This Take Your Kid to Work Day, I went to my former middle school, Hillcrest.
For Blocks A and B, I visited my all time favorite teacher, Ms. Knight. For English, she taught the class how to break up paragraphs, and in Socials, they did review on an upcoming Middle Ages quiz. Near the end, they did two Kahoots that I also participated in.
For the next two blocks, I went over to Ms. Filomarino’s classroom. She gave the class a lesson on Prime Factorization and a sheet on factoring.
Proceeding lunch was Block E. I joined my friend Jobin, who was also doing TYKTWD in Health and Wellness, which was taught by our previous STEAM teacher, Ms. Bahng. We had a chat about addition, with emphasis on social media. After the conversation, we played three games of 11.
The last block for me was Team PE, with four classes coming together to play 4 corner soccer. I used it as an opportunity to catch up with my former classmates. It ended early due to someone getting kneed in the face.
I had an amazing time visiting Hillcrest!
1) What did you hear, see, smell, and feel in the work environment on Nov. 6th?
When I walked in, the classroom looked clean and organized to me. They didn’t have singular desks. Instead, they had four long desks stretching across the classroom. In the back, they had art on the wall. On the front towards the right, there was vocabulary for the Middle Ages. On the left, I saw short stories that I assume are all written by Edgar Allan Poe. I don’t know if the class was small or if many people skipped that day, but I only counted 19 students. Whilst observing them throughout the day, the class was mostly silent, except when Ms. Knight gave them time to work on their assignments. When compared to when I was in her class, we have two complete opposites, with mine always somehow being loud. However, it was a different story for Socials. The class was loud, yelling out answers to the Kahoot.
Ms. Filomarino’s classroom contained a lot of green and was very aesthetic and clean. The desks were arranged in 9 groups of 3. Her room was more spacious than Ms. Knight’s room. Whilst playing the pyramid game, people were chatting and I constantly heard dice dropping on the desks. During the notetaking, the entire class was very focused on the lesson.
The Health and Wellness Classroom had the tables pushed to the side, giving limited space for chairs. Since Orange Team were the last divisions to receive hot lunch, some were eating burgers, whilst others were eating chips or cookies.
Block 5 (Team PE) was extremely chaotic. There were four classes together in one gym playing soccer. Everybody in that gym was very competitive and loud.
2) What about the environment would motivate you to wake up every day to attend work?
Although this job could get stressful and overwhelming at times, I would probably be motivated to teach and help these students learn about the subjects I’m passionate about, such as English and Socials. Being remembered as a great teacher, as I remember Ms. Knight as mine, would also provide motivation to become a great educator in a middle school and show up every day to attend work. I believe teaching requires a lot of patience and hard work to do, but if you persevere, everything will work out fine.
3) What about the work environment would discourage you from waking up every day to attend work?
After the daily question of the day, Ms. Knight showed the class a housekeeping rules PowerPoint. She was ranting about papers, food and broken pencils turning the top of the bookshelf into a garbage disposal. The top of the bookshelf is now clean, due to her cleaning it the previous day. I think the dirty and disorganized work environment would discourage me from waking up to attend work. I would be tired of dealing with the students’ mess constantly. Also, some of the boys were gaming during class and I would not want to repeatedly get them off their devices, because it is simply just very annoying. I don’t know if this is a myth, but I’d assume the pay isn’t the best for the work you’re doing.
4) What is one thing you found interesting about your workplace visit?
During the day, as I saw and heard, everybody was only talking to people in their friend groups, with the boys at the front two desks and the girls in the back two. Two years ago, when I was in Ms. Knight’s class, almost all of us were one big friend group, connecting with everybody in the class. Perhaps it has something to do with how the desks are placed, since we had our desks positioned into a U. Another factor could just be the people in the class aren’t compatible with each other.
Another thing I found interesting was the lunch schedule. They go out to eat first, then they come back to an “instructional lunch”, which means that they eat, and the teacher plays an “educational video”, or they work on assignments. I asked a few students, and they also agree this is nonsense.
Photos from Ms. Knight’s Classroom:
