Field Experience Reflection

For my field experience, I was in a geometry classroom at De La Salle high school. From those 10 hours I observed there, the lessons were very “the teacher lectures and the students take notes on whatever she writes on the board” and that’s that. Sadly enough, the traditional way math classes tend to be taught is in a very teacher-centered manner. I was able to sit down and have a discussion with her about her experience being a teacher for the past 14 years and she actually mentioned this to me. She said how ideally she would like to have the lessons be less focused on her and more on the students, but the reason she doesn't is because it’s time consuming and would take a lot of time away from the content. With the fact that we prepare students to take standardized tests, do we want to teach students content in a way where they will actually comprehend or do we just want to cover as much as possible? Often times, it’s quantity over quality, and that’s what I saw in this classroom.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed my time there and I still like how she taught overall, but I do think more could have definitely been done. She really took the time to stop and completely answer whatever questions the students had, no matter how long it took. She did make sure her classroom was one where the students felt comfortable expressing their confusion and could ask as many questions as they wanted because she would take the time to answer them and break things down for them. During the time I was able to sit down with her, she mentioned how there are moments that made her want to go back to college and take a business calculus course or a physics course so she can expand her knowledge within the world of math and make it more relatable for the students. That’s something I think not many teachers really consider. Also, there were times where she would have the students do an example problem on their own and she would go around the classroom to see how they were doing and checking their comprehension. When it came to the language and vocabulary being used in the classroom, she would write down the vocab word and its definition that the students would copy. That’s about as far as I saw it go in terms of language from the discipline and texts.

From what I saw while I was there, the only texts that were really used were the textbook and worksheets. She would assign problems from the textbook and worksheets as homework, but that was it. Her lecture notes and example problems were ones she took from the textbook or made up herself. I definitely think there could have been a better use of texts like what we've been utilizing and seeing in our course. However for the most part, in this classroom, the entire time was spent copying her notes as she lectured. I never saw her do any activities, show or incorporate any other texts.

When I was in HS, I had a bad geometry teacher and it made me think that it was something I never wanted to teach; however, after observing this teacher and seeing how fun (yes, fun!) it could be, I'm no longer afraid of possibly teaching it in the future. Overall, I enjoyed my time there and I liked the teacher I was observing, but I do think there were better ways to have done things and more that could have been incorporated.