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Mine and Logan's CT has to share his classroom with other teachers, so there is minimal personality to the room. The classroom the tables are set up like a traditional classroom. All the students sit in rows facing the main white board. There are two students to a table so they have plenty of room for their work space in the classroom. Our CT's "desk" sits at the front of the room. Since he shares the room, he doesn't get to decide where or what's on the desk. This is usually where he teaches from. The walls are mostly covered with white boards and then one side is all cupboards where they store all of their materials. There are barely any decorations on the wall. However, there are some posters that are from another class that add some character to the room. Out CT uses his iPad everyday and for pretty much everything. He tries to use AirPlay whenever he can so that he can walk around a bit. However, the times I've been there, AirPlay hasn't worked for the whole lesson. When it goes out he then has to connect his iPad, which makes him have to sit at his desk.
Due to the fact that our CT has to share his room with other teachers, he has no say on how the room is set up and what goes on the walls in there. He does think that his iPad does a lot for his teaching. He said he can get a lot done with that and the projector.
After seeing this classroom, I would definitely not have my classroom like the one in my practicum. I think that having students in some sort of pods would be a lot better. In the traditional style, students can only talk to their neighbors on the sides of them. I think these pods could create dialogue between multiple students when they are discussing things in the classroom. I also plan on putting some sort of things on my wall. When I'm sitting room for my practicum, I don't feel like its that inviting of a classroom. I think that the little character that things on the walls makes the students feel more relaxed.
I wonder if when sharing a room, a teacher could work with the other teachers to come up with room decorations and a better seating arrangement? Have you asked your CT about this?
ReplyDeleteI noticed how you said sometimes your CT's AirPlay does not work, do you feel like this hinders the lesson and the goals he is trying to achieve? You also said he uses his iPad for pretty much everything. I wonder if getting the material across to the students is harder sometimes when a person is always trying to incorporate technology.
ReplyDeleteGreat things to think about from Bonni &Ryan. I was actually thinking the same think Bonni was. Can your CT work with other teachers to decide how to "spruce up" the room? Reading the blogs we can see that there is such variety in terms of the types of rooms and n whether teachers get their own rooms or not. You might end up in a place where you have to share, which is't all bad - sometimes this is so that teachers will spend more time in the "planning center" or "math office" and talk more about teaching. If you end up in that situation thinking about how you might approach other teachers about the room arrangement will be important. Also, Ryan has some good questions... I know that in the school you are placed they use a program to do AirPlay through a "desktop application" that is on their laptop. Apple TVs are less than $100 and they are much more reliable. So, this could be improved greatly with better technology and it allows the flexibility of moving around the room. We have this capability in methods so I hope you try it out! :-)
ReplyDeleteI notice that you said you would like to have pods in your future classroom. I wonder how large you would like these pods and if you would prefer the tables like these or desks. I imagine that it is difficult to move around this class but hat is just something that you have to deal with when you share a room. I like that your CT uses a lot of technology because it is nice to see a variety of teaching techniques.
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