Today I spent time in both Mrs. Johns and Mr. Jones' classrooms. This was a shorter day for students, so classes only lasted 45 minutes. Mrs. Johns' second period is set aside for planning, so she took the time to show me to Mr. Jones' room and introduce me to him. Since I had never been in his classroom, I was eager to see how it was different from my previous experiences with Mrs. Johns.
In Mrs. Johns' classroom, students were still working on their legacy papers from last week, and I was glad that I got to see their progress. Students were answering the questions provided, and this week they were focused on putting their answers into paragraph format and moving forward with the writing process. Mrs. Johns and I were there for support, but the students worked on their own for the majority of the class period.
When her class was over, she escorted me to Mr. Jones' room where I got to work with his senior English class. With a 45 minute class period, these students were focused on catching up on any missed work, which gave me a lot of opportunities to assist them.
I worked with two students in particular. One of the students was working on an "Archetype Essay." Mr. Jones had his students take a quiz to find out what qualities they had that matched up with archetypes that we see in many stories. This particular student fell into the warrior, magician, and martyr categories. As a part of the assignment, the student had to write a short essay explaining how she felt about the archetypes she was assigned, and she and I spent this time formatting the essay that she had previously written. While showing her how to indent, change font, and keep her sentences consistent, I had the opportunity to talk with her about her martyr assignment. She confessed to me that she wasn't really sure what a martyr was, so we spent a little time looking into that and Googling answers. She explained to me that, many times, she uses her work checks to help out her family and take care of their needs, but that one day she hopes to open her own salon and provide for her family in that way. Through the simple task of editing a paper, I was able to spend some time getting to know her and what she wants to do in life.
The second student I worked with was focused on a personal narrative. This interaction was much less serious and extremely entertaining. This student chose to write his narrative about an experience he had at Six Flags. He described riding the roller-coaster Goliath with his family and the intense fear he felt during that experience. I shared with him my first experience riding Goliath and the fact that I was just as scared as he was! Getting to laugh with this student over a shared experience was so much fun and brightened my morning. I'm starting to realize that sometimes, just laughing with the students can be beneficial to them, but even more beneficial to me.
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