Our last two classes were outside field assignments to observer a teacher and student intern in their natural environment – the art classroom. My first observation was a high school class here in a wealthier district. The teacher was a ten year veteran of the art program and she had seen it grown progressively in size over her tenure. The school had added a second teacher to cover the ceramics, graphic design and art club responsibilities and he had been teaching there the last two years. I observed three classes starting with the very basic art class where the students were doing fairly simple assignments to an advanced art class where most of the students were creating oil paintings. The classes diminished in size as the difficulty rose. I really liked the teacher in terms of her personality and laid-back style at first but saw that the students took advantage of that and didn’t seem that engaged by her or the work. It seemed too easy and she seemed to let them socialize at their will. At one point a student who had a can of Monster drink that he had chugged placed it on the work table in front of me and crushed it with his head. The teacher didn’t say anything. I went ahead and got around the classes and engaged with the students a lot. I even got in a bit of teaching myself. I’m not sure this was what I was supposed to do but the teacher was out of the room and a student had a specific question. He asked me how to draw water in a pool. I sat down and we drew together and talked about the physics of water and really tried to break down how water flowed, how it appeared in a pool, how it was a volume but was not opaque, how solid surfaces underneath it were affected optically by it, etc,. It was great experience and the student even stayed during his lunch to figure it out with me. In this first observation I really felt that I could jump right in and teach. I observed things I’d change for sure in terms of curriculum. I’d definitely make it more demanding. I think this would do two things. It’d make it more crucial that the students got right into working when they came into the room and it’d make it a necessity for me to be there to help them and answer their questions. I think for a veteran teacher, the difficulty of assignments might get easier as they get older and their energy level starts to go down. I noticed she seemed tired after the three classes and she had three more to go that day. These classes clear out and then a new group of students come in right away all within five minutes. Overall the observation was a benefit for me and gave me a lot of excitement to start in my own room.