Observation 1

     I performed my observations at Mt. Pleasant High School in Providence.  The teacher came down to get me from the main office.  We briefly stopped by the teacher's lounge before going to the classroom.  The classroom I observed was a 12th grade English honors class.
     The teacher sat me at his desk.  His desk was in the back left hand corner of the room.  Another teacher's desk (different teacher's teach in the room at different times) was in the front left hand corner.  The windows lined the wall the ran along in between the two desks.  The doors were in the front and back right hand corners.  The smart board was in between the other teacher's desk and the door door up front.  The white boards and bulletin board were amid the two doors.  Book shelves lined the wall in between the back door and the desk I was sitting at.  The student's desks, instead of being in traditional rows, were put together into six different groups.  Five of the groups of desks had students at them, the one closest to the white boards remained empty.  The groups ranged from four to six students.  Some English-related posters and student's assignments hung on the walls.  Nothing seemed to be missing from the room.  The teacher moved around the room, but mostly stood near the white boards or the smart board.
     The school was overwhelmingly large, but had a very professional feel.  To get to the main office I walked into the lobby from the outside, then up the stairs in went in the first door.  The English teachers lounge and the classroom were on the floor above that.
     There were 16 students in the class, 18 people including myself and the teacher.  The class was about evenly split between gender.  The class was fairly diverse, mostly Latino and African American.   I could not tell their class and there seemed to be one disabled student.
     Everyone in the class participated.  Each student in this class appeared to have abilities and skills that matched or exceeded that expectations of the school, being to that it was an honors class.
     The power is fairly equal in the room.  The teacher obviously has more power than the rest of the class, but it seemed less so in this class than in many other classes.  The students seemed to have equal power with each other.  It was a highly discussion based class, which lessened the power gap in between teacher and student.  There was also heavy emphasis on giving the students time to discuss amongst themselves without the teacher and to fill out their discussion sheets.  The discussion sheets are t-charts with pages/line numbers one side and their thoughts on the other.  They are used for discussion and essays.
     To be a student in this class would probably be quite nice.  Being in such a discussion based class would have been very productive.  The discussion sheets would have also been a wonderful way for me to retrieve my ideas I had when reading for writing essays.