Field Experience

While I've still been having some difficulties in getting my actual observation started, I did have another opportunity last week to sub in an English Inclusion classroom where I could watch the lesson that the other teacher had prepared. I spent 6th and 7th period with her and her classes, both 9th grade regents level. Both classes worked on the same thing, with no variation between the two. The groups were reading Romeo and Juliet, picking up from where they left off the day before with Act 1 Scene 2. And if you asked me to predict, according to the concept of Backwards Design, what the teacher had in mind as the mastery goals for students, I would say she didn't have any in mind. But if I had to come up with one, it seemed the goal was for students to walk out with a basic understanding of the events that take place in scenes 1 and 2, and little else beyond that. The way she achieved this goal was by reading scene 2 aloud from where they had left off, then evaluating stude...

I have not yet begun official field experience in the 7-12 English setting, but as a per-diem substitute teacher I've been in plenty of English classrooms lately. This occasionally includes Inclusion classrooms in which I'm covering for the teacher who is out while the other is still there to run the lesson...so, basically, I get a period of unofficial observation. One such classroom experience was last semester, so I can't recall the exact grade level--perhaps eleventh grade? I happened to be there on the day that the class was beginning The Catcher in the Rye. As I read chapter 5 of Christenbury and Lindblom's Making the Journey , I realized that I could look back and see the lenses that this teacher was using on that day as they began to dive into this book. She did not begin by giving them any sort of historical context, nor did she say a word about J. D. Salinger. After briefly asking students whether they had any idea what the book was about or what the title co...