Kenwood School - Jacquelyn Williams - 2.5 hours
Mrs. Williams is out of class today; the class has a substitute named Mrs. Allen. Even with a sub the students have been nothing but respectful towards her. They’re a bit more excited than when with Mrs. Williams but I assume that’s just because of a different teacher, not out of disrespect.
The students have just come back from a field trip from Connect Concert seeing the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. They are given a few minutes to talk about the trip and then are instructed to silently read. If they don’t have a book they must put their head down on their desk and sit quietly. I think this can be a good incentive for kids to read as sitting there doesn’t look like fun.
The students are released to get ready for lunch in “squads”, each of which is a group of desks. One squad is four desks, another is six desks and then there is two squads of ten desks. The classroom is a bit crowded with thirty students in total. The walls have a lot of decoration such as paper-mache space planets, the alphabet in two places and work from the kids. Mrs. Williams has kept bouncing exercise-like balls with small pegs at the bottom in her classroom.
Students have taken a longer lunch and recess than I had anticipated today, an hour and fifteen minutes. Likely this has happened because of Mrs. Williams having to take a sudden leave earlier in the day and not having enough time to set up a lesson plan for Mrs. Allen.
Students are being given the option to start their reflection piece for their field trip they took earlier today. As a story Mrs. Williams has assigned for the sub to read to them, they write about their day. Mrs. Williams, typically, has the students use sign language to ask what they need to get up for (such as water, bathroom, tissue, etc.).
Mrs. Allen has a tender and patient way of disciplining the students. She waits patiently until they are ready and if it takes too long, respectfully lets them know that she is ready to start. At the end of story time the students begin to put their chairs on top of their desks before they go to put on their winter gear.