Personal Narrative: My Experience At Northside High School

I completed my placement hours at Northside High School. The population of the school is four hundred and seventy students. Of those four hundred and seventy students enrolled at Northside, 95% are White, 2% are Black, 2% are Hispanic, and 1% is Other. The percentage of students identified as living below the poverty index is 33%. Northside had eight class periods a day, which meant each class period was around forty minutes. Northside allowed their students to bring backpacks, have a ten-minute break after second period, and eat lunch in the cafeteria without their fifth period teacher present in the cafeteria. I noticed most of the students brought their lunches and were very well dressed. Most of the students from Northside seem to come

Hughes teach a variety of literature. The students covered To Kill a Mockingbird, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, and “An Author to Her Book.” Most the class was spent analyzing literature, I wondered when the students received grammar instruction. I am currently enrolled in Pedagogical Grammar and the one concept that the class focuses on is teaching grammar in the context of literature. I asked Mrs. Hughes when she taught her grammar instruction and she replied that the standards no longer allowed time for it, unless it was during the paper writing process. Mrs. Hughes held her students to a high standard, especially the Pre A.P. students. She would remind them repeatedly that in the eleventh grade the students would be completing A.P. work instead of Pre A.P. work. Overall, Mrs. Hughes’s classroom had set rules that almost every student abided

Hughes had little to no behavioral issues while I was in her classroom. I asked her how she created such an effective classroom management strategy. She informed me that she established certain rules and expectations in the beginning of the semester. She never went into detail about her class rules, besides no cellphones and no food or drink unless it was water. I noticed very quickly the established roles in the classroom. During the Pre A.P. class periods, Mrs. Hughes instruction was more student-centered. While she did lecture a little while each day, she also encouraged discussion and usually the students would carry most of the discussions. The English 10 classes were slightly different. Mrs. Hughes had a more teacher-centered form of instruction. The students usually noted that they were “bored” or saw the literature as “pointless.” The experiences in Mrs. Hughes classroom varied from