Observing Mr. Pope During His Economics Class

oday I had the privilege of observing Mr. Pope during his Economics class. His students were on-task, engaged, and met every expectation he placed before them. One thing I think I can take away from his class is the way he addresses students. During the class, he did not raise his voice once, nor compete for the attention of the class. When a student was off task, rather than angrily confront them, he expressed concern, asking them if everything was all right. His tone was gentle, and I believe that is part of why students responded so obediently. Peers who have observed me have noted that I come off as stiff when lecturing, and angry when disciplining. Mr. Pope avoided the perception of anger by avoiding the consequence of discipline, and finding another was to accomplish compliance. Going forward, I’m going to give students an opportunity to correct misbehavior by drawing their attention to it while trying not to make it obvious …show more content…
One thing Mr. Pope did that I would have done differently was during his lesson on unemployment. He chose to include a number of slides that indicated unemployment broken up by race. As soon as I saw the slide, I thought that this might become an issue. One of Mr. Pope’s students soon started listing stereotypes as reasons for the data. The way Mr. Pope addressed this was to redirect the student to discuss the data, rather than the reasons for the data. How I would have handled this differently is based on my knowledge of my students. My first period class mature and scholarly compared to my third period class—even thought the former are Freshmen and the latter are Juniors. With my 3rd period class, I would have left any notation of race out of the discussion, knowing