Observation Hours Reflection

I conducted my 10 observation hours at Westmont High School over the course of 2 days. This is also the high school I attended growing up. The classes I observed were an AP Human Geography course, and an American Geography course. What I thought was interesting about theses courses was how different the classes were from each other and how this was reflected in the teachers field specific capabilities. From what I observed the teacher used many different types of texts that were specific to his field of expertise.





The first class I observed was the AP Human Geography Course. At this point in the semester the students were focusing on Folk Culture vs Pop Culture. The class started off with the students watching the opening to the movie fiddler on the roof and were asked to take note on instances of traditional values that appeared in the video. The students used school issued laptops to take these notes and submit them to a class website using google classroom. Taking notes on the video and submitting them was also a great way to embed assessment of the students current understanding of the concept into the lesson itself. What followed was a discussion on what they saw in the video and how it pertained to Folk Culture. He then discussed examples of Pop Culture using a slideshow of pictures that relates to the students current cultural understanding such as fast food, fashion, pop trends, and television. At the end of the discussion, he posed to the class the question “Is the globalization of Pop Culture a good thing or bad thing?". This was a great way to frame the students thought processes to approach future concepts with a field specific mind-set. The final part of the class was watching a video about the Bhutanese culture before and after television was introduced to their society. The student were then asked to approach the video while considering the question about globalization. After the video the teacher walked around the room having the students answer the question by arguing their perspective using the examples they saw in the video.





By modeling this question before the students watched the video, the students were training their minds to approach the contents using a mind-set that is specific to the field of Human Geography. Many Human Geography experts would approach cultural change with the questions, “How did the change affect the cultures values and traditional practices?” and “Was the change damaging, or beneficial to the cultures values and traditions”. This is the exact type of critical analysis that the students were being taught which is really beneficial for furthering their academic career and progression.





The American Geography class was focusing on the Pacific Northwest. The class started off with a Bellinger. “Describe the physical and cultural characteristics of the Pacific Northwest”. As the students worked on the bell ringer, the teacher played the song “smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, a band from the Pacific Northwest. The students typed away their answers and submitted them to the teacher online. This assessment activity was very important because the teacher was looking at the submissions and had the realization that the students knew little to nothing about the topic. This allowed him to adjust the class lecture to better reflect the current level of understanding of the students. Thus the bell ringer discussion became more of a lecture informing the students of the main points they need to know. Afterwards, the class continued working on a map activity they had been working on since the day before. The activity involve the students being given a blank map of the united states with major roads, cities, and rivers outlined on the map but not labeled. On the back of the sheet was a list of all the names and labels they had to locate and place on the map. They were also given a booklet containing maps of the U.S. with all the labels and locations marked down. The students were instructed to use the map booklet to fill in the labels onto the blank map looking for the word bank on the back. The students worked together on the activity while the teacher walked around the class providing guidance and assistance to those who needed it as well as ensuring that the students were keeping their focus on the task at hand.






This activity was a clear and pristine use of text that is purely specific to the field of geography. The ability to read maps is becoming a lost art and having the students learn this ability is key when approaching the field of geography. Having the students work together on the activity was also very appropriate considering this was more of a skill building activity than a content learning activity. By having the students work together, the higher achieving students were helping the lower achieving students to understand the basics of map reading.