Being new to this type of observation fieldwork, I hardly new what to look for when approaching Ms. Hester‘s classroom. She clearly had everything outlined and in order without need for many questions. As I spent time with 3 classes, I got the feeling that this was in fact a wonderful school. This teacher has created her job into an environment for educational growth. Ms. Hester led me to want to observe effective teaching techniques, inefficient techniques, and individual teaching styles.

Two of the unique and effective techniques I noticed while observing Ms. Hester’s classes are her “bell assignments” and her book research project. As for the bell assignments, this handy little quiz is time for the students to socialize and review the material within the first few minutes of class. This assignment consisted of a few questions that made the students apply concepts from the material they are learning. This also made for an easy lesson plan. In another class students worked on a book research project unlike any other. Instead of reading a book and writing a report, these students were taking their difficult text books and simplifying the information about a selected topic. The project allowed the students to make a book about their topic and present the book to a group of 5^th and 6^th graders. This is an excellent way to boost confidence in public speaking while adding the teaching aspect to the learning process. For the students, the hard words and work gets to turn into a project that will reflect their ability to work with a partner and create firm concepts of factual material.

I also noted some inefficient techniques; however, I am glad to report that none where the fault of the teacher. There was a bad physical layout of classrooms and offices resulting in a serious safety hazard. The layout of these classrooms are conjoined with faculty offices in the center of two or more classrooms. This caused a routine disruption in the teaching agenda compared to having an empty room with just the students. Because the faculty offices were inside the classrooms, students coming to see teachers during the period also disrupted the learning process. This fault lies with the architecture of the classrooms, of which the teacher clearly has no control. Also, after school began, the doors of the room were left unlocked from both sides creating a potential for intrusion. This safety measure is a major concern because the exterior of the classrooms are directly outside the main road. Since the class is not inside an enclosed structure there is high potential for runaways or kidnappings. Students were allowed to flow in and out of the class to use the restroom or water fountain in a safer room structure, but the main doors of this room and the class were unlocked.

Ms. Hester has some unique ways of communicating college level material to her very bright students. By making good use of cooperative group lessons, the teacher was free to spend more one on one time with her students. In the average college level classroom were this material is being taught, the information is almost always presented in a teacher presentation to students, and it is not an effective way of reaching all students. By using cooperative group projects, Ms. Hester enabled her students to understand concrete concepts without the teacher giving a lecture every day. I also observed that this use of group teaching allowed for the students to do what they wanted to do most: socialize. The students all had the impression that they were there to socialize and have a good time. By doing group exercises she was able to take full advantage of this motivation and turn it into a way to individualize the teacher student ratio. With less people needing help, Ms. Hester was free to maintain order in the groups while attending to one student at a time, instead of the entire class.

In conclusion, Ms. Hester demonstrated to me that there are several alternatives to just dictating information to a large body of students. Through the appropriate use of cooperative group projects and the use of students natural desire to socialize, this teacher clearly showed her ability to facilitate a healthy environment that promoted educational excellence.

Jeremy Marston

2/15/2006