A Mock Trial

Today started out in Darrell's World with a 9th grade engineering class. They were putting together circuits using bread boards, LED's, 555's, and restrictors. By the end of the class, I had a basic understanding of how to put them together and I would have loved to put one together, but they were short on materials, so maybe tomorrow. Due to the shortage of materials, people had to work together, but one girl expressed her negative feelings about working with other people. Darrell's response was that there are people in the world, so you have to be able to work with them. This is the first time I have noticed resistance toward group work. To exit Darrell's class, students must firmly shake his hand while making eye contact. If either piece is missing, he will send them to the end of the line to try again. Next, I went to my regular 8th grade math class with Dan. The first hour was devoted to Judo math. A very interesting event happened right after their SAT Question of the Day which occurs at the beginning of class. A girl raised her hand to go to the bathroom claiming it was an emergency. She even raised her empty bottle of Vitamin water to express the urgency. With hesitation, Dan let her go and then proceeded to ask the class to "Show their Obie." Obie is a fancy word that means their armbands or Judo Math gear. They concluded that the girl who left possibly went to get a friend's Obie so she would not be shamed for not bringing hers. When she walked into class, Dan said, "Show me your Obie" and she raised her arm which had one black belt and one yellow belt. The other black belt and white belt were missing. Dan asked her straight up if she had went to get someone else's Obie. She answered, "yes" and was completely embarrassed and disappointed in herself. A couple students in the class made comments about it and she began to cry. Dan didn't punish her, he simply had her return the armbands to their owner. I think he thought she got the lesson and didn't want to make her feel worse. If the students lose their Obie, they must buy them for $1 each. Today's material involved equations of lines in slope intercept form and standard form. No incredibly interesting ways of teaching today. Next I returned to the drama X block to watch them rehearse. Their play is about two brothers who get their ears pierced which is against the dress code at their super strict school. One boy gets suspended, while the other one gets a slap on the wrist. This is as far as they have gotten. After lunch, I returned to Dan's class to play with electromagnets. He explained that electromagnets can be found in the junk yard when they use the electromagnet to pick up cars, carry them to a new location, and drop them. He expressed the importance of having a electromagnet and not just a magnet because the electric part enables the magnet to be shut off. The kids worked with a nail, wire coiled around the nail, a battery, and switch to create an electromagnet. After P.E., I spent the rest of the afternoon with Bobby's humanities class. Today they were having a mock trial for Jack, a main character in the book Lord of the Flies. They spent the last three weeks reading the book and learning a basic background on trials. It was very interesting and they did a pretty good job for such a complex process. There was a jury, defense, prosecution, bailiff, judge, and witnesses. The picture at the right is of the mock trial. Just another example of the wonderful projects and interaction that happens at HTM.