RCHS
Ms. Leadbetter 12 Grade English
Jarvis Chandler and Jarrett Wolff
Introduction to Field Work
In this class, my partner Jarrett and I worked on a task to effectively teach a group of 12th grade students. We took on this task both as individuals and as a collective. Neither of us had much aspiration for teaching, so there was a sizeable knowledge gap we each has to overcome. Personally, I only saw myself being a teacher as a retirement job where I could do just to stay busy. I used this class to work some of those practical teaching skills that I may use for the future. Much of the teaching concepts we learned about were literature based so took on a piece of literature and crafted a lesson around it.
On my first visit, I had the opportunity to observe Ms. Leadbetter’s 12th grade English class. Before diving deep into how the students engaged with the material the teacher taught, I want to make clear my role in the classroom, as well as the purpose of the class. My role in the classroom was to purely observe. However, if there were chances to join into a small group discussion, I would interact with the students. The purpose of their class was to prepare adjust them to college-level academia. This is under the assumption that all of the students in the class have plans to attend a higher education university, which it seemed most everybody did. Prior to entering the classroom setting, I thought about some potential challenges that a teacher may face. I thought about Larmer and Boss’ 7 Essential Project Design Elements, student voice and choice in particular (Boss 3). I won’t go into detail about the other six of Boss’ elements due to relevance to the pedagogy that Jarrett and I adapted As I observed, I paid close attention to whether or not students were allowed to verbally participate in the class, or if it was more like a lecture to the students. Much to my pleasure, the teacher exercised a style in which she gave the students a choice of whether or not they wanted to work in groups, or individually on a set of questions based on a reading they did. At first the students were very quiet and seemed a bit disengaged, but then the teacher involved herself as if she was one of the students and the small and individual groups slowly converted to an ongoing class discussion. I had no doubt that the students were given a voice and choice of how they wanted to work, however not many of the students opted to use the voice and choice available to them, so the teacher had to implement a natural adjustment based on the environment of the classroom. She also allowed the students to make connections from their work to their personal lives without letting the discussion become too off task i.e., there was a few moments where many of the students, as well as the teacher, began relating characters in the story to people in the newly released Jeffrey Dahmer documentary on Netflix. In some sense, that also builds a comfortable culture among the students and teacher, however it allows their relationship to remain professional. Building culture in a classroom is another important factor in Project Based Teaching that was discussed by Boss and Larmer (16).
Overall, I thought the teacher did an amazing job of keeping the class engaged and involved with the subject material. She was able to adapt her teaching style to the needs of the classroom, which may prove to be one of the most overlooked elements of teaching: being adaptable.
The Ins and Outs: A Classroom Portrait
From the Inside:
The first noticeable detail about Mrs. Leadbetter’s class was that it was rather dimly lit. My eyes certainly needed some adjusting the first time I entered. Instead of using the overhead lamps, the class was lit up by tall skinny lamps in the corners of the room. The walls are painted with all sorts of designs, posters, and all sorts of attractive stuff. To me, this was a sign of a seasoned veteran of a teacher who has made many positive relationships with students over the years. It also gives a lot of life and creates a good classroom atmosphere. The class occurs around lunchtime so many of the students have trouble engaging because they have been in classes for several hours without any breaks. From what I observed from Mrs. Leadbetter, she usually uses a sort of group discussion activity to get the students talking and communicating with one another. For the classes that I observed, they were becoming familiar with British literature, Shakespeare’s works in particular. She had prepared a worksheet for the students to complete in small groups, then once groups started wrapping up, they would go over the answers and discuss them as an entire class.
She, like many of the teachers at RCHS use a project-based learning model to help students consider how real-world problems are dealt with. The main difficulty with teaching a large group of tired and hungry teenagers is keeping them engaged, a challenge that Mrs. Leadbetter took on gracefully with wit and humor. She helped the environment be a bit more relaxed and focused at the same time. The casual culture that she created in her classroom helped her students remain active and engaged with the material. Much of it, I was familiar with because I took a British literature class when I was a senior in high school. Mrs. Leadbetter had successfully created an environment that had students partake in peer-based activities.
