Alyssa DiTota
Professor Dalton
WFSS
16th October 2019
Observation Essay
It was Tuesday, October 2nd when I walked to City College earlier than I ever had before. It was about 7:30 am and I was on my way to observe Professor Brittany Zaya’s 8 am English 101 class. I was a bit nervous and so I made sure to get there early, hoping that I would have the chance to chat with her briefly and explain the premise of my assignment. When I first approached the classroom in the NAC building, I noticed there were only two or three students waiting for class to begin. At this point it was around 7:45 and I wondered if I would be observing an almost empty classroom. Professor Zayas had not arrived yet and so I chose to wait outside of the classroom, nervous that If I had entered too soon there would be an un-comfortability between me and the students waiting. I stood outside and watched the tired students trickle in one by one until 8 am hit. Professor Zayas showed up right at 8 am, I assumed she would want to quickly get set up as to not lose class time and so I kept our greeting short. She did not ask me any questions; I just thanked her and took a seat in the last row of the classroom towards the right side. I felt slightly tense as there was no explanation offered to the students about why I was there, but they didn’t seem to take notice. Class began shortly thereafter.
In total there were roughly about 15-20 students in the class. Rather small compared to some classes I have taken in the past. Professor Zayas began with a recap of the important dates her students should take note of. There was a lot of chatter happening between the students about a paper that I gathered was due the next class. Through the voices I learned it was a rough draft of an important paper they had been working on. I overheard rushed and frantic questions between the students as they compared essay lengths and thesis statements, trying to gage how their own papers would compare against each other’s.
After this introduction there was an activity that required the students to pair up in small groups. Professor Zayas hastily explained that she wanted the students to take turns telling the people in their groups a story without using any verbal sounds. It seemed that she didn’t explain the instructions thoroughly enough because many of the students became confused about what exactly they were supposed to be communicating to each other. After the instructions were reiterated there was still some reluctance amongst the students to partake in the activity. In my opinion, this wasn’t working out because the students had no introduction into the activity and didn’t seem to understand why they were doing it. Another reason might have been that it was very early in the morning and an activity such as this required a lot of energy. I heard several students expressing their confusion, including one that said, “I don’t know how to tell a story without speaking” and another lamenting that this activity was “Dumb Hard.” There were two young men sitting to my left who didn’t participate at all and instead made a pact to just tell each other a story and when it was time to share, they would reiterate what was verbally spoken to them. There was one group in the far-right corner that Professor Zayas was helping out, but she didn’t seem to go beyond that group.
As the class went on, the next plan of the lesson was to hand out a reading from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The students were asked to read it together and to discuss it as they were reading it in their small groups. She warned that the language was rather tricky. As the papers were being passed around, one of the boys that was sitting on my left side instinctively handed me a paper, but then questioned himself when he realized I wasn’t actually a part of the class. I accepted the paper, telling him that I was interested in reading it. We both awkwardly laughed and then I turned back to my computer to document the interaction in my field notes. The language of the paper was tricky, even I had a hard time understanding it. The students that were grouped on my right side did not even attempt to read the paper, let alone discuss it. They instead continued on with their comparisons of the rough draft. One of them was even writing it, having not finished it the night before. These students actively did not pay attention or contribute to discussions during class. On the far-left front of the classroom was a group of students who were diligently reading the excerpt and discussing it together. This group consistently put forth an effort to participate in class.
As the class continued, I noticed that all of these students were very young. No more than 20 years old if I had to guess. I am 24 and so I found myself viewing them as kids and even referred to them as such in my notes. Even though I am not much older than them. I definitely felt like an outsider and tried my best to keep to myself. The remainder of the class was spent watching a video of a debate on whether or not students’ minds are being harmed by text message lingo and whether or not it is killing the English language. During this discussion the students were much more engaged, including the group of troublesome students to my right. This is probably due to the fact that the students were able to relate to the topic. Also, as the students became more engaged the professor also had more fluidity in her discussions and seemed to become much more comfortable standing in front of them all.
As the class came to a close, Professor Zayas tied all of the activities of the day into a reference on what they had previously been working on. Due to this I was unsure how it all fit together, but the students responded well to it. The class ended with only a few students stopping to talk to the professor. I thanked her when it was my turn and explained the premise of the work I was doing, but she didn’t seem to be too interested in the details and I had class in 15 minutes, so I kept it short and went on my way.
