Terry Hunter is a middle school teacher at Oak Canyon Middle School in Lindon, UT. He has been teaching middle school for over 30 years. I asked my dad, also a middle school teacher, how someone could last so long at that level. His response, "I work with rowdy rotten 7th and 8th graders every day, and I love every one of them."
As per assignment, I visited Mr. Hunter's classroom for a couple hours to observe his teaching style. I took a few notes and had a good time. :)
Notes:
After passing back their latest test, Mr. Hunter asked students to raise their hands according to the scores that he called out. "32, 31, 30, 29, 28, 27..." Then he had students stand up, "26, 25, 24... You that scored 26 and below failed."
- The kids didn't seem to mind the public display of their performance. Maybe it was because they were used to it. I'm betting that some below par kids would try to improve so that they weren't publicly embarrassed, however, some excelling students may not want to appear too smart in fear of losing cool-ness. "Bunch of smarties," one girl said to her friend who scored 32/32. "I am not," the girl responded as she sat down.
"10 seconds to be seated. 10, 9, 8, etc."
"You have one minute to put your folders/calculator/etc away and return to you seats. 15 seconds! 10, 9, 8, 7..."
-It was nice to know what was expected of the kids and how much time that they had to be seated.
Mr. Hunter had a lanyard microphone that projected his voice over a set of speakers mounted on the walls. It was really cool. Cheap, easy, effective.
There was cool stuff all over the classroom. Astronaut posters, model planes, flags, rockets, trusses, bridges, etc.
Activity: Build a cylinder 3" high and 1" wide using a piece of paper and glue. We tested them in class two days later to see how much weight each could hold and it's efficiency rating.
Follow up questions after a stress test activity. "How many of you are better technologists and engineers now? Technology is the science of improving life."
Job Shadow: Kids take a day off and shadow someone in the work force, usually a parent or relative.
Discipline: Students carry with them a Blue Sheet that records their behavior. Teachers mark their blue sheet when they break rules, are disrespectful, tardy, etc. The Blue Sheet is then calculated in with the students finally grade at the end of each quarter.
- I asked several of the students about their Blue Sheets and what they were for. Most of them could only give me partial answers and said that they were overall confused to their purpose. The system seems to be effective, however, because no student wanted to have their sheet filled out. Mr. Hunter didn't give warnings before marking their sheets, so the rules that they had broken must have been known expectations with zero tolerance.
Mood shift. Mr. Hunter was more irritable with his second period than his first. The kids were a little more rowdy and didn't perform nearly as well. Mr. Hunter was quicker to fill out their Blue Sheets and gave the class two 'strikes.'
-Again, the students had no idea what the strikes were for, just that they were bad?
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