From the Outside:
Rockbridge County is located deep into a side street in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia. It is by no means a busy metropolis, but the school district covers a wide region full of nature’s beauty. The school is about a 5-minute drive from the city of Lexington, which is very colonial and reminds me of a 17th century American town. The population of the greater Rockbridge area is roughly 23,000 people. It’s a true small town where everybody pretty much knows everybody. A lot of the students have either grown up together or have known one another since they were infants. This creates a unique dynamic between the students and my partner and I, being that outside of our experience as VMI cadets, we share little knowledge about the comings and goings of this little town.
According to the school’s principle, Dr. Mike Craft, Rockbridge County High School (RCHS) aims to provide a safe, non-threatening environment that fosters mutual respect and appreciates diversity and encourages students to be active in both the classroom and extra-curricular activities. The faculty are a group of highly skilled and caring educators that dedicate their careers to preparing students for the future and careers have yet to be invented. Their approach is student-centered and challenges them with rigorous problem-based activities, preparing them to be productive citizens and future leaders.
Educational Research
Jarvis Chandler
I had an opportunity to read an article about the many perspectives of examining a developmental education for college-level students: including students themselves, college professors, administration, and policy makers. I chose it because not every teacher has the opportunity to exercise an adaptable teaching pedagogy in their own classroom. With all these perspectives being heard from and considered, there is one that has been ignored for the majority of rhetoric in research literature on the topic, high school teachers. Williams, Tompkins, and Rodgers use this opportunity to conduct a study with a sample of teachers to have a platform to speak about factors that they believe affect the placement of high school graduates in developmental courses and how to reduce that number.
High school teachers were rather eager to take a chance to be actively involved on the scholarship of this topic. Using this study, the results found by Williams, et al. proved successful because those that communicated with the teachers felt some form of enlightenment with the added perspective of high school teachers.
I believe that the value in this study comes not from the value that an individual teacher can pull from it, but rather in a specific collective of teachers banding together. The study performed by Williams et al. could serve as a difference maker not on a school level, but a county wide level. If a large group of teachers in one area can approach their policymakers with a guided set of ideas, recommendations, requests, etc. they will likely find success in potentially changing education policy in order to benefit a wider scope of both teachers and students.
The relevance of this article somewhat depends on the area. Teachers living an area where were already heard and have somewhat of a coalition will not find quite as much value as teachers who hold little to no say. From your perspective however, that of a tired and downtrodden teacher, I found this article both inspiring and encouraging. It shows teachers that their voice matters, and that their career is one that affects the lives of millions of students, regardless of whether or not everyone acknowledges that fact.
Williams, Mitchell R, et al. “High School Teachers’ Perceptions of Developmental Education.” Journal of Developmental Education, vol. 41, no. 2, 2018, pp. 2–4.
Jarrett Wolff
An important text for this course was that of Boss and Larmer’s “Project Based Teaching” as it brought insight into specific areas of the classroom along with unique ideas and ways of teaching. Important reasoning as to what may be working in classrooms is how “In the process of engaging with PBL, students learn to ask good questions, be resourceful, manage their time, meet authentic deadlines, and persist through challenges. When done well, PBL fosters self-management and self-directed learning” (Boss and Larmer 1). Developing this unique sense of learning through keeping in mind the causes and effects in making PBL ultimately succeed as intended. Its goals are further outlined when it’s said that “They want to see not just final, polished results of student learning but more of the day-to-day instructional practices that teachers use along the way to support and engage all students in this type of learning” (Boss and Larmer 4). New ways of educating aren’t always bad when they have proper goals in mind that have a likleyhood to succeed.
After going over methods and ideas within PBL in class, I saw how useful they could be as they are so vividly outlined within Boss and Larmer’s reading. Further ideas on PBL and its use are outlined in saying how “rather than holding all the answers, Project Based Teachers encourage active questioning, curiosity, and peer learning.
This sense of togetherness in learning in PBL provides valuable ways of continuous improvement in the classroom along with possible efforts to both learn, and have a better way of retaining this learning as to which its constantly beneficial
Boss, Suzie, and Larmer, John Larmer. Project Based Teaching : How to Create Rigorous and Engaging Learning Experiences, Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, 2018. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/vmi/detail.action?docID=5704249.
