East Side High School Classroom Observation

I observed at East Side High School under Marcus Lewis who is the head band director at the school. My first observation with Mr. Lewis began with us sitting down and assessing the current state of his band program. He warned me right away that his vision for the band program differed from his administration’s vision. This led to a lot of frustration for the teacher’s in the music program and not a very ideal environment for students to learn. The environment is quite stressful for the teachers and students, and the students are the direct reflection of their environment. With all of the being said, Mr. Lewis is a great person and very intelligent teacher. He just chooses to go through the motions of each class period and it’s very hard to determine what his actual goal is from observing his classes.

As seen in the above image, Mr. Lewis’s classroom has many characteristics in common with most high school band rooms. The room is just a large square with no separate rooms except for one office and two bathrooms. This creates a very cluttered look because all of the instruments have to be stored somewhere because most students are unable to take their instruments home. So one of the first things you see is the stacks of instruments in the back corner of the band hall. Normally, this would

One is just random instruments grouped together taking up the front area of the classroom. They serve no immediate purpose because no students use these instruments. They just sit in the front of the class taking up the entire area. The next problematic area is the music storage area in the far right corner of the classroom. There are several filing cabinets with music in them with no apparent organizational scheme. In front of this, two tables are setup with piles of instructional books and loose pieces of music. Again, there is no kind of apparent organizational scheme to the clutter on these