Monday, December 3, 2018
Field Reflection- Niles North
I did my field observation hours at Niles North High School in Skokie IL. The student demographics of students were 38% white, 9% black, 12% hispanic, 36% Asian and 5% percent-(https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/school.aspx?source=studentcharacteristics&source2=studentdemographics&Schoolid=050162190170002) I observed a civic history class and world religion class. Mr. Amaro taught both classes. I attended his second and third period class. One thing I noticed about his class was that they all used digital literacy. Every student had chromebooks and Mr. Amaro had a smart-board. Niles North is located in the suburb and it is a well off school and had a lot of diversity.
In his world religious class we watched a lot of videos of different religion figures. One video was about Moses, and another video we watch was about Buddhism. He connected the videos to the readings as well. The videos were great for the visual students. After the videos and connecting them to the reading he would have quizzes for them. This was a good assessment for him.
For his civic class he focused a lot of the different government branches including their functions. It was interesting because how passionate these students were about the government and the president of the United States of America. I was able to see who was conservatives and liberals in his classroom. Mr. Amaro also connected a lot of current events to his world civil class. Another practice that Mr. Amaro did was the "who" "what" and "where" worksheet. He was able to have students analyze their readings of the government branches. In addition, he was able to assess what the students learned as well.
In conclusion, I had a great time observing Mr. Amaro class. I really enjoyed how he let the students have a voice and I noticed that many students were very passionate about the content that they were learning. This observation helped me shape the understanding of different practices. It was a pleasure to do my observation hours, at Niles North.
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While it's great that you took notice of the 1:1 ratio of Chromebooks to students, did you notice if the students were using the digital tool to automate or informate, based on readings from our discussion during the week of digital literacy? This something I told students to focus on explicitly during observations.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of the video content, did he play them in their entirety, or take time to pause the videos periodically and ask questions...again, this is an issue we discussed numerous times in class.
When Mr. Amaro taught civics, did you get any indication of his political leanings? Did the students respect divergent opinions or viewpoints, or were they engaged in heated debate? How did Mr. Amaro moderate the space?
Based on your writeup, I'm not clear on the ways you observe Mr. Amaro "let the students have a voice." Remember, they have their voice, he facilitates a space where those voices have currency and are empowered to negotiate and make meaning with one another. However, in order to advance a claim of that sort, you would need to provide specific examples detailing how that came to fruition.