This week I did my first eight or so hours of observation hours. On Tuesday and Thursday I drove out to local suburban-ish high school (I think I mentioned how I got introduced to a biology teacher there in an earlier entry). So far I’ve liked it pretty well.

Tuesday I didn’t get to do as much – the teacher’s ninth grade Environmental Science classes were taking a test, and the Human Anatomy/Physiology classes did a lab to look more closely at some of the bones that they will be tested on in class next week. Mostly I just took a look at how the classroom was set up and how the students worked on their lab. I have to say I really loved the huge science classrooms this school has! All but one of them are equipped with projector technology to allow the teacher to use PowerPoint presentations in class, too, which I think is really convenient – and it lets the lecturer do more than present words or extremely simple drawings, which is definitely what my blackboard technique is limited too. (My board handwriting is less than fabulous, too.) The Anatomy students worked pretty quietly in their lab groups too (with a distinct trend toward increased noisiness toward the end of the school day) – although I did notice that most of them opted to look up the bones in their textbook, rather than actually playing around with the skeletons and the boxes of model bones the teacher had set out for them, which was too bad, especially since their test will consist of them having to look at and identify actual bones, not just pictures of them.

I also learned on Thursday that the two Environmental Science teachers at the school plan the course in its entirety together – so that both sets of classes get the same lectures, worksheets, tests, projects, and homework. This both appeals to me and makes me somewhat nervous: I like the idea that both classes will be equally prepared before they move on into the next level of class, and fairly graded – no one gets the “mean teacher” with the extra hard tests and twenty-page research papers while their friend gets the “nice teacher” who assigns one dittoed worksheet a week. But I also realized that co-planning the entire curriculum doesn’t really leave you any room to say, “Well, the students are really interested in this topic, so we’ll spend an extra day on it instead of covering that other less important topic.”

Thursday was more fun. I got to read aloud a pair of case studies about biodiversity and the Endangered Species Act to the Environmental Science classes, and then grade the corresponding worksheets that got turned in before the end of the period. Of course a lot of the answers were obvious “I just want to write something down and be done with this” responses, which the teacher said was pretty standard for ninth graders. I also got to call on my long-distant Comparative Anatomy knowledge to help a pair of girls who came in during study hall to work on the material that was going to be covered on their anatomy exam – I pulled out the box of bones and showed them how some bones actually articulated with each other, which they had been confused by when they were just looking at the book pictures. After that, they dug through the bone box some more; I helped them with terms when I could. (I had to ask the teacher just where the pubic tubercle was).

So far I’m enjoying my time there – unfortunately I realized my future job prospects in the building are dim, since I discovered another student in my cohort has already been subbing there for a while now! I guess I will have to start poking around in some districts a little farther from the City …