Pamela's First Class Cycle: First Visit

November 6, 2009
When I arrived at Pamela’s class in Columbia Middle School, Kyu & Laura were already there, helping the students. I apologized to her for being late … went to her regular room instead of the library computer lab. The room is set up with the computers all around the walls. So the students face the walls instead of the teacher. Pamela’s class had been working on Frogger for several days. In comparison to some of the other teacher’s first class cycle, her class seemed to be doing very well. Most of the students had the worksheet populated with background agents, as well as a cursor-controlled frog, generated trucks, logs & some turtles. Most of them were working on programming collision, transport, drowning, or winning/losing behaviors. Unfortunately, before I had a chance to help many students, the school had a fire drill. The fire drill took up most of the class time, so when we returned to the classroom, the only thing the students were able to do, was to log out.

During the fire drill, I took the opportunity to talk to Pamela about what was happening at Columbia & her perceptions of the program. She felt unsupported which was expected, as there had been some miscommunication about start dates. I assured her that we were committed to supporting her & asked if there was anything I could do right then to help her. She asked for some information on Sokoban & I promised I would email it to her within a few days.

Pamela’s class schedule is unique in that she teaches every other day … this means that one week, she teaches on Tuesday & Thursday, & the following week on Monday, Wednesday & Friday. Her class period is 50 minutes long & there are about 30 students in the class.