This week, our tech class attend an in-situ at Gordon Terrace, and the more I find myself working in the field, the more I realize that patience is a tool that will be incredibly useful in this line of work. I continue to learn the important ways to engage with kids in a way that is both productive and validating for them, but the only requirement for this kind of interaction is time, and plenty of it.
We arrived and was immediately greeted with an excellent presentation from the principal of Gordon Terrace, David Martin. We were able to ask questions regarding the creation of the Maker Space in their school, the way they use technology in the school, and how they safely implement protocols for students to use technology in the classroom. Next, we were allowed to take a few moments to tour the building before the in-situ, and I noticed that this was a relatively active school. Each class seemed to be engaging in activities that excited the students and included them. At this time, we then headed to our designated classroom where we would be partnered with a small number of students each to teach them about www.getepic.com, a website that encourages reading at an early age.
This is where the realization about patience came in. During my time with these students, which was roughly 30 minutes, we were able to cover a very small portion of what the website could do, because between each moment of showing the kids how to log on, they would get distracted by wanting to tell me about something either distantly related to the subject matter or even completely unrelated. The students were so excited to tell me about their experiences on the weekend, but I struggled with shutting them down, as I did not want the students to believe that I was invalidating their world, which they were quite eager to share with me. With a little bit of word tennis, I was able to eventually find efficient ways to get these students on task before the end of the session and we were able to explore more of the website than I had expected after the first five minutes with the two students I was set to teach.
I wanted to make sure that the students were learning the information that I was required to teach them, but also understood that it might have been exciting or even nerve racking to have an adult they did not know engage with them about technology, a topic that I find kids in the modern era take a keen interest in. Overall, I felt that my real take away from this in-situ was being able to read students, even if it was only two, and keep them on task with divergent conversation that would lead back to the lesson. I felt that perhaps I did allow for too much sharing within my group that disallowed us from exploring more of the website than I had anticipated, and I perhaps could have tightened up my previously mentioned divergence to bring more interest to the website. Eventually, once I allowed free reign to explore, the students were able to see that there was plenty of content that fell within their personal interests.
This was an excellent experience in the classroom, and I am incredibly thrilled that we were given the opportunity to engage with students in a way that felt natural and did not cause stress, given the supervised and instructed layout of the in-situ. I will continue to work on my ability to make my interactions with students as productive as possible, but in a way that does not limit how they can express themselves.