, as I have taken two public speaking classes at VMI. My experience with conducting a virtual lesson was certainly interesting, but it was not at all a waste. Technology is rapidly making its way into the high school learning environment, so I think that having the students learn virtually can somewhat be seen as a benefit.

 

Brad Smith

Coming into fieldwork, I honestly wasn’t quite sure of what to expect. I knew that it was a course about teaching, but teaching was never something that I ever imagined myself doing. Because of this, the first few weeks of class interested me a lot, as I began to learn about the basics of teaching, as well as theories such as project based teaching, something that I had unknowingly experienced throughout some of my time in grade school through high school. While some of these topics proved to be more interesting than I first thought they would (such as Dewey’s principles or the idea of project based learning), it was when we began to choose the teachers that we would be pairing up with that I really became excited about the class. Soon enough, after exchanging a few emails with Ms. Donahue (the teacher we were paired up with), we were ready to experience our first class at Rockbridge County High School. Upon arriving at Rockbridge County High School, I wasn’t sure of what to expect. Not only was the school very different from my own high school, but what were the students like? Was Ms. Donahue a nice person? What was her teaching style like? All of my fears were set aside when we stepped into the classroom and were met by Ms. Donahue, who kindly greeted us, and said that we could sit in the back of the class and observe her teaching. Over the course of that class, we got to see the passion and excitement that Ms. Donahue brings to her classroom each day, as she interacted with students and led them in research design. Over the next few trips to her classroom, Ben and I began to interact with the class more and more, helping students design their presentations on their findings, and chaperoning on a fieldtrip to an environmental summit. Meanwhile, in our own classroom at VMI, we started working on our project design, an in class debate on whether or not single use plastics should be banned. This project challenged us to come up with an idea and plan like we were going to execute it in an actual classroom. This assignment, already challenging, was made even more so by our distance-learning environment, however, through countless phone calls, texts, and even zoom meetings, Ben and I worked our way through, eventually creating the finished product that you are reading now.

Fieldwork has been a fun and interesting course, as we learned about different aspects of teaching and learning, and put them into practice in a real classroom setting. Additionally, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to visit and help teach in a local high school classroom, an experience that I’ll never forget. I am extremely grateful for this opportunity which was presented to me, and I look forward to taking the knowledge and skills that I have gained in this course, and applying them elsewhere in my life.