Abby Whitwam

ED 220-02
Lab Log 1
February 4, 2016
Getting to Know the Territory - Holland High
I sat in the front office of Holland High School on January 29th feeling a lot of emotions.
Mostly, I felt overwhelmed, particularly because of the size of the school. The Holland High
building is beautiful. I learned from my mentor teacher that a bond issue passed a little over three
years ago, and renovations have just been completed. Most of the building was redone, my
mentor teacher Ms. Behrendt told me. The most impressive remodeling done was to the cafeteria
which isn't enclosed, but rather is completely open. It is the first thing you see when you leave
the office and enter the halls of Holland High. Ms. Behrendt told me this cafeteria is multi
purposeful. Students dont only go there for lunch, but they will have classes held there because
it is so easy to spread out, grab a table, and do group work. It has even become a popular hangout
spot for the students. Ms. Behrendt said you will always see students there, anytime of day.
As I think about some of the things we have been learning in class, this layout for a
cafeteria is a place for students to discover their identity. Looking at the groups of students
hanging around, it is obvious they are clustered together according to friends or interests. Friend
groups can determine the identity of many adolescents, as Erikson discovered, and I could
actually see this process at work within the first ten minutes of being in Holland High. The open
cafeteria being used as a classroom also helps target some different learning techniques of
students. Instead of remaining in a classroom, lecturing, the teachers can bring their class to the
cafeteria to encourage group centered activities which might help students who learn

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interpersonally and even kinetically because the students have more space to move around and
participate in active learning.
Walking through the halls and spending time in a classroom gave me the opportunity to
learn a lot about the students in the school, merely from observing them. It was quite obvious to
me, from the moment I entered the high school office, that there is a large portion of Spanish
speaking students. The secretaries in the front office spoke Spanish, I know this because they
spoke in Spanish to each other, to students, and to parents on the phone. In Ms. Behrendt's eighth
grade reading class, there were only eight students, and half of them spoke Spanish. They speak
English as well, in fact they spoke it the majority of the time, but every now and then, the four
students would say a sentence or two in Spanish to one another. This was interesting to see
because we have learned about diversity in class, especially as it relates to conducting class
instruction and realizing the different sources of influences on intelligence, such as environment
and heredity.
The last observation that was interesting and prevalent to me was the level of
development of the students in Ms. Behrent's class. I was told before school started that this class
is different from a normal English class. The eighth graders in the room can only read at a third
grade level. They have unintentionally fooled teachers and schools up until now because their
reading was proficient enough for them to pass each grade. But as I observed and worked with
the students, I could quickly see the slower pace, the little comprehension, and the lack of tone
the students demonstrated. From reading the textbook, I learned that development is predictable,
there are universals that every kid experiences. On my first day in a field placement, I saw an
active example of varying rates in development. Progression in reading and comprehension for

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example should be at a much higher level once a student is in high school, but Ms. Behrendt's
class has experienced a delay in their development.