Classroom Observation

I haven’t been to high school in a few years, so honestly it felt like walking through a movie when I stepped through those doors. The kids gave me piercing curious looks, there were cliques and groups everywhere, and the school felt like a maze of course. When we, Chris and I, finally found Mrs. Nelson’s room, we peaked our heads in her office door to say hello. She was cordial if not slightly cold with the tiredness that is not uncommon to public high school teachers. We let her be, we didn’t need anymore attention than that, and she had enough on her hands with her next class coming in.

One very nice thing about her class, Film History, is that she leaves the stacks of chairs in the corner instead of putting them out and lining them up. She lets her students get their own chairs and sit wherever they want. Remembering my high school days, it was always such a relief to be able to have that small amount of control. The class began with a review of what they had learned in the last class. I was impressed with the involvement of the students; they seemed to remember the terms fairly well. Then the teacher handed out empty work sheets and pulled up a super dull high school style power point – one that has no style, a few pictures, and mostly just text written in Times New Roman. This was the end to any class discussion, and the beginning of feeding students facts that are not fleshed with commentary or history. She went through a few interesting terms that are definitely important in film, like, diegetic music, but the majority of the time was going through the last hundred years through lists of the most famous musicals. You have to remember two from this decade for the test and two from this decade for the test. You must know that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers was an extremely famous onscreen pair in many musicals for the test. Write this down on your worksheet/outline, it’s on the test.  Every other sentence she said, “this is on the test” like a threat if they don’t pay attention. It made me really sad that this tone had to be used in the classroom. I understand that high school is hard, and at this age, teenagers aren’t too interested in paying attention, but I wish there was a better way.

What I did like about the class was the emphasis on viewing things. It felt like they were going through all the necessary material for the test as fast as possible, so that they could get to watching films, in this case The Wizard of Oz.  I think this emphasis is important, but I wish there had been more context into the importance of the film and how it fits into history. I’m very glad that this class is offered in high school, and I wish it had been offered at mine. Even though it is test centered, I believe that students will pick up on something that they hadn’t before. Maybe they’ll be more willing to watch an old Astaire movie because now they’ve heard of him. I don’t know what all the results are for classes like these, but I’m hopeful for sure.  It introduces the idea that there is more to films than just going to the movies, and I like that.