You may have noticed a teacher sitting in the back of one of your classrooms or your teacher was gone for a day or you even had a teacher follow you for the day. So what is this all about? For the last few weeks, OA teachers and students have been participating in a shadow program in which one teacher follows one student around to each of their classrooms to see what the average daily student experience is.
But what exactly is this shadow program and what is looking to accomplish? I spoke with Ms. McLaughlin who helped to organize it to get some answers. “What we are trying to do is find more continuity across departments,” she says, “in my conversations with Mrs. Cavanaugh we were on the same page that a lot of students, and teachers particularly, feel like they have a lot of isolated experiences in each classroom.” She goes on to say, “teachers have a certain understanding of who their students are in their class so to then see them elsewhere and to see them maybe really shine in something that you didn’t even know they were interested in, it creates more of an understand and sense of community.” They also wanted teachers to be, “more realistic or empathetic and understanding of what it’s like to go through a whole school day.”
It seems as though their goal was accomplished. From the feedback she has received from participating teachers she says “the teachers have loved it which makes me very happy and they keep saying ‘I’m so tired, I don’t know how they do that all day’ so I think it has been very humanizing and its a more compassionate understanding that teachers have now.” There was also a fear that, “students may have thought it would be more awkward or felt that it would be weird,” but in reality, “it was very seamless.”
The program created a lot of talk in classrooms and friend groups. But how many people actually participated? They ended up having about 20 “matches” or pairings of students and teachers, so in total 40 participants. In the early discussions it was, “only going to [be] 10 matches, then we felt like 20 would be just a better net experience.” Ms. McLaughlin says, “we chose 20 [teachers] just for the first round, but I think about 40 signed up” and “about 60 kids” signed up as well. When I asked her if one class produced the most volunteers, she responded by saying, “its a pretty even spread, I think it’s slightly heavier on Juniors and Seniors, I think just by kind of just the nature of it. There’s at least three Freshman and at least three Sophomores.” I asked the coordinator if she was surprised by the amount of interest and she said “I was surprised that more kids signed up than teachers because I was kind of just expecting to have to pull teeth to get kids to want to do it. Not that the teachers weren’t interested, but just turn out wise I was pleasantly surprised.” If you missed out this time, you’re in luck! This was just the first round and because of the interest they are “looking to do another round some time in May.”
So what are they planning on doing with their findings after conducting the research? “The plan is after everyone has gone, all of the teachers and all of the students will meet one day after school for about an hour to just kind of debrief the findings of what the experience was like. And then, [Ms. McLaughlin is] going to share that out at the faculty meeting in anticipation of the second round and [she] talked a little bit with the superintendent, Dr. Cabral, and [she] think[s] she wants to now expand it into the other schools in the district.” It seems as though there are big plans for expansion of the program. “I think the plan is to debrief and then hopefully expand to make it a regular part of the culture,” says Ms. McLaughlin, “I don’t know if [Dr. Cabral] wants to do middle school teachers shadowing middle school students, but I’m even thinking it would be cool to do a middle school student shadowing a high school student.”
I also spoke to students and teachers who participated in the program to learn about their experiences. Mrs. Sweeney, “thought it was very beneficial…half the time [she] never leave[s] the first floor,” so she thought “it was great to see the diversity of the classes and [she] learned a lot.” She also says she, “forgot how tiring it was. It was kind of an exhausting day. [Her] student had two tests back to back so [she] also learned that that’s a challenging day just to have, and they were science and math so to go from one right after the other is tough.” But overall she, “was in really good classes.” She goes on to say, “I was in a lot of AP classes and that’s a different world than my world.”
Ms. Sweeney’s two main takeaways were the importance of the rotating schedule and the importance of breaks. “It made me appreciate the rotating schedule because I remember just how bad it would be as a teacher to have the same class last block every day, so that when you’re really exhausted 6th block every day that’s not the same block every day.” She also now understands what the rotating schedule means for the lunch schedule, “I had second lunch which made me appreciate having first lunch because, you know, you get into something and then you have drop it and go to lunch and then try to get back into it. So, from the students perspective, I can see why its good to not have the same class during lunch block every day; but from a teachers perspective if you’re always doing second lunch it can be tough when you just start to get them going and you get interrupted.”
