What happens in the East Wing

This past Thursday, I did it, I ventured to the east wing, with my cooperating teachers help of course!

The east wing is where the athletic office is located as well as the science classrooms. This is the first time I ventured into another classroom while at Penn Manor. I walked in to find the science teacher preparing for the day ahead… aka finishing up his breakfast.

On the board was written the class overview for the day which read worms/greenhouse/reading, notes, presentations, WKN (weekend) HW. As I sat in the back waiting for students to file in the looked around as the walls were covered with biology related posters. The room was highly organized and put together. As the students filled in they got straight to work. Some students were checking on the greenhouse whiles others were finishing up their presentations and preparing questions for the review notes.


As the class progressed through the notes it was exciting to see that they were talking about the sources of pollution with the main one being agricultural runoff. Of course this fact is not exciting, but the idea that they were talking about agricultural practices made for quite the connection.

As the teacher went through the notes he incorporated class discussion, questions, graphics, and videos that aided in the students retention of information. This class is an AP Environmental science class so I was excited to hear some of the higher level questioning techniques as he probed students for more in depth answers and encouraged them to work together to answer questions.

As I sat in the back I noticed to some students were checking their SAT scores, some were talking with others, and some were on their phones, mostly the students choosing to sit near the back. While the students sitting up front were engaging in the material and asking questions to further their knowledge. This is one thing that I was curious to see, he did not bother to try and focus these students in the back, they were not being disruptive, but only hurting their chances of performing well on the next exam or the AP test. This is something that I am slowly picking up on, some days it is better to have a few students disengaged, then disrupt the class to refocus them, especially when they are juniors and seniors, you have to pick and choose battles.

I continued to sit there and take in the teaching style of another as we proceeded through the notes and began the student presentations.

Some thoughts that came out of this observations first off is why is the Ag department not closer to the science department. The science department is attempting to grow cucumbers, herbs, and potatoes with a tiny closet sized glass room that they call a greenhouse. We are always talking about how we need to make these cross circular connections, where the Ag department also contributes back and this would be the perfect opportunity, just a thought.

I also observed how this class was very much run like a junior senior level class. They were very self directed in their learning wheres freshman students typically need more guidance. As I concluded my observation I had a chance to chat with the teacher about his career prep class, which he said is highly structured and quite different from the one I observed.

Overall it was exciting to be in another teachers classroom and see how they presented information and kept their student engaged!