My Third Day

My third day was on February 8th. Once again, I was in Ms. Johns's class with Anna. Instead of grammar, the class was going over the Progressive Era. At first, I could not remember this time period, but it was basically the same as the "Roaring Twenties."

After she went over the basics of the period, the class broke into groups and were assigned a section of the reading. Each group had to underline importance sentences, phrases, or words they did not understand. I was assigned to work with a group of three boys. I had them volunteer to read their section out loud, and was happy that everyone did so willingly. Usually, you have to pick a student to read out loud. They did the assignment perfectly, but it was hard for them to single out important sentences. To them, most of the sentences were important. I could identify with their problem. It's hard for me to pick apart things, because even the supporting sentences contribute to the big picture.

Ms. Johns then had each group talk about what they thought was important, and any words they did not understand. She wrote all the words each group said on a large paper for future reference. This portion of class took the longest, and went till the end of class. When Anna and I were preparing to leave, Ms. Johns asked us how everything went. She also informed me that she wanted me with the group of three boys, because of her relationship with one. They were all bright students, but one of the boys just did not like her, and would not work if she was present. I was surprised; each student was very nice and did the assignment without need for any prompting or keeping on task. She did not tell me which boy it was, and I kind of glad she didn't. In my group's presentation about Girl, Interrupted, we discussed how knowing about a person's mental illness might cause us to prescribe behaviors to him or her before we know the individual. Now, this situation has nothing to do with mental illness, but I liked not knowing which student had the issue with Ms. Johns because I did not want to unconsciously label them and view them any different than the other students.

Overall, I enjoyed the review of the twenties and seeing a group of students eagerly do an assignment and learn new vocabulary.