Megan+Cornett

Observation #1: Asheville Christian Academy 2-14-07

On Valentine's Day I found myself in two 5th grade classrooms at Asheville Christian Academy. It was very interesting to note that in one of the classes, the girls and boys were segregated and sat at different tables. The first class I visited was unfortunately quite dull and not very interactive at all. In the 45 minutes I was there the teacher talked most of the time, a lot of questions were ignored, and for the most part the kids seemed used to this and didn't even try to volunteer thoughts or comments. It was a very one-sided conversation about "My Side of the Mountain." I had a hard time focusing becuase it was so uninteresting, I can't imagine how the kids stay focused.

They second class I visited was taking a wordly wise spelling test and during the test I got the chance to ask the teacher about her methods/curriculum for literacy and reading and writing. She showed me the reading text book which had excerpts from a lot of American authors (since American History is studied in 5th grade) but no real significant text worth noting. And they read four other books over the year.

I also noticed that there was almost no racial or ethnic diversity among the two classrooms I was in. I also visited the library and they had two spanish books and they told me its because they don't have a need for them at the school. They also had a very limited science fiction section, no Harry Potter, which I thought was interesting. ~Megan

2-19-07-Asheville Christain Academy was out to observe Presidents Day~Megan

Observation #2: Asheville Christian Academy 2-21-07 I visited the same 5th grade classroom again, Mr Jim Goffin. For the whole time I was there, he was reading to the kids from My Side of the Mountain. All the kids were working and fiddling around while he was reading and I found out later that the class has their autobiographys due on Friday, and several of the kid are not ready yet, so he was letting them work on it while he read. That was all that happened in the classroom during this period. After I left the classroom (they were about to head to recess) I had some time left and i stumbled upon the middle school chapel service that is held weekly in the auditorium. What an interesting subculture. The service very much had the feel of an evangelical type of church. All the kids were quiet and not very fidgety, but they wern't into the service, most of the looked bored and seemed to be wishing the service was already over. Every child there had a Bible with them. It was fascinating to watch the kids interract (or not) with this subculture. ~Megan

Observation #3: Asheville Christian Academy 2-23-07 I visited the second 5th grade classroom, Ms. Cate's room. The students were studying the presidents when I arrived and the teacher had printed out different presidents from a coloring book and given different presidents to each student. At the bottom of the coloring picture was a blurb about the president. While I was there they went in chronological order of presidents and read about them from this coloring book. Then they played a lotto president matching game which got incredibly chaotic. The teams were all by gender...there were three teams of boys and three teams of girls...I thought that was very interesting. This is my last visit and over my time here I am continuing to notice the uniformity of the scool outside of the uniform dress code. All the kids I encountered there were very well-mannered, polite kids. ~Megan

That does seem like an interestiong way of breaking the kids into groups. I can't ever remember having a teacher do that for one of my classes. I would certainly imagine that the boys versus girls mentality of the competition only raised the level of intensity. It seems strange to me to incorporate pages of a coloring book into a 5th grade classes lesson plan, they seem almost to old for that. Whatever works though I suppose. And I guess everyone does love to color. Sounds like it was an interesting trip. - Jamie Hart

Observation #4: Francine Delaney Charter School 2-28-07 I visited a fourth grade class in this unusual public charter school that runs without a principal but more with the teachers/parents collaboration. The one 4th grade class had around 14 students and it was proabably around a 50% ratio in terms of diversity. The students were very curious about me and what i was doing there. A few girls showed me their reading logs and their tension charts and they had someone come in weekly to help prepare the students for the state writing test and they had binders called "Authors Club" that was the collection of their stories for practice. The room was a bit disorganizd but it felt very creative to me and when I came in the students were working independantly on their reading or if they had finsihed a book, recording it and making a tension chart for it. I liked the feel of the classroom a lot. There were lots of books and there were no desks, simply three round tables, and the students had assigned seats at different tables. The girls I was talking with also showed me the math center which was full of different math games to help learning rather than lots of worksheets. I liked it a lot. ~Megan

Hey Megan, I like imagining the kids sitting together at round tables. Sitting at desks can be isolating (or promote independance..), but being in a group at one table builds support and teamwork among the students. I wonder if you expereinced this on your observation. Did the children work together in different ways becuase they were in groups as opposed to being on their own? ~Laura Cohen

Observation #5: Francine Delaney Charter School 3-7-07 A lot of the same things were going on as the last time I visited, since it is always at the same time. I worked with a few of the girls and they reiterated, for me, the process of their reading workshop with making notes about the plot and characters and new vocabulary words as they went along. I think it is very interesting that the teacher has a conference with a student about every single book they read. I watched her having a conference and she was really engaged and listening to the student and had her read aloud a passage. The teacher then checks the students journal to see if he/she prepared properly with all the correct sticky notes before the conference. I asked a few girls about the class schedule, as I had noted some interesting things on it such as "closing time" and "morning routine." I found out that the morning routine is the half hour at the beginning of the day where the students work on their math. The teacher makes 10 problems a week with one genius problem. The students are given 30 minutes each morning to work on them, they simply have to turn them all in completed by the end of the week. They have math lessons during the week to learn about the problems they have for the week. I learned that "closing circle" is the last few minutes of the day where the students have an opportunity to share how they are feeling about their day. I also noted that in a column to the left of the days schedule was a list of activities/homework. I learned that this is what the students can work on if they finish something early that they have been working on independantly. It is a very nice classroom and I like the creative feel to it. ~Megan

