FieldBlogPost- Shaker Heights High School

Going to Shaker Heights High School was personally a very big change for me after going to Mayfield Middle School and doing all my placement work at Gesu in a fourth grade classroom. It wasn't a bad change necessarily, I enjoyed my time at the high school. When I got there, we were welcomed by two admission directors who talked to us about the school and high school education. One thing they touched on that was big was the IB classes. I was not too familiar with these classes and still am not really, because I never had it at any schools I went to. I know that it is offered for early childhood students and it is called PYP. Middle school kids it is called MYP. When you get to high school, it is called DP. IB classes are for more enriched learners and connect issues talked about in class to all around the world. The other thing they told us that I thought was interesting was that Shaker has about 130 clubs/organizations students can do to get involved. That is A LOT! I don't even think my high school had half of that many clubs/organizations.
The first classroom I sat in on was an engineering class taught by Dr. Marencik. This class was an elective and it was an application course. The classroom was a lot different than a middle school. There was a lot of diversity in the school/classrooms and there weren't a lot of visual aids like there would be in a middle school. The only thing I noticed is that he had a "Learning Objectives" board where he had papers about the project they were currently doing. The students that take this class do group projects all year based on application and being able to create things. When I was there, they were working on a dwelling project. They were to create a dwelling and then make a 3D module. The project was very researched based and then they would build. This allows the kids to be open minded. For example, I saw two kids trying to build a dwelling in outer space. The kids get graded on their logbook, participation, presentation, the physical project, and their final paper. The teacher said in the final paper he likes quality over quantity. Like Mayfield, before we went into a classroom we had to address a question we had. I asked, "what makes a good teacher?" In this class, I could tell the teacher made the students feel comfortable because they weren't afraid to approach him. He also walked around to every table to check up.
In the second classroom, I was in a Social Issues class, but I only got to stay for 15 minutes. It was a very laid back classroom setting. The students sat around in kind of a "U" shape at tables while the teacher was in the middle. At the beginning of the class, they discussed an introduction to a book they started reading. The kids were very open. They talked about obesity and how their are social issues in the food corporation. What makes her a good teacher? She had great open discussions, she challenged the students while involving them well, and it seemed like the kids respected her.