Cross Students Try Hand As Teachers

Instead of English educator Akimi Nelken being at the head of her Wilbur Cross High School classroom, a trio of students took a turn leading the day’s lessons.

That was the scene this past Wednesday at Wilbur Cross in a first-floor classroom during a new Seminar In Education course for high schoolers aspiring to be educators. 

This school year Cross, Hillhouse High School, and Metropolitan Business Academy introduced an Educator Pathway for students to learn about what it takes to be an educator and consider it as a career path.

At Cross, Nelken brought Southern Connecticut State University’s (SCSU) Seminar in Education course to Cross students for the first time. The students get high school and college credits to help fulfill education prerequisites. 

This work is part of the district’s​“grow your own” initiative that aims to prepare students with interest in teaching and public education jobs. Click here to read about Metro’s class. 

The project tasked students with applying what they’ve learned about trauma-informed education and restorative practices in crafting a 30 – 40 minute lesson for the class on a topic of their choice. They also had the option to revise a recent lesson they’ve experienced in any class or pick a class subject for a specific grade and design a lesson for it. 

Before passing the floor to the class teachers for the next hour, Nelken reminded students to put their phones away, take their headphones out, and to engage and give their attention to the student presenters.

Amirah ​“AJ” Young, Jacqueline Fulton, and Janae Nelson prepared their lesson by getting laptops for the class. The trio focused on culturally responsive and student-led teaching practices while learning about cultural dancing. 

The group explained that culturally responsive teaching has the goal of helping others to improve their knowledge about other cultures. 

“How are we feeling today guys? Thumbs up, sideways, down?” AJ began while demonstrating each hand movement to the class for a check-in. The class signaled varying feelings in the air. 

The trio then got the class warmed up with a circle. The students played the hand-clapping game known as ​“concentration,” sharing their names with the class to a rhythmic beat. 

On a slide the trio shared the directions for the lesson’s activity, which was to read an article and watch a video in small groups.

The three teachers split the students into groups to learn about the Merengue, Egyptian Folk, and West African folk dances. Each teacher worked with one group. 

After reading articles about the dances, the groups listed what they learned on poster paper. 

Fulton’s group learned about the Merengue. The students noted down that the dance originated in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The group formed a circle as students reread details of the article to note on the poster. 

On a poster the group described Merengue as a partner dance made up of a series of side steps. 

When posters were complete, the students joined outside the classroom in the hallway for a gallery walk through the other groups’ findings. They used sticky notes to pose questions or comments for the details of the dances. 

The final ten minutes of the class involved an end circle asking the class to reflect on what the presenters did well and what could be improved. 

Students complimented the trio’s choice of an interesting topic, good energy, and gallery walk which allowed them to learn more. They suggested having more video examples of the dances and having printouts of articles so students don’t have to read off one group laptop. 

Next year students can continue on in the teacher-development pathway by taking SCSU-credited courses in psychology and ​“teachers, schools and societies.” The education pathway curriculum was written by Hillhouse, Cross, and Metro educators.

So far this year, Nelken said her students have gained a better understanding of a teacher’s perspective and what the job entiails. She got help from her teaching assistant senior Harmony Cruz-Bustamante with co-planning lessons and assessments for the year.

Nelken aims to show her students that ​“being a teacher has been such a beautiful and rewarding experience.” In her class she gets to show students that teaching can be fun and intellectually challenging, she said, while also helping her high schoolers to understand their own school experience through a wider lens. The course has helped her grow as an educator, said Nelken, who has taught for 14 years.