Classroom Observations

Fall 2021

Internship Info
● Valiant College Preparatory

● Private wrestling school

● Started September 15th, 2021

● Attends 2 hours, Monday - Thursday

● Social studies classes; American history and world history

● Students are sophomores and freshmen

● https://youtu.be/kP4lYsrzBUU
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Observation Notes

I’ve been in the classroom for the last two weeks and although I don’t stay the full

day, I do see the same set of students everyday since I’m here for periods 1 and 2. The

school is mostly made up of male students as this is a wrestling school. There are more

girls in the lower grades, but I’m in the classroom of freshmen and sophomores.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to observe the American government this semester as I

had hoped due to my mentor teacher actually getting the juniors ahead and teaching

them last year, so they have no need for it this year. However, I am in the history classes

so at least that’s related.

She starts off every class with bellwork, this is something the students went over

yesterday usually. She gives the students about 10 minutes to get it completed and

goes over the answers with them. If they don’t start off with bellwork, they hop right into

notes that they didn’t finish the day before. These are very small class sizes, there’s only

70 students in the whole school and each of my classes only has 10 students. However,

the class can be as rowdy as ones with 30 students, but they seem to calm down as

soon as their teacher addresses them.

This week (10/04), the students are finishing up their unit or being real close to

as they have pushed back their fall break about two weeks. The students are engaged

with the classroom material, especially the world history class since they ask a LOT of
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questions. And although asking questions is good, they seem to ask the same

questions with different wording. I don’t know if what the teacher says goes through one

ear and out the other because this week has had the students literally asking the same

questions over and over again. This is not about confusion over the assignments but

just the notes or kind of off topic questions. Today (10/06) we were learning about the

Great Wall of China and there were many questions such as “does it just stop in the

ocean?”, “can you see it from the moon?”, “how do the guards get up to the towers?”.

They’re on topic but not necessarily relevant to the learning environment. The teacher

tries to answer a lot of the questions but also tells the students they need to move on in

order to get through the notes. It’s almost like every slide with new information brings

about 10 questions or so.