Field Post 3

Last Thursday our class took a trip out to Cleveland Heights High School. I knew from the very start that I did not want to be a high school teacher, but even so I was very interested by what I saw. Cleveland Heights High School is a much different setting than Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School, where I attended. Cleveland Heights was a predominantly black school district, while Brecksville is the opposite. During my observations I sat in on a 2nd period senior english class. Going off of the school being predominantly black, I noted that there was only one white student in the entire class. I also noted that including myself, there were 6 different adults in the room which I found to be quite excessive. The students in this particular english class were working on a project for an annual competition in Downtown Cleveland that they attend. Each year, this class writes and performs a rap. The rap depicts issues of gender and race. Many of the kids were involved in their class discussion, but whenever the teacher would go to work with a student individually the rest of the class would become distracted and talk about things unrelated to what they were supposed to be working on. Overall I thought that writing this rap would be a great experience for the students and it is a different way of expressing themselves and it is a different way of learning. I also noted that there were 4 students that walked into class very late, and not a word was said about it. As I stated earlier this school has a very different environment compared to where I attended. Entering a rap contest at my old high school would be considered taboo and unacceptable, and if students were to walk in that late there would be questions asked. It was interesting to see how different schools handle different events. Based off of my observation I imposed a question about teaching in a high school setting. This english class spends a majority of their time creating this rap, and it makes me wonder when they have the time to focus on their curriculum when it comes to other classroom activities such as reading, vocabulary, tests and so on. Although writing a rap is a neat way to get a class to be involved and doing something different, when do they actually learn vital material?