Tracy's First Class

September 24, 2009
Alex & I arrived at Pueblo around 11am. It only took us a few minutes to find Trinity Lutheran School, even with a wrong stop at the public school across the street. And even though we rang the bell at the wrong door, the staff was expecting us, and we were greeted warmly.

The woman who greeted us led us to Tracy’s small classroom, which was also her office. We learned later that her classroom was small because the contractor forgot to incorporate a technology lab into the plans. Consequently Tracy had either a very small classroom in her office, or a computer lab had been squeezed into a large office space. The contractor’s error had a positive effect in that Tracy’s class size could not ever be more than 15. The small class size was advantageous to the students, because they all received more personal attention. Another advantage was the U-shape the computers were arranged in. From almost every seat, the large screen on the far wall was visible.

Anyway, Tracy, Alex & I chatted for awhile about the project, and then Alex & I went to get lunch until Tracy’s class started at 12:45pm. When Alex & I returned to the classroom, students were already arriving. The atmosphere was upbeat, as the students powered up their computers and chatted with each other. Tracy used the large screen on the wall to project instructions for her lessons to the students. Today, besides the 15 students, Tracy, Brandon (CC student assistant), Alex and myself, an outside photographer was also taking photos of the students.

Tracy had started this project class on Monday, September 21. Most of Tracy’s classes were 1 hour long, and this was no exception. During this class, the students were working on several different sections of the Frogger game. Most of them were working on finishing the car/truck behavior programming and then moving on to the transport behavior. A couple students were behind due to missing a class, and others began the class with the transport behavior of the frog on top of the log. During class the students talked to each other, usually to help each other with designing different parts of the game. Tracy, Brandon, Alex and myself also assisted the students when they raised their hands for help. Although the atmosphere was casual, when Tracy required their attention, the students did not take too much time to quiet down and pay attention.

Throughout the hour, the instruction went smoothly until near the end when all the students had reached the piece where they needed to program the frog & log to communicate with each other in order to facilitate the frog being transported on top of the log. A technical issue arose on some of the computers. In these instances the programming was correctly completed, but when the log moved, the frog slipped off into the river. Alex decided that a better programming method should be used to rectify this problem.

When the class time ended, the students reluctantly turned off their computers and left the class noisily. While Tracy was teaching her next class, Alex & I took the opportunity to talk to the principal. He had nothing but good things to say about Tracy and her work in their school. Since Trinity Lutheran is a private school, they had more latitude in their curriculum design and presentation options. Tracy was the only technology teacher and she taught all the students from the primary grades to 8th grade. Consequently, Tracy develops a history with the students, so that she is aware of student progress and learning styles. So Tracy’s knowledge of her students, small class size and time length of the individual classes combine to give a learning advantage to these students. Proof of the advantages can be seen in the accomplishments of Trinity Lutheran students when they graduate into high school. Their skills, especially in computer operations, are substantially better, not only of their peers, but even better than some of the local high school seniors. Trinity Lutheran School has a reputation within Pueblo for producing knowledgeable and quality students.