First day In Oakton School

Our field experience started today. We were ready at 7:15 am to go to Oakton school. There the staff was kind and politely. The welcome was warm. Teacher Christopher Fowler received us with a box of Dunkin Donuts. Then the tour started. It took  all the morning. Classes starts at 8:00 am. Students in their classrooms honor the flag and make a patriotic prayer. Then they are told some daily annoucements for instance about the special events they have.

We met the interim principal Daniel Meier and some of the assistants principal.

I was amazed with all the facilities they have. The auditorium is just as big as the theater of my city. It has a capacity of 1176 people. The library is a comfortable space with fiction an nonfiction books, magazines, newpapers and computers. The art classes are marvelous. They have band, choral and orquestra classes, professional photography (even with black room and studio) and graphic desing. The school have plenty of prizes, medals and awards in atlethics, music, academy. We visited most of the classrooms. I was suprised with a special class that combine engineering, design and Maths. Students were using lasers, 3D printer.... Wow!!! We met also the police officer and the security staff. 

We visited some science, history and world languages classrooms. students were excited. I saw some spanish classes for few minutes and I felt students behave like my students when a native english speaker come to my class and speak in English. They don't want to speak and they show a blue face like they don't understand when talking in the language they are learning.

In the school schedule is not connected with the days of the week. There are just two changes (two different days): Burgundy and Gold (their represenative colors). Burgundy has a set of classes and Gold other. Everyday they have Couger time, is a period of 45 minutes, in which students choose a class to go. This time allows students to be responsible with the time, to use effectively the time, to make wise decision about where to go. The idea is to create the responsibility sense and the independence in students. Freshmen normally choose classes to waste their time, but as they become mature they use this time to do homeworks, group projects, ask questions to the teacher about topics they aren't doing well, in general to save time after school in homeworks.

I had the opportunity to go to my Partner teacher's class after lunch. It was good experience. Dr. Cruz has creative writing class. I really liked the way she introduced the class to write an essay about Volunteering. She started talking about the word volunteer, students participated answering if the word was a noun, a verb, an adjective or a preposition. Then they defined what Volunteer is and the teacher asked them their opinions about volunteering as a compulsory action to get the diploma in Virginia. Differents opinions came up. With this Dr. Cruz made students to have an argument and Counterargument brainstorming. Then Students thought about a thesis for an essay. Something innovative for me is Ms. Cruz uses a document camera projector to show students how to write correctly, where to write, correct words, etc.

It was a shame I couldn't see the end of the class because we arranged to be at 2:30 pm at the teachers' lounge. But I can't wait for tomorrow to see the whole English class.