Field Blog Post #1

Mayfield Middle School

I never actually considered wanting to be a Middle School teacher, but after observing a class in this middle school, I am not totally against the idea. Upon arrival at the school, we sat in the cafeteria and talked to the principal of the school. We got to hear some background about his experience and journey to becoming a teacher as well as principal. Oddly enough, he was a graduate of John Carroll University! That being so, he was very open to allowing us to look around the school on our own and allowing us to get the experience we wanted to. After talking to him, I do not believe that I would enjoy being a principal. This is because I asked him if he ever got to have one on one time with students. His response was that that is the one thing he wishes he had more of. I want to be able to directly work with kids and get to experience the difference I will make in their lives. 

After we spoke to him in the cafeteria, we were let loose around the school to explore. Some things I noticed about the school was that it reminded me of my middle school. It was old but had some new and renovated areas. There were kid’s artwork and schoolwork hanging up around the halls, and there were students walking around the halls or doing science experiments like I would have seen at Aurora. I did notice something that was unlike Aurora. I do not know if this is actually true about the school, but I saw more male teachers than I did female. The school also had an odd setup. I am sure that if I spent a longer time there then it would have made sense to me, but walking around I was very confused. The different grades (6th-8th) were separated into separate parts of the school, and I decided that I wanted to visit 7th grade. 

I got to observe Mr. Race's classroom. He is a seventh grade science teacher and when we walked in, he was assisting his students on a metric lab. If the kids were done with their work, they were to do something in their science books. The labs did not take long to finish, and once they were all done, they would get back their tests they had taken a few days before. The students that did exceptionally well were called out into the hallway to get their picture taken. This picture would then get put onto Mr. Race's Wonderful Warrior Wall. As students were getting test scores back, Mr. Race had asked them to be quiet and keep their sound level at a zero (no talking). The students did not listen so Mr. Race had to drop marbles. Marbles were the student’s incentives to behave well. They had lost a lot during just this one class period, because they did not listen very well. But, overall I definitely enjoyed observing this classroom and it made me think that there is a possibility that I could be a middle school teacher.