Justin Scherer

Dr. Savage

ARTEDUC 4200

13 October 2020

Observation #1

I am going to use this paragraph to describe the demographics of John Sells Middle

School. According to the most recent NCES information (from the 2019-2020 academic year),

John Sells has a student population of 920 and holds a Student/Teacher Ratio of 18.22: 1. This

public school is located within a large suburb in Franklin County. The student population 63.4%

White, 18.2% Asian, 8.2% Hispanic, 5.4% Black, and 4.8% that identify as two or more races.

About 21.1% of the student population is eligible for free lunches.

For this week’s observation, I have elected to do the alternative option (because I’m

currently in OSU sanctioned quarantine). I was sent 3 videos and tasked with describing how

the teacher in the video (Cassie Stephens) presented themselves and their personality in their

classroom.

The first thing I noticed was the teachers use of repetition to keep their students

engaged. Stephens utilized a call and repeat form of communication when it came to explaining

the lesson and the vocabulary associated with it (see the line instruction video for prominent

examples of this). The other thing I noticed is that the teacher elected to utilize a more

‘musical’ form of teaching. Stephens would often times emphasize important directions or

words by putting a theatrical stress beneath a given word. I found this particularly effective in
regards to gaining and keeping their students’ attention. This fun form of teaching also seemed

to help in building a stronger student teacher relationship (I say this because the students

seemed to be laughing and having a lot of fun while they were going through the demos).

This teacher definitely utilized humor whenever they could. They talked about how hard

it is to teach kindergarten, and the inevitability of high energy kids. Their solution for this came

in the form of a highly interactive / humorous lesson demonstration. This teacher’s goal was to

“channel” their student’s energy and redirect it towards building a general excitement about

the actual lesson. I thought this was a great idea, because there is no way a kindergarten

teacher will be able to have full control over all of their students at all times, so putting on a

“performance” and getting your students excited to learn can really help propel a lesson

forward.

I’d say that this educator's teaching philosophy relies heavily on the idea of hands-on

student engagement. It also seemed to be fairly performative at times (which can most likely be

attributed to the teacher’s bubbly personality). I think this teacher does a great job keeping

their students engaged and interested.

This brings me to my final question: What can I take from these videos and emulate in

my future teaching career? I don’t think I have the stamina to be as theatrical as Cassie was, but

I do think I can lean into humor more so to engage my students in the lesson at hand. I also

really liked the way Cassie implemented a class store (giving her students more agency). I would

really like to further explore effective TAB classroom set-ups.

 Works Cited (APA)

Search for Public Schools - School Detail for John Sells Middle School. (n.d.). from

https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/school_detail.asp?ID=390470202753