Today's main focus was to shadow Gautam for the day, I wanted to see how his lessons were structured and what they contained. The timetables are structured so that the students focus on no more than three lessons per day, this makes for very effective learning because the students skills can be developed over shorter periods of time and I also think through this system students skills can be enhanced.
I decided that I wanted to observe a 6th grade lesson and as I already knew Anthony Conwright I thought this would be a great opportunity to see one of his lessons. I really wanted o observe how he managed his class, the classroom layout, and how that contributes to learning. The best thing I took from that lesson was the classroom layout. It was split into two sections, one part was lots of tables put together into a conference type situation, for half the class to sit with the teacher and advise each other. In the other half students sat at desks placed around the room working on laptops.
For the rest of the day I decided to shadow my host Gautam. During a multimedia lesson the teacher was going through how to use Adobe Illustrator and the aspects and details of that. In the class they were painting and editing animations they had drawn and scanned into the computer. We arrived at HTHMA and met up with Mr Corkish for his first day. We decided to show him around the campus to give him a feel for the school and to have a briefing about this week and what would be happening.
One personal question I had was I wanted to find out the similarities and differences between the music departments at SBL and HTH, so I went to High Tech High International and got involved with a music lesson. It was mainly the introduction to the lesson as it was the students first day back from internship. The teacher gave them a simple question and answer sheet about their favourite music, why they like it and do they play any instruments? This for me was my highlight of the day because seeing my common interest in a lesson in a different school was very insightful for me. After lunch we went and saw Brooklynn's Internship Presentation Of Learning, hearing her views on SBL and her insights was great to see and to see the impact both Andrea and her had on our school was nice. Shortly after myself and Mr Corkish went and sat with Anthony Conwright to ask some questions about the teaching side of PBL. This was great because it showed us all the work that goes on behind the scenes of the projects. We arrived at HTHMA and briefed with Mr Knowles about our day. As Max was going to deliver his iPOL we thought it would be a great idea to get the background information about POL (Presentation of Learning).
So went down to the 6th grade commons and interviewed two students with questions like; how often are they done? Who's the audience? And why do the students dress up for the POL's? After we gained all our information we went back and shared our findings with each other. We then went to watch Max's iPOL which I thought was seriously good, it was packed with content and was presented with extreme professionalism. We went straight into a project tuning programme where one of the teachers presented his project to the group and we would go through seven stages which were:
Shortly afterwards we were given some downtime to work on our presentations, we finalised everything and figured out what we were going to say. During our prep time a fire alarm went off in the building but it was just a false alarm so we were soon back to prep time. The presentation went smoothly and we finished it just inside the 3 minute requirement. We used the afternoon to do some observations in the middle schools to get a feel of what the process is like in the years before high school. I went down to Anthony Conwright's class again to observe his lesson and to gain more knowledge about how things are done at HTMMA. I also used the rest of the afternoon to plan a schedule for Friday and for the next week. I aim to do some more classroom observations and go and visit some different buildings around the campus. We arrived at HTH for our third day. We have to give a presentation to a group of teachers from England tomorrow so we decided to take the HTH policy and get creative. We made big question marks out of cardboard in the 12th grade common room. We then wrote down the key questions regarding our brief:
After lunch I arranged to interview Anthony Conwright who is a 6th grade humanities teacher. He was extremely informative and had some very interesting concepts on project-based learning. Explaining to us that projects are not just about the outcome, it's the skills they learn during the process. The teachers design the projects that have the best and the most outcomes for students. Whilst I was interviewing Anthony, Tim and Charlie went into a different classroom and observed the expectations prior to undergoing a project. We arrived at Media Arts where we had a quick briefing about the day and decided to sit in on an advisory session to see what it involves and how it could be beneficial. From my initial observation I thought that the advisor was extremely helpful and encouraging towards the students. It was clear that the advisor was extremely enthusiastic and this was very effective. To sum up the advisory session, I would say that it was a workshop in life skills that helps students develop their personal self.
Shortly after that, we went down to Explorer Elementary where we sat in on a year 5 lesson. I was amazed how intellectual and knowledgeable they all were, two students gave me a tour and it was really informative, they both had an amazing amount of confidence for their age. After lunch we met with Andrea and Brooklynn and they answered some questions we had. We also went over to High Tech Middle school and asked some more questions to the students which was really beneficial for me, Tim and Charlie. In the afternoon we went and sat in on Chris Wakefield's X-Block where they were playing American football, it was a nice and chilled end to the day. After 19 hours of uncomfortable travelling, a ten minute ride in the back of a Mercedes felt like luxury. On day 1 of High Tech High we arrived and met some of Gautam's friends. Soon after Tim, Charlie and I went and met Chris Wakefield to get a rundown of our day and a brief overview of our two weeks in San Diego. Shortly after our briefing with Chris we then joined back up with our hosts and shadowed them for 20 minutes or so which was extremely beneficial to see the student teacher relations, this is something I hope to study in more detail over the two weeks.
We then had a meeting with Larry Rosenstock, CEO of HTH in the conference room in which he talked about his vision of High Tech High and his dynamic view of the school. I found Larry extremely motivational and an inspiration, it was very clear that his attitude and his ethos is portrayed by the school itself. Shortly after, Andrea and Brooklyn very kindly decided to show us around the campus. We visited; HTH Media Arts, HTH International, HTH Middle School, HTH Middle Media Arts and finally High Tech High School. Each school had its own personal and unique feel to it and this makes for a very student friendly environment. |