Week+February+12th-17th

For my first day of field experience I came into a class of 10th, 11th, and 12th graders working on storyboards. Mr. D explained to me that the students were in the middle of a project that had them come up with a product that couldn’t exist, then make a storyboard and go out and shoot a commercial with flip cams. After that I sat in the back of the room and watched the kids work in groups to get different parts of their projects done. Mr. D would walk around just to make sure the kids were staying on task or answer a question so they could work on another step smoothly. Mr. D then came to the back and sat with me we talked about the different points the kids were in and some of the kids that had more needs then others. I felt like I was part of the team right away with Mr. D, the kids on the other hand was a little harder to open up with. I actually only get to see the last 25 minutes or so of this class so there wasn’t much else to observer, besides the fact that each time someone would finish one step they would come to Mr. D to get his approval to move on to the next step. But instead of saying yes or no to their storyboards he would ask them questions to make them explain each scene and what it did for the commercial. Things like: what is this frame representing, what type of shot are you going to use with this scene-wide, close-up, medium-different questions to make the kids explain their ideas or talk about their vision in another way they wouldn’t have thought of. After the bell rang the next class came in, the 11th grade advance broadcast class. The students have been working on their first full screen writes since the beginning of the year. I will be working in their class the most since it is a two block class that goes till the end of the day. When the students came in Mr. D had them all sit at a desk, introduced me and then started class by asking the kids who didn’t want to produce their scripts any more. The kids that raised their hands had to pick a role they would be in another film, may it be an actor, camera man, even a director. As Mr. D was talking with the class he would let certain people go to computers to get to work then he had an issue with a student, she didn’t want to do any type of work or even be in the class, so Mr. D left her alone till he finished talking to the rest of the students. When he finished getting an idea of what each student should be doing he took the student having the issue into the hall to talk. While they talked in private I sat back and watched the kids to see the way they acted without Mr. D there to keep an eye on them. Some of them messed around at different points but for the most part they stayed on their tasks, if they had a problem they would go to another student and ask if they knew how to do something or what the next step should be. Later in the class when Mr. D was back he asked what I knew how to do and I told him the different classes I have had and my experience in broadcasting. He then told the class that I was him, I could help them on anything, if they had questions and he couldn’t be with them or didn’t want to ask him I was able to answer them as well. It helped the kids open up to me and start conversation. I ended up working with one student on her script. Mr. D told her it was too long and had unneeded scenes, but she had to figure out what they were. So for the rest of the class I had her explain to me the major points of her script, then go through and tell me things she thought were important. We ended up rewriting a good amount of her script, cutting it down, and making it more of focused on one topic to make the story line run smoother. Thursday the kids had a half day so I came in at 8 and stayed till 11:30 when school was out just to see the other classes and talk to Mr. D more about what we would be doing in class and what he wanted me to do while I watched him teach the class. Since the kids have so many different periods they only had 25 minutes at most for each class so we ended up watching movies in each class. While the kids were watching the movie Mr. D and I talked about his different techniques and what I would be doing. The biggest thing that stuck out to me was the way each class was started. Mr. D would greet each student by name and they have to come up and shack his hand before sitting down. He explained to me that it was a way for him to see how the kid’s attitudes were for the day, did they seem happy or not in the right mood to work in class or stay focused. The way Mr. D was explaining this technique I realized it was his Joy factor, like we talked about in class. He would get the feel for the class and engage we each student by having the initial interaction and setting the tone of the class. For my first week all I can say is how excited I am to start this relationship with the students and the school as a whole. I want to help the kids learn about broadcasting and learn from Mr. D how to integrate different techniques of media literacy. It was a great beginning to what I hope to be an overall amazing experience.

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