I awoke feeling very comfortable, now in a sleeping bag as opposed to wrapping myself in my coat. After quickly wolfing down the delicious scones that the Foods teacher had given us with the chili (which we could not thank her enough for), I headed to the school. I settled into my usual pattern of staying for the first few minutes of Max’s classes, then wandering the school the rest of the time. During my walk, I had been speaking with Herman, when we walked past the elementary school bathrooms to find a boy standing there, looking bored. We asked him what he was doing, to which the boy cracked an impish grin, and said “I’m a guard!”. We talked with him about his “guard duties”, and all through it, I couldn’t help but smile. It was a rather fun interaction.
A bit later, I walked into a second and third grade classroom to observe. The teacher pulled me into the lesson, and I was more than happy to help. The students were writing stories on what would happen if they would be in space. I read out some of the stories students had written, and got to guess which students were which based on the names and writing on their paper. I told the students a little bit about myself, including where I lived, where I grew up, where I was born, and where I had traveled in December. I used a nearby globe to point out the locations to the students. Luckily, the city I was born in, Magadan, was marked on the globe. Afterward, the students settled in to a vocabulary lesson using a Smartboard. I made a mental note of how second and third graders here view the Smartboard as just another part of their daily life, while my middle school students back in Fairbanks don’t have very much access to Smartboards. Regardless, I watched as Mr. Donough, the teacher, used the Smartboard to teach vocabulary. I even jumped in and taught some of the words myself. After this, the students used the Smartboard as a sort of quiz review tool, with definitions being projected on screen. Student had to go up and type on the word on the board. Every way the Smartboard was used impressed me. It was one of the few times I had seen very effective use of Smartboards applied in a real classroom setting. Most of the time, I just see pointless slideshows or PowerPoints on Smartboards. This was a great change, and I have made several reminders to remember some of these lessons. I could very easily tweak and change them, and make them apply to the secondary school setting. Overall, I seemed to be a hit with the students in the class. They asked me how to say a few words in Russian, asked me to participate in their review games (which I gladly did), and so on. One student actually wanted me to each lunch with them. I regretfully told her that I had to wait for the older students. Regardless, the experience in this classroom was very fun. It did, however, provoke some thoughts.
School districts such as this one and the North Slope Borough are usually well-funded, and therefore have very solid technology. For example, there is permanent laptop cart in Max’s room, with each computer assigned to a student. I see Smartboards in almost every single classroom, as well as projectors and plenty of other technology. One cannot say, however, that they have too much technology. Every piece of technology I’ve seen has been made use of beautifully. It isn’t just boring PowerPoints project onto the Smartboards. There are engaging review sessions, great interactive activities, and more. Every piece of technology is applied to the classroom incredibly well. Then I think of the technology back in the Fairbanks North Star Borough. First, there is significantly less of it in the schools, as funding is lower, and understandably so. I’ve heard of, perhaps, one Smartboard in Tanana Middle School, for example. We have a computer lab, but what school in Alaska that educates more than one hundred students doesn’t have at least one? This is not what bothers me, though. What I simply cannot get out of my head, is the way this technology is used, or rather unused. With things like Smartboards being a bit more scarce, one would think technology would be made use of in much more effective ways. Not so. I see either the previously mentioned PowerPoints, or simply pictures that someone shows and talks about, then moves on. It would be different if this PowerPoint was only a supplement for a lecture, along with movies and music. Instead, most PowerPoints attempt to teach for the teacher, which quickly leads to student burnout. I remember taking a secondary education college class where the instructor warned us: “Now, don’t teach using PowerPoints.” Immediately after this was said, she brought up a PowerPoint presentation onto the screen, with literally 90% of the slides being a complete wall of text. After seeing the first slide, my eyes immediately glazed over, and almost independently of my will, my cursor scrolled over to Firefox and my keyboard typed in “collegehumor.com”.
I guess what I’m trying to say through this mini-rant, is that at Manokotak, most teachers make very effective use of the many technologies they have, while many of the bigger schools use them ineffectively. This is kind of a strange situation, as one would think a school with an abundance, or over-abundance of technology would be the school that used it in boring or ineffective ways.
After my mental bird walk, I continued my observation of the school and teachers. I stepped into a first grade classroom, talking with some of the students and the teacher there. My visit was rather brief, as an idea came to me. I quickly went back to Max and asked him if I could possibly teach a lesson tomorrow during his Government class period. I told him my idea of teaching a lesson based on the Bill of Rights, how they apply to everyone's lives, and famous court cases involving them. I had taught this lesson at Tanana Middle School previously, and so had most of the material saved in my gmail, which Max allowed me to access via his laptop, which had it unblocked. I printed out packets with several notable court cases on them. Max was genuinely interested, and asked if he could keep one of the packets, to which I obviously said “of course”. The rest of the day was spent preparing for the Government lesson tomorrow. I'm not quite sure how it will go, as this is a different classroom environment then Tanana, but I'm somewhat optimistic.
Once school got out, I decided to go for a short walk along the road that had brought us to the school. One end went to the airport, while heading the other direction, one would find himself in the town of Manokotak after a 4 mile walk. I ran into Casey on the road. As we walked the road, we kept glancing up at the mountain that the teachers here have told us to hike up. We have made tentative plans to hike it on Saturday, depending on the amount of work we will have to do in preparation for our lessons back at Tanana.
So far, this has been an interesting trip. I've observed many different classes and teaching styles, and hope my lesson tomorrow will go well. Now I think I'll head to the gym and shoot a few hoops before heading back to the apartment for the night.
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