Observations + Connections
Jarvis Chandler
Going into this course, I had somewhat of an ignorant mentality. I thought that it would just be an easy class that I would just coast through and not get a whole lot out of it. However, I soon after realized that teaching is a far more difficult career than meets the eye. My long-term girlfriend is currently teaching first grade and often laments on how difficult it was at first. When we began reading Boss, we learned about her 7 Essential Project Design Elements. Even with her saying that, I still had a bit of confidence that I would find success in this class. I knew I wanted to do my class visits with older high school students, as opposed to elementary schoolers. Could teachers, “accomplish deep and meaningful,” conversation with students that I wouldn’t see very frequently (Boss 2)? By the end of this class, the answer is yes. I felt as if I was able to connect with the students at least a little. I believe much of this was the level of respect they have for a college student because many of them aspire to go to college, as well as our similar age ranges. I was able to have casual conversation with them because of shared experiences of our youth. I wondered over how I would be able to identify these design elements in a real-time classroom. As we read a bit about John Dewey for our first field journal, a particular quote stood out to me, “John Dewey is like the Bible – often alluded to, but seldom read” (Reed 90). I took somewhat of a bold interpretation of what this means. I saw it as meaning that anyone can say they know Dewey with a few quick google searches and have a bit of potential to be an effective exerciser of a teaching pedagogy either similar to or influenced by him. With that being said, to truly excel and be at the top of your profession requires a more analytical deep dive into Dewey’s work. I would most compare this relationship to that of a practicing Christian and a pastor. While a practicing Christian may be rather knowledgeable and have a strong faith in the Bible, a pastor would have meticulously studied and interpreted the Bible to exchange their information with others in a way that is easy to understand. When a teacher has to cover a heavy subject, its material can be so extensive that it’s difficult to decide on how to teach it. The learning being done, especially in a literature-based lesson, usually has to scaffold on top of itself. This means that the learning must build atop of what was previously learned in class. Teachers must plan carefully to string lessons together for students.
Jarrett Wolff
I had no idea what field work would entail as its requirement for my major seemed daunting yet interesting at the same time. Being able to go into a high school such as Rockbridge County and relive this part of my life where I was both learning while having a sense of what I wanted to do in the future. I have thought for a while that teaching could be a possibility for me if I found something interesting enough to base my career off of it. After going into Ms. Leadbetter’s class and seeing how teaching operates at the high school level while reliving my experiences at the same time was enlightening. The English subject I particularly found interesting especially when spending my time in this classroom. Whether it was Shakespeare or a class discussion in general, it was both enjoyable and a valuable learning experience when looking at career possibilities. This valuable time I spent in the classroom could be connected to how Dewey states that there’s a “continual process of reconstruction of Experience” (Dewey 90). This connection between the classroom and the personal really opened my eyes as to what learning along with teaching can do. I didn’t feel too out of place when going back into a high school classroom as the environment was both warm and welcoming to where comfort is almost natural. Another bit of thinking from Dewey I also found interesting is how “the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself” (Dewey 90). Doing a course on teaching while doing the same thing I feel is a worthy experience as I’m immersed in both being a student and having the opportunity to teach a lesson as we were able to. Confidence in how a lesson comes out and provides interpretation along with new ideas is also what I feel that I learned in this course as this was another thing that I saw on both sides of being a teacher and student that I feel will be of use if I take the steps in becoming a teacher. My own time I spent in the classroom of field work along with Ms. Leadbetter’s class showed how there’s a blend of knowledge and discussion everywhere regardless of level.
Literature Inquiry Design
Thank you to our partners
Thank you so much to Mrs. Leadbetter for allowing us to observe and partake in your classroom and lessons. It was an invaluable opportunity to see what a classroom is really like from the outside looking in. Thank you so much for provided us with the materials and tools to be successful in teaching a lesson to the class. Without your help, and the thoughtfulness of your students, we would have surely failed. Your help communication, experience, and contribution of your time has been greatly appreciated and I wish both myself, you, and your students with the strength to finish out the semester strong.
Additionally, I want to thank MAJ Hodde for allowing us to participate in such a wonderful class. Teaching a bunch of tired and stressed college students is no easy feat. Without your clear direction and guidance, I would not have crisply understood the material expected of me. Again, I want to thank you for your patience with our class and I hopefully will be seeing you frequently next semester. Jarvis Chandler
Thank you to Ms. Leadbetter for the classroom experiences as it was an enjoyable time being in your classroom along with seeing how you operate as a teacher and most importantly an educator of the future. I hope you continue teaching with the same passion that I’ve seen while watching you work. Jarrett Wolff