I walk into Monticello High School with an air of confidence after the wonderful ending to my first meeting with the teacher of the class that I will be working in. The desolate hallways are a paradise of silence and emptiness. No students pushing past each other in order to get to class on time, no books falling to the floor in the desperate struggle to make it to the end of the school day, no slamming lockers followed by random curse words and no - In an instant the sound of the alarm-like school bell changes the almost serene atmosphere. The herd of students enters the previously empty school building filling it with sounds of laughter and the latest gossip. The students look like busy worker ants darting from place to place before their first class. They stop by their lockers, then the vending machines to eat the breakfast that they should have eaten at home, and finally they congregate outside the classrooms socializing with friends. Before the Advanced Algebra 1 class begins, I sit in the back of the room watching the 27 freshmen enter one by one. They take their seats and begin working on their "Do Now" assignment for the morning. They are reviewing how to solve systems of equations. After finishing, they begin to bombard the teacher with homework questions from the night before. She eagerly answers each one and begins her lecture on dividing exponents. The students did not notice me at all, the mere shadow in the back of the room. But I noticed them, as I intently observed each one and the work that they were doing. I wanted to get to know this group of students, the way they learned, how they acted and their individual personalities. It was not until I was about to leave and the teacher introduced me that they began to take notice of me. The mention of lessons involving technology caused a blank stare to slowly appear on each face. I can tell that I will have to work hard to reach these students.
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