I spent Monday and Wednesday mornings this week observing Christine Honore’s 8th grade classroom at Arcadia Charter School. Driving up to the building the first day I was already a little bit surprised (a theme of this blog post, you will notice!). Growing up in St. Louis I am accustomed to school buildings looking a certain way – large, looming structures, often made of brick or other old stone. Arcadia? Not so! Arcadia Charter school is located in a small, one story building about a half mile off of highway 3. Walking inside, I was surprised to see that the space looks almost office-like; the windows, layout, and low ceilings look somewhat like an HR building. There is both a middle school and a high school at the school, so the building is divided in half when you enter. While there are a few rooms in the back that look more like traditional classrooms, most of the “classroom” spaces in the front are delineated through clear dividers or arrays of student’s desks; I think because it used to be a manufacturing building, the school had to get creative in making schoolroom spaces.

Walking into Ms. Honore’s classroom I was in for another surprise – there were only four students! And they were all doing coursework online, huddled over individual laptops in desks spaced 10 feet apart. Apparently, Arcadia is still in remote learning mode. Although there are some teachers and students back in the space in-person, all of the classes are operating remotely and the majority of the students are tuning in from home. I (woefully unprepared for this) had not brought a laptop, but after setting me up with a school computer I was able to log in and join the students “Project Work Time” period at the beginning of the day.

From what I could gather from my time there, Ms. Honore is not the teacher for the 8th grade class. Instead, she serves as more of a monitor/assistant for the people there in person. The students virtually move from “class” to “class” (clicking on different teachers Google Meet links) and Christine is there as a resource to keep them on track. I found it a little bit difficult to observe classroom approaches/learning styles from my position as an online learner – most of the classes I sat in on (such as “Project Work Time” and part of an English class) began with a greeting from the teacher and the rest of the time was spent doing independent, online work. In the “irl” classroom, everything was eerily quiet. None of the students spoke to one another for almost the full hour I was there. Two consistently played on their phones – being chastised by Christine for not paying attention. One student seemed to have particular difficulty matching the energy of this silent room. He loudly squeaked his chair back and forth and often blurted out random, provocative things (at one point talking about arson!) to get others attention. Online learning is so difficult! I know that all of the teachers are doing their best given the circumstances, but I couldn’t help but feel my heart breaking for the students. Given what we have talked about in class about the importance of social interaction to cognitive development, I wonder how this time period is impacting the social/emotional skills of these children.

During their independent work time, I spent a lot of time looking around at the walls of the classroom. Due to the small space in the building, the 8th grade class is in a room without windows. But covering the walls are color drawings, projects, and quotes handwritten by the students. I liked to see this emphasis on student expression and insertion of them, as learners, into the structure of the classroom. It made me wonder what the school environment is like in normal years – I am sure it is very different from the quiet, rigid classroom I observed.

According to Piaget’s stage theory, the 8th grade students I observed are in the middle stages of formal operations. While I was unable to witness a lot of student discussion/interaction due to the online nature of the classes, some of the activities during “Project Work Time” seemed to confirm this stage. One student, for instance, was working on developing an independent project to clean up the back corner of the school lot. While explaining his ideas for this plan, I saw him do a lot of hypothetical thinking – remembering the layout of the space in his brain without seeing it, thinking of objects he might need *if* he wanted to put in particular fixtures (like a table or other area to sit). At first I wondered if this was truly “formal operational” thinking – since he was reasoning about a space that existed – but as the class went on I noticed the questions that the teachers were asking of the students (“What will you do if you can’t get these materials? What will you do if you have to stay distanced when working on this project?”) indicated some abstract, hypothetical reasoning.

For the future:
Next week I will be coming to school at my regular time, so I am curious to see how the students/classes might be different at a different time of day. I also hope to explore more how the charter school develops teacher-student relationships. I noticed that all of the teachers go by their first names, and that several have fairly personal, informal relationships with some of the students. I am curious to learn how these teachers balance creating a warm environment with having some authority in the classroom.

• This topic was modified 2 years, 9 months ago by Tonja Clay.