Observation #1

Paris 1

Dominic Paris
Prof. Nathan Alexander
TEC 610-01
October 13, 2015
St. Ignatius
My classroom observation took place at St. Ignatius High School in the classroom of Mr. Eric Castro (who is both an Our Lady of Mercy, my school of employment,
and USF alum) who teaches 10th grade social studies. Mr. Castro did not teach in his
classroom, but I did get to see it before classes commenced. The walls were covered in
references to psychology (he shared it with the psychology teacher). All the desks
seemed new with no marks. I was surprised to see a chalk board that seemed a little old
fashioned as I am used to seeing white boards in new schools. All in all the classroom
really met my expectations of what I imagined SI would be like.
Mr. Castros class met in the library. It was an immaculate and stunning library
with wood panels and simple but elegant lighting fixtures. A corner of the library dedicated to some tables around which the students were gathered. Mr. Castro told the to
take out their iPads and bring up their textbook. They had 7 minutes to scan several
pages of text regarding the treaty of Versailles. Mr. Castro had his own iPad count down
7 minutes. After the 7 minutes had ended he asked several vocabulary terms and gave
examples. This seemed to be a brief overview of an unfinished portion of the reading
from the previous night.

Observation #1

Paris 2

Mr. Castro then allowed the students to use the remaining time for their term paper. The assignment was a 10 page paper on a famous person. Students could use the
librarys internet resources of old dead tree things (i.e. books) for research. Over the
next 30 minutes Mr. Castro floated around the library and answered questions from the
students. I was very impressed by their impeccable behavior. The worse offense I saw
was a pair of students cruising the internet for something unrelated to research. However, students at that level were allowed to use their time as they saw fit provided the work
got done on time.
At 15 minutes until the end of class he gathers the students again and reviewed
the outline of the research that he wanted for the paper. He then allowed them to return
to work. With only 5 minutes to the class did get a little rowdy and the librarian
shushed them. But I was still extremely impressed by the way the students comported
themselves and how they handled the independent responsibility.