Reflections from my day shadowing a student

For the past two years, a group of education-focused organizations and foundations has coordinated an international “Shadow a Student” challenge to help spur school leaders to spend a full school day with one of their students in order to see what school is like from a student’s perspective.  Though I try to spend a little bit of time every day in a classroom or two or eating lunch in the cafeteria with students, last year’s “challenge” got me to follow a couple of our elementary campus students for their full school days and it was a helpful learning experience for me.  This year I tagged along for a day last week with one of our middle schoolers, Anna, to see what a typical school day is like for a student at the middle campus.  I posted some moments, photos, and videos during the day on my Facebook page, but here are some more detailed reflections on my experience.

I started my day by catching the #32 MARTA bus near my home and taking it to the middle campus.  Nearly 80% of ANCS students live within two miles of one of our campuses and many of them walk, bike, or take public transportation, so I did the same.  From arrival on through morning meeting, I was greeted by a teacher with a high five (she’s there every morning for students and visitors), was prompted to talk with another student about what he did over the long holiday weekend, took part in a full campus conga line, and recited the poem “In Lak’Ech” in unison with all students and teachers just as we do each Wednesday at morning meeting.  Looking back, I’m struck by just how deliberate our middle campus team is about building connections between teachers and students as well as between students, a critical piece of any learning environment but especially so during the years of young adolescence.

For the first class of the day, Anna and I stayed in the gym for PE where students were continuing their work on individual fitness goals projects.  Each student had developed a goal related to his or her own fitness and was collaborating with both the teacher and an “accountability partner” to create and follow a plan to reach the goal.  Anna’s goal is to be able to hold a free-standing handstand—no easy feat!  We jumped rope and did yoga to improve our core strength and did push ups to strengthen our arms and shoulders, then did a few handstand holds braced by the wall (there’s even video evidence–check that Facebook link!).  Other students practiced for their goals too, like making a three-point basket consistently or running a mile in under seven minutes.  Giving students choice in their learning and a structured process to help guide them to goals relevant to them definitely resulted in high levels of student engagement.

At lunch, I enjoyed the wide-ranging conversation over our meals (we hit on topics from the Civil War to the NBA to chicken sausage) and at recess time I joined Anna and her friends in a computer game called bonk.io, a game at which I not surprisingly ended up being terrible.  I noted that there seemed to be plenty of time to eat a meal at a normal pace, talk, and take a break, and the students I talked to said they appreciated this.

In the afternoon, during Humanities class I talked with students about a book they’d recently finished (I Am Malala) and in Math/Science/Technology class I took an assessment about calculating rates of attrition and reproduction in an animal sanctuary. When I asked students if they could explain what they’d been learning and why it seemed important, their answers reflected to me that their teachers had clearly laid out the big ideas and direction of their units of study and students drew meaning from their work beyond just “because the teacher told me to do it”.

Though it takes a bit of coordination to spend a full day away from the rest of my job to shadow a student, I’ve come to appreciate just how important and useful it is to do so.  You learn a lot more about what school is like by immersing yourself in the entirety of a school day rather than visiting a classroom here and there.  I’m already thinking about where and who I’ll shadow the next time!