//Sounds like a creative and open classroom. Do you have any idea how many books a student typically reads? I think it's great that they have a book conference so the child gets the chance to tell someone else about what they read - I see all kinds of developmental opportunities in that. Ansley//

I am did not choose to attend ACA because I do not consider I a school where I would be interested in teaching. It is very different from what I am used to. I would like to visit a school like this sometime, to study the dynamic and see how this fairly strict and dull environment effects the students, Socially and educationally. I wonder if the education is actually better if the uniforms have an effect of their social life. ~emma

Observation #6: Francine Delaney Charter School 3-14-07 There was not much difference from this observation to the next. Except, I caught the tail end of a class meeting. The teacher was discussing how behaviour was becoming an issue in the class. I was not able to catch the whole thing, but I got that school suspension was being brought up. At the end of the meeting the teacher asked everyone who understood and was in agreement with what she was saying to give a thumbs up. I liked this atmosphere of a class meeting...it gave the feeling of an honest classroom community instead of a teacher dictatorship. ~Megan

Observation Site #3: Art Space Charter School 3-28-07

This trip was cancled. ~Megan

Observation Site #3: Art Space Charter School 4-2-07

I visited a 4th grade class. The room was pretty small already and it was divided into two separate classrooms, two 4th grade classes. The teachers team teach, which I thought was a great way to teach. One teacher teaches more of the science and math related material and the other focuses on history and social studies. I got to talk with the teachers during recess and they told me some of the projects they have done like when they were studying slavery they had one day where the faculty played a role that involved the slave trade, work, etc, and the students were taken out of class made to line up against the wall with their head between their knees and then they were "auctioned" off. And somewhere in the building was the North (New York/Canada) where they could try to escape to. It sounded like such an affective, creative, and hands on way to learn.

~Megan


 * Megan- I heard about the slave lesson that the school does. It sounds very intense and I feel like the students really get an idea of how horrible it would be to be a slave. I also think that team teaching is very effective.** - Elenore

That is such an interesting lesson, I like that the teachers at Art Space try to create lessons that make learning personal for the children. -Emee Observation Site #3: Art Space Charter School 4-4-07

The 4th grade class I visited previously went to recess again so I visited the dance room and observed the 4th grade boys in their dance hour. The teacher seemed very stressed out trying to manage 20 energy-filled 4th grade boys. They were working on and learning a Renaissance dance. 1/3 of the boys were cutting up real bad and not paying any attention to the teacher, another 1/3 didn't care and was just going through the motions to make it through dance class, and the final 1/3 were really into the dancing and making up their own steps and they got the steps the teacher was teaching really well. I noticed that since all the boys were in the class together, no one made fun of each other for dancing, they all had to do it. I like that, if schools are going to have a dance program for boys, I think it should be required for all boys in order to eliminate teasing and making fun of other students.

~ Megan

LT 4/16

Observation Site #4: The Learning Community 4-23-07

The Learning Community (TLC) is a hands-on experiential type of alternative school setting. It meets on the grounds of Camp Rockmount (LEAF site) and the small school of 56 students, K-8th, meet in small cabins. It was more of an unusual day when I went; the school was celebrating Earth Day by making rattles with sticks, wire, and flattened bottle caps. Then they sat in a circle and talked about why the earth is important, and they had a big music and drum circle. It was totally different than anything I had witnessed in the other schools I'd been in. It was the complete opposite from ACA. There are only 5 kids from K-8th grade so the whole school has a lot of interaction with each other. K & 1, 2 & 3, 4 & 5, and 6-8 are all grouped together. I could definitely tell that the kids have a lot of interaction with each other. I was amazed at how easily and lovingly the 8th grade boys and older grades assisted the younger kids to find their sticks in the woods an to hammer the bottle caps flat. In a public school it would be much harder to follow through on a project that involved so many kids from so many grades, hammers, and wire. That is the neat thing about this school is that they have freedom to teach as the want. I'll be interested to see more of the classroom setting as this observation process continues at TLC.

~Megan

4-24-07-Work Day Observation Site #4: The Learning Community 4-30-07 We went on Wednesday and Friday.

Observation Site #4: The Learning Community 5-2-07

I went to the Learning Community today with the intention of being with the 6/8s and their garden day. They spend a fair amount of time at the Black Mountain Community Garden volunteering. They are learning all about what remay (the white muslin cloth the insulates plants from cold) does. The students were very knowledgeable about it and seemed excited to learn about gardening. They were planting the Three Sisters (Native American agricultural tradition) and they were learning about that culture. It was a very neat thing to experience and I got to work with them in the garden. It was an inspiration for me as I really want to integrate agriculture into my classroom in a major way.

~Megan

Observation Site #4: The Learning Community 5-4-07

Today I went at 8am with the intention of seeing the more traditional subjects being taught. However, I got to witness the last authors reading of the year. This event is when the students take turns reading their creative writings they've done in school. It was K-8 in the program and all parents were invited and many came. It was really neat to hear these 1st graders read their little story and then a 7th grader read his poem. They all seemed very confident and had a great time. It is just so neat to see how involved the parents were and to see the pride that the students take in their work. It is definitely a very different way of learning. During my visits, I am realizing how much more I want to take elements of this organic and fun kind of education and bring it to a more public school setting.

Megan: I wish I would have went to this school, it sounds so different from anything I've ever heard about. How interesting that they spend so much time on gardening. It is a good point to bring up about bringing fun education like this into public schools. I wish you well in that path. ~Katie

LT 5/15

I wish I could have gone that day, you're right about The Learning Community, it is a unique school and all the kids have so much confidence in themselves, its great to see a school where community and individuals are more important than standardized tests -Emee