Group notes from tuesday 10-22-13

Three scenes of good teaching (group)
Mr. Escalante shows examples of being a good / bad  teacher in the following scenes

SCENE 1- Bad Yet Good Teaching. (Andrew)
This scene took place on school grounds not in the classroom, the leader of the group was in a fight and not winning, Angel sees this fight and runs out to join and back his friend up. While on his way out to help his friend Jaime grabs him and holds him back with struggle coming from angel trying to break free. Jaime then proceeds to tell the students to go get help and grab another teacher. Escalante breaks the rules of the educational system by intervening in the fight going against teacher code, yet shows his good teaching by helping Angel not get involved in any trouble. You can really tell he wants the best from his students in this scene, basically showing and letting Angel know that he can do better than to stoop to that level.

SCENE 2-Word Problems, Good Teaching. (Annika)
This scene took place in the classroom, Jaime asks the class to read the board aloud getting students to participate. The word problem uses students names and how many girlfriends they have making fun of them for more student interactions. As soon as the class started reading aloud the principle and another teacher enter the room, Angel had followed in as well and the class as a whole says, "laaaaaatteeee, late" Escalante tells them to calm down and try to solve the problem on the board asking multiple people to step up and speak out, 99% of the students didn't answer it correctly until Ana walks in the door and explains what the words on the board were trying to say and answers the word problem correctly. As soon as she walked in Jaime smiled and said, "Glad to have you back" and then proceeds to tell the class how it's not that they're stupid, but they don't know how to learn it yet. This shows good teaching in that it gives students a new challenge with personal connection.

SCENE 3- Apple Scene. Good Teaching (Megan)
This scene took place in the classroom , the whole class was in their seats and they are making fun of Mr. Escalante having a chef apron and hat on. He holds up his butcher knife and an apple and slams it down on the cutting board getting the whole classes attention. He then walks around putting different slices and parts of the apples on each students desk and asked them what they had. Some answered with joking answers saying that they have a "core" and an "apple" and others answered with fractions, Ana answered with a percentage, trying to get the class to engage in what percent or fraction of the apple that they have. This is good teaching in that he actively participated in the class activity and got the class to participate as well, he really tries to get his students to engage and see that math really isn't that hard if you think about it, it just comes to you.