Reflection+8

=__WHYY Take 2__=

 Today I was able to witness a class with students in it. There were 4 students, two of them at their own computers initially, working on their projects and the other two at the same computer getting distracted with prom shoe shopping. After a little procrastination Henry encouraged the two to split by asking them how they are standing with their projects. This was an interesting dynamic to face because in some classrooms that I have been present in if a teacher saw the students on a computer looking at prom shoes they would get reprimanded for looking at the website and talking when they should have been working. In this after school program however, Henry seems to recognize that getting upset over the use of the computers for something like that is a loosing battle, instead he chooses to barely acknowledge the distraction and gently redirect their energy and focus to their own work. This instance may seem weak on the part of a teacher, but for an after school program that he wants the kids to be excited about it seems as though a relaxed transition into the work period is necessary to maintain the comfort and more positive energy from the students.

It was great to see how the different students were working on their "Feature" projects. Each student had different ideas of how they wanted to put their montage of information and audio clips together to create a solid piece. One student was listening to an interview that he had conducted for his topic of the homeless in Philadelphia, another student was writing a script for himself to record, and so on.

I was able to really speak a lot with the first student and learn about what they had done in the class, the structure, how he learned the skills he is using currently and about how Henry brought in a guest speaker from the station who helped the students learn what to work on to fix one of their projects. It is great that the students have the amazing resources they do at WHYY. It would be much more difficult to organize a guest speaker coming into a school to speak than a speaker from WHYY walking down the hall on a free hour to stop in a speak with students. Throughout the afternoon Henry surveys, and chats, and moderates activity that the students are working on. He checks in with where each student is and with student X helped introduce some access tools for pro-tools. They were not introduced to the class as a whole at one time which I found could be beneficial for the individual student but a lot of work for Henry. This individual teaching made me think. Is it more beneficial to the class to introduce how to use ProTools and the like, individually? Or is it better to introduce the skills to the class and then help the students individually when it came to that point?