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Scenario C: Natalie Haywood's Secondary Literature Class
- Natalie’s room was like most rooms in the English wing of her high school: on one side was a cement block wall with windows; throughout the room, desks with attached chairs were arranged neatly in long rows; and in the front of the room, stood the teacher’s desk, with a white board hung behind it. Mounted on one wall was a single bulletin board that Natalie had decorated at the beginning of the year. Two bookshelves were angled together in one corner of the room; a few wooden chairs next to them were meant to suggest a reading center. Natalie had stocked the shelves with books she thought her students would enjoy, but few had used the center.
- One afternoon Natalie was writing on the board and explaining the subtleties of plot to her senior literature class. She heard a disturbance in the back corner of room and turned around to look down each row. A student in the back put her head down on her desk, hiding from view behind the student in front of her.
- Natalie moved to the podium and faced the class to lead a discussion. She asked a question and waited for a student response. When no one volunteered, she called on Kaitlan, who was sitting in the front and center of the room. “Let’s discuss Kaitlan’s comment. Does anyone else have an idea to share?” she asked. Her question was met with blank looks, so she continued with her next question, calling on Jess, then Yuri, and finally Carmen.
- After a few minutes of questions and answers, Alex started squirming in his chair and tapping his foot. Because he was always getting up and moving around, Natalie had placed him in the middle of the class to keep an eye on him. Alex’s foot tapping stopped when he started tossing his pencil from hand to hand. He frequently dropped the pencil on the floor, and each time one of the four students sitting next to him would pick it up and toss it back to him. His constant movement continued until class ended.
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