Monday, September 13, 2010
Fist full day at MLK Middle School, we took the 86 bus to the North and after a fifteen minutes ride we got off and walked along Ammendale Road, bordering the woods, for fifteen minutes more. In the school, Ms. Debbie and Ms. Jennings were waiting for the three of us, Sergio, Raj and me. We were assigned to different courses and different teachers to have a wide perspective of the way they work at school. After four hours observing teachers and students, it was a good opportunity to compare our schools in Argentina to this public school in The U.S. Of course this is the first impression we got, I would like to enumerate some features that were particularly noticeable.
-Students go to the teacher´s rooms which is identified with numbers. The teacher has his/her own place and the place is arranged and decorated according to the teacher´s subject.
-The room is quite big and classes are not numerous.
-When students go into their classrooms, they are welcome on screen because they have close circuit television and after a patriotic poem they are reported on the events of the day by other students in charge of the TV program for that day.
-Any special announcement is heard in the same classroom by means of loudspeakers.
-Every classroom has a computer, sometimes more than one, and an LCD projector very much used by the teacher to correct exercises on the screen.
-On the board, the teacher always states the goal of the day and the warm up activity, which in Language Arts is usually fifteen minutes reading a book of their choice and a short
after-reading activity.
-Students do not talk to each other unless they are asked to interact with their peers to carry out an activity proposed by the teacher.
At four we left the school, fortunately this school is one of the PDS (Professional Developing Schools and there many interns working there, so one of them picked us up to our apartments.
As it was not late yet, Prince George Plaza ( a huge shopping center with Macy´s and J.C. Penny department stores) was the new finding of the day.
