Journal Week 1

The first day of school at Lincoln, for the secondary students, started with an assembly. This assembly was a time to welcome everyone back, inform them of the expectation for this school year, and to celebrate the seniors. Upon arriving to campus, we were greeted by loud horns and students running around in costumes and face paint. I later realized that these were seniors, which were identified by the color shirts. The seniors are set apart from the other student body. Though they have to wear uniforms, they can easily be spotted in any crowd. The underclassmen wear white, blue, and red Lincoln polo’s. The seniors on the other hand have purple and green Lincoln polo with the word “senior” on the sleeve.

Unlike many of the high schools in the US, the seniors celebrate being seniors on the first day of school. They have music, they dress up, signs are made, their mascot is in attendance, they paint their faces, there are balloons everywhere, and parents are taking pictures and recording. It felt like I was in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. It was a very interesting and unexpected moment for me.

After the assembly classes began. My CT had 4 classes for the day. The plan for today was for us to introduce the course (go over the syllabus), ourselves and to review their knowledge on the purpose of the physical fitness test and the different test involved. He reviewed the physical fitness test because he planned to start the school year by giving the students the physical fitness pre-test. The reason for this was because he wanted to give the students a baseline for improvement. They have struggled with the test in the past.

For the review of the physical fitness test he split the students into five groups, asked them a series of questions in which they discussed to figure out an answer as a group and then each group would present their answer to each question. Once everyone gave an answer Frans would make comments and elaborate if needed.

Other than introducing me and helping hand out the syllabi and materials, Frans did all the instruction for the first to classes. For the last 2 classes he gave me the opportunity to ask the students the questions and conduct the class discussion. The students were very responsive and stayed on task throughout the class. The only problem I foresee as of now is that the students are sometimes very talkative and also the language barrier. I do not speak enough Spanish to understand the students at all times.