Debbie's First Class: Second Visit

September 3, 2009
First & Second Classes: Due to more problems the previous day (9/2/2009), I had arranged for Allen Comer to help Debbie as often as he could, making two community college students for Debbie’s students. Kyu and I were attending as well, so altogether there were five adults in class. This appeared to improve the class instruction with more of us available to individually help the students. Also, the trouble-maker (Josh), had been expelled and was not there to disrupt the class either. The effects of both of these situations contributed to giving the students a much richer experience, meaning the students appeared to enjoy themselves during the learning process, as well as make more progress on their games. Although personalized attention usually helps to increase student engagement and knowledge acquisition, the situation in both of Debbie’s classes improved more than you would expect from just the addition of this condition. I theorize that the explanation for this has to do with the multi-cultural (not just multi-racial) aspect of Debbie’s class in comparison to the others I’ve observed. The students’ backgrounds have more diversity than I have seen so far. Consequently the communication for instruction becomes much more difficult. Individual instruction would then be much more successful than class instruction. Debbie also thought the age of the 8th graders as opposed to the 6th graders could also be a factor. I agree with that assessment, as well.