Immersion Research – Guided Tour and Two Classes
The type of interactive immersion that I conducted was a Guided Tour and sitting in on a CTE class and on the start of an English class.
On the guided tour:
Principal Eid took us around the school and pointed out his favorite parts.
– We started in the principal’s office, walked past the gym which he did not even point out.
– Then he walked us down the Arts hallway. It was lined with lockers, and above the lockers were banners from the shows that Clay has put on. On the other side of the hall were classrooms and he showed us the orchestra classroom, the learning piano classroom (where they have a bunch of keyboards set up in front of computers), and the dance classroom (where some sort of interpretive dance/yoga activity was going on).
– We then followed him past the cafeteria. The cafeteria is small, and the colors are not pleasant. It is probably one of the most unattractive rooms in the whole building.
– He showed us the inside of the CTE classes – the dental program, doctor program, auto/car program and the welding program.
o He was really passionate and excited about these.
o Talked about how great they were for the kids, and how only Clay offers them — but kids from the other high school’s can bus to Clay to take the programs
– After that we walked down some halls and saw the academic classrooms but did not check inside as there were classes going on.
– There seemed to always be students in the hall’s and Principal Eid was constantly asking them to return to class.
– He really emphasized:
o The Arts and CTE aspects (first things he showed us).
o How safe the building was (safety patrol people, police officer, gates, policies).
o The quality of the teachers – he introduced us to almost all of them who we saw.
In the English class…
– I was only present in this class for the first 15 minutes, but it pretty much took the teacher the whole time I was there to calm the class down
– Kids kept walking in late and she would be stern with them
– Kids showed up without pencils or paper
– Her classroom was colorful and exciting, the walls were covered in pictures
– It was evident that the kids in the class who were not excited to learn dominated.
– There may have been dedicated students, but it was not evident who they were.
– The teacher was kind to the students, patient, and clearly well-educated.
In the CTE class…
– The CTE class was welding
– The teacher of the class is a past Clay graduate himself
– Kids walked in and the teacher told them to go get dressed in their welding gear
– The kids in the class respected their teacher, he didn’t take any of their sass or procrastination
– There were challenges they had to meet written on the board, and the kids seemed motivated
– The class seemed to be structured more around building their specific skills, and there was no lecture portion
I personally felt:
– That the school was a little boring looking for an Arts building. I had imagined more visual elements, more artwork displayed, and more colorful hallways.
– It was beige all over, and could have been a little cleaner.
– Potential Idea: have an art class have a unit focused on how to make the school look better each year.
– That there were a weird amount of student’s wandering the halls at any given time.
– That the staff we interacted with really care about the school and students.