Apples From Asia Never Work.

4. Springville High School -
-this was the least impressive school visit I’ve had.
-Mr. Bell was very into himself and his designs and what his students in the past have done for him and made for him and said about him. He also dislikes China very much and he dislikes Apple for outsourcing to Asia. That was really funny and I couldn’t look at Robbie or Tyler or I would have totally cracked up.
-I wish I could have seen the students working on the equipment because it looked like they had some really really cool stuff.
-The students were really cool! They were making pencil drawings. I’m not really sure what for.
-Mr. Bell let them wear their Ipods while they were drawing. I don’t know how I feel about that yet. I mean, I love music and of course as a teacher I plan on listening to music during work time, but I kind of want all of us (my students and I) to be on the same page. Does that make sense? I had this idea that I wrote in my teaching journal about assigning each of my students two different days during the semester, and on that day they would bring in a play list of music they had made for us to listen to. I would of course outline at the beginning very strict rules relating to the content of the music, and if they broke those rules they wouldn’t be allowed to play music again and I would make them listen to Alpine Yodeling for the rest of the class period or something. I’m not sure about that yet….we’ll see what other things I come up with as I continue to learn and think.
-two students came in late from the same thing (I think it was a meeting for football or something). One had a note, one didn’t. Mr. Bell ripped the head off of one of the kids and didn’t say anything to the one with the pass. He made the other kid go back to get his own pass from the teacher. Maybe there’s a past with that kid, I’m not sure. I mean I get it, he didn’t have a pass, and maybe he’s a disruptive student, but I really think that there are better ways to communicate to students that their actions aren’t okay. The key is to get them to respect you, and the get them to want you to be proud of them. Then they would never do anything to make you disappointed in them. And when they do, and you show that disappointment, they actually learn something from it. There are so many things I am still unsure of as far as how I will handle situations when I teach!!!
-We also visited the last 15 minutes or so of a film class, wherein the teacher did something I want to be weary of as I teach, and also in my relationships with other people. He did the “Thank you, but….” or the “nice job!!! But…” He told the students that he enjoyed their films, BUT they really needed to be more serious about filmmaking and the technical side of it if they wanted to make it to sudance. The students forgot about the ‘nice job’ part of it about 15 seconds into that 5 minute lecture about being more serious about their craft. To me, that would be an unfulfilling assignment as a student.