Compare and Contrast

I went and visited Braden Boss at Springville High School and it was beneficial because he had a lot of good ideas of what to teach and how to animate the students to do well.

As a tech teacher he really jumped head long into the technology aspect. There was the idea of having text voting poles during the announcements, he uses a class blog to control assignments and keep the students informed, he has a Facebook account for the class to do formative and summative assessments, when he sends his journalism students out they text in when they need help or have a question.

Another was a film festival that is held at the end of the year of all the students work. I did that once in an Animation class in High School and we were pumped and working over time to get our projects done. I actually think that is the first time I have ever pulled an all nighter to do school work. But the pint is that is was something to get the students excited. Even the ideas of inviting an expert or someone from a college to be present at the festival or Premiere to me would excite the students to really do their very best work and really put in the time that is required. I know they use this here at the university. The animation department just held their premiere of their latest animation on Tuesday of this week and they had someone from ILM come and talk about the field and give some pointers in what they were doing.

We have gone over this concept in class a little as well of when you give an assignment if there is no follow up on that assignment then why would the students even do it.

From visiting Mr. Moss's class at Wasatch last time and then now seeing Braden Boss it has really been an eye opener in how important classroom management is to the effectiveness and professionalism of the students. Both classes were having a different day than usual whether by technical difficulties or planned happenstance. The difference was in how they handled the situation given to them. Braden is more of a treat them as what they are. He treats his students like high school students, like teenagers and he does it in a teenagerish way. His students treat him more like a buddy than a teacher. When the schedule changed he let the students govern themselves as teenagers as to what they were going to do that day in class rather than giving them direction.

Mr. Moss treats his class like professionals and expects them to act like it. He has them on deadlines and requires professional dress and demeanor while presenting. When things shut down in a much more unexpected way for his class he picked it up and ran with it. He had them start working on ideas for the future and taught them a concept that wasn't meant for their class but had some application after tying it in through a discussion afterwords.

I think what Geoff said about the new teachers feeling young is true. They feel young compared to the other teachers and faculty because they probably are however no matter how young you are you are older than a high school student and are therefore older.

I had one of my college professors who had a problem with this because he looked younger and taught with a lot of energy and acted younger because of it. He was having problems with his students giving him no respect and denying his authority to even teach. It was a little extreme but I noticed how he was really affected by it. He became more structured but still kept the energy. He demanded more respect while still keeping a good relationship with the students. It is possible and necessary to do for the students to understand your roll as a L/T and their rolls as well.