FieldPost 3

Beachwood High School (Day 1)

 

             

Beachwood High School is the next school I visited and did some observation hours at under two teachers. Mrs. Buddenhagen and Mrs. Ogilvy, the two history teachers at BHS, taught a range of classes: AP Psychology, World Studies, U.S. History, Government, and Sociology.

 

A little background of Beachwood is that it is an average sized suburban public high school with approximately 600 students. Also, BHS is very diverse in terms of culture and socioeconomic status. BHS gets a lot of students in the district that are Jewish. This high school is technologically advanced throughout the school. All the students get to rent out a mini laptop at the beginning of the year for the whole year or they have the option to use their own. There is no dress code or uniform, so the students can wear whatever they want with some exceptions. The library there is very small compared to my high school, Reynoldsburg High School. Most of the students that attend BHS belong to the upper-middle and upper class. Here is my first of many observations I make in Mrs. Buddenahagen's class.

 

Observations: Mrs. Buddenhagen's 11th/12th grade AP Psychology class

• when I first walked into her class I honestly thought it was her freshman or sophomore class, the students looked so young. She told me they were all juniors and seniors and I was surprised to the fullest. I felt old for a second.
• Mrs. B, as the students call her, is a very eccentric teacher. She shows passion in teaching and shows her interest in history.
• students seemed to be very focus for the couple weeks because the AP test is coming soon, so Mrs. B is doing a good job in prepping them.
• she gives them essay prompts and guides her students through them to show them how to properly answer an AP essay.
• looking at the classroom, it looked very bland. there were few posters and it didn't look exciting at all, but that didn't matter because Mrs. B was a fun teacher.
• the students sit at tables with 4 sitting at each, which encouraged discussion and let the students help with each other if they got stuck on a problem.

Observations: Mrs. B's 9th grade World Studies class

• the students watched an interview with Oprah interviewing Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, on his experiences and was part documentary too
• Mrs. B gave the students insight on how life during WWII and Nazi Concentration Camps was like for the Jewish population
• she told them how the genocide of millions of Jews was the most terrifying thing of that time period
• she would constantly ask her students to think about how would you feel and react if you went through this. The students seemed to feel much sorrow and wouldn't know how to feel, they just it knew it would be terrible and frightful.

In conclusion, Mrs. Buddenhagen has a very interesting class full of culturally diverse students. Mrs. B like the other teachers I have observed show no sign of using the banking method and has much discussion in her classroom and incorporates many different kinds of teaching styles.