Mitchell Tandy

EDUC 350 001

Case Study 2
The second student that I interviewed for my case studies was a 7 th grade
boy whose name Ill withhold to respect the privacy of the student. The student has
lived in Colorado for the past 10 years, when he moved from Wisconsin with his
family, including his younger brother who is currently 8 years old. The student
excels in classwork and picks up new concepts incredibly quickly, but he is well
known for a kind of trademark set of unique behaviors and mannerisms. One of
these is that he states he has scientifically tested and shown that he thinks better
with his shoes off, and as a result, he rarely wears shoes in class. He plays bass
clarinet in the school band and enjoys some anime/manga, but I dont recall seeing
him at the anime club meeting that I visited, so it might be just a personal interest
rather than a social one. His favorite manga (at the moment) is Full Metal
Alchemist, a series of comics that ran from 2001 to 2010. I had seen the original
animated adaptation of the comic, but not a newer adaptation that was released a
couple years ago, and he calmly recommended that the newer adaptation has some
advantages over the previous one.
Perhaps what surprised me the most was that what is shown above was all
the personal information we talked about in the interview. He was much more
interested in talking about his thoughts and perspective on education, which I
wasnt expecting to be as well-defined and mature as it was. The student stated
that he didnt like school primarily due to the pacing. Even in the advanced classes,
such as 7th grade algebra, he learns and internalizes new concepts at such a faster
rate than his peers that he ends up bored or annoyed by what is redundant

instruction for him. As a result, his favorite thing that teachers do is when they
accommodate for individual students needs, allowing him to not be restricted by
the pace of the rest of the class. In fact, he reiterated this when I asked what
advice he could give me as I pursue teaching: aim for students to progress at their
individual paces. It was so parallel to the differentiation discussions we were having
in EDUC 350 that I was unsure of whether or not he had seen my class notes
beforehand! As one might expect, his least favorite thing that teachers do is assign
homework without in-class worktime when the in-class instruction drags on, when
he could have used that time to complete the assignment.
Academically, the student is a genius, and that sometimes causes issues.
Throughout the semester, there were many times during instruction when the
student would ask questions that were beyond the understanding of the rest of the
class, which put the teacher in an interesting situation: do I answer the question and
confuse the rest of the class, or do I tell the student to hold off on that question until
I can answer it individually (if I get the chance to)? Fortunately, for the days I was
there, I could quietly walk over and quickly answer those questions without
interrupting the rest of the class pace. Other times, he would finish assignments so
quickly that it would become a behavior issue. The student would wander around
the classroom and distract other students from completing the assignment. A
couple times, I actually successfully tried a management technique where I caught
him wandering and offered to show him an advanced look at the concept the class
was working on. Hopefully, I can formalize this in my future lessons to properly
challenge students in a similar situation. Regarding his learning style, I have no
doubt in my mind that hes in the same group as me: Abstract Sequential. The
students intuitive understanding of abstract ideas and their implications, as well as

a reliance on individual mental problem-solving strategies, really points in this

direction.