Field Experience

My field experience is cooperating teacher is Kyle Wallace at Central High School, and I go 3 hours on monday mornings and 3 on friday mornings. It is Kyle's third year teaching, and he teachers one Senior IB class and the rest of his classes are all English III (Juniors) classes. My first day he told me that he's "not a big fan of classroom discipline" and is "pretty laid back," just to give you an idea of the classroom setting. After getting past the first class or two in which I was simply asked if I smoked pot (to which I said no), and what was the youngest age girl I would date (to which I said college age), my practicum as been a really enjoyable and eye opening experience.


Mr. Wallace likes to let his classes work a lot in small groups or at least partners most of the time when they are doing any kind of 'read and analyze' assignments or projects. Quite often during his class I find myself wandering around the room from group to group and helping students with things like figuring out the meaning of difficult words, or even just prodding them keep on working. I have not taught yet, and because Mr. Wallace is gone all week and then SPS spring break is the following week I will not teach for three or four more weeks still. Even though I haven't actually taught yet, I feel very comfortable with his classes at this point. All of the students are respectful toward me, they have no problem asking me questions, and if I ask (tell) them to do something then they always do so.

Mr. Wallace believes that by not being extremely strict in class lets the students know that you are actually their to teach them and care about them, not simply their on a power trip with a huge ego. He seems to have a very good relationship with his students for the most part.
I think one of the main things I've learned from Kyle is simply that it's ok to be a laid back style of teacher and still get the work done in a high school environment.

When I teach the English III classes in a few weeks I will be doing so on monday and friday mornings of the same week. Right now the plan is for me to teach Langston Hughes poetry on one day, and Zora Neal Hurston "How It Feels To Be Colored Me" on another day. They are just finishing up on Slave Narratives and moving on to the 1850's-1920's now, so these are two important pieces of literature in their texts that I thought were worth looking at (and Wallace agreed). No lie, I'm a bit nervous about teaching those classes (although more nervous that Dr. Franklin will be in their critiquing), but all in all I feel pretty comfortable with the whole process at this point.

p.s. Read or watch the movie "Into the Wild." It's pretty much amazing.