Her second takeaway was that student’s don’t get a lot of break time. As a teacher, she gets 2 “prep periods” throughout the day. Which are two blocks that she gets without a class so she can work on other things like lesson plans or grading work. Mrs. Sweeney acknowledged that, “there wasn’t a lot of regrouping time throughout the day.” She said that, “there were just no breaks, I mean there was advisory and lunch,” but even lunch isn’t really a break because of the stress of getting food. Her student fortunately, “ate lunch in the library and that was more low-key, she had brought a lunch so she was more prepared.” But if she had had to go to the cafeteria, “that would not have been a break either.” So often times, “the only break is advisory which is short .” Because she did not have time, “where [she] was free and it’s longer than the 22 minutes that you have for lunch to go to the bathroom or get something to eat” she was very tired.
Overall, she thought it was very interesting to see how other classes run. “Im really glad I did it just to see how other classes operate,” says Mrs. Sweeney. She learned that, “the make up of a class really drives a class.” Meaning, that who you have in a class at what time of day really helps or hurts the flow of the class. Mrs. Sweeney ended by saying, “It was just more about understanding what a day in the life of a student is really about and you know there’s up and down and your constantly moving which we don’t do because we stay in our rooms and you guys come to us so it was really interesting to see that.”
Mr. Gotsell, who also shadowed a student for a day, agrees that there is not a lot of break time for students. “The biggest take away was how jam packed a student’s day really is. I had very little time to go to the restroom or fill up my water. It was also difficult adjusting from one subject to the next,” he said. At the end of the day he felt, “tired.” He, “started out with BC Calculus and it kept going from there. The only real down time I had was during the student’s community service block.” But, not every student has the luxury of a relaxing community service block. Most students don’t take community service because it isn’t available to their grade level or seniors couldn’t fit it into their schedules. And, what happens on a day when a student drops community service? Or their community service teacher has work for them?
He touched on the subject of lunch as well and how short it is. He realized that lunch isn’t really much of a break for students either because, “the time it takes to walk to the cafe, grab your lunch, and find a table really does add up.” He said that, “when students used to complain about how short lunch was, I always replied, ‘my lunch is just as short as yours.'” It seems that now he has changed his tune.
When asked if he thought participating in the program was helpful he said, “100 percent.” He believes, “every teacher should have the opportunity to shadow a student for the day.” In the end, he felt that he had learned a lot about what it’s like to be a student. Of course, he was a student once too. But he realized that, “sometimes we forget how much high school has changed since we were students.”
Melanie Yelle, who Mr. Gotsell shadowed, had a great experience on her end as well. “I think that Mr. Gotsell was able to see a perspective and experience classes that he would not have before. Although I did not talk with him that much I think it was really beneficial for him,” Melanie said.
I spoke to another student who participated as well, Ella Rivers. Though this was more of a learning experience for the teachers, the students seemed to learn a little bit about what a teacher goes through in a day. Ella was paired up with Ms. Hynes and she says, “Ms. Hynes is so sweet and all our conversations were very enlightening.” Rivers says, “I learned that as a teacher, it’s much harder than it seems to truly connect with the students, create a safe space, communicate, and teach the material in a way that reflects all the students different needs.” She continues that thought by saying, “Ms. Hynes described the struggle she has between trying to efficiently get through the curriculum and providing students with a classroom environment they can relax their minds and feel heard.” Which was very eye opening for Ella.
It seems as though the pairing had many good conversations throughout the day that benefitted both teacher and student. “When I was not busy working we would have conversations about what I am learning in my classes and furthermore how I manage my work etc…one conversation we had during my community service block was about how she, as a teacher, did not realize until she shadowed me how much our brains have to switch gears throughout the day,” Ella says. “She said something along the lines of ‘I am just in English land all day, it must be hard for students to switch gears so fast.'” said the student.
“I appreciated her acknowledgment that sometimes teachers have trouble understanding the full experience of their students outside of their own classroom,” Ella said about her experience. “I feel as though the shadowing experience was very beneficial, not only for the teacher, but for me too… I think the entire shadowing experience was both fun and educational for me and Ms. Hynes and I would definitely do it again if I had the chance!”