Bring Out The Best: Hellman's Light Mayo

    7:15am The students start to settle down as the morning announcements come on. Some of them talk through it, but this doesn't seem to be a big deal. 

    7:30am Mr. Mayo gets up and takes command of the classroom; AP Physics is about to begin. Before getting into the material he engages the classroom by asking how everyone is doing. Then, he notices a lot of empty seats in the front of his class while many of his students are hiding in the back. He tells the class that he needs those seats filled and gives them time to come towards the front. Those that don't voluntarily move get told which seats they have to move to. He is polite and jokes with the students during this process. He starts off his lesson by pointing the class towards his shirt (he seems to always be wearing some funny and relevant graphic t-shirt) and then uses it as a springboard to jump into his lesson. 

    7:45am After a brief introduction of the material he proceeds to tie the current material to what they covered in the prior week. He asks very directed questions to help guide the class develop the connection between the lectures and is really good at managing the wait-time. After a bit of silence and having looked across the room, he either rephrases the question or asks a new to help the students go in the right direction.Whether a students answer was right or wrong he provides positive reinforcement. 

    This is a typical morning in Mr. Mayo's classroom at Coral Gables Senior High. He has been teaching for many years and currently teaches a variety of classes consisting of AP Physics, IB Physics, AP Calculus, and computer programming. Unfortunately, I have been unable to observe any of his calculus classes, however I do not believe his teaching style would change much from class to class; only the content would change. He chooses to teach by primarily using a "white board" app on his smart board and by engaging the class. He writes down the critical concepts on the board and draws pictures of the content whenever appropriate. He makes sure to tie in the concepts they are learning in class to real world applications. For example they were talking about how we knew the Earth was around 4.5 billion years old which is because of the half-life of uranium. A couple of minutes later, as they're talking about other elements of the periodic table, he mentions how in the past people wanted to learn how to turn lead to gold (alchemy) which we currently know how to do. This lead to a class discussion of why the sticks in lead pencils are referred to as lead. After clearing up some misconceptions he reels the class back from their tangent and continues with the lesson.

    Overall, I think his teaching style is effective, especially for such a difficult class. He tries to keep the engaged through anecdotes, jokes, and goal-directed questions. As an instructor, I can relate to how difficult it may be to use wait-time, as sometimes I end up answering my own questions out of a panic or to save time. In my job, as I only work with four students at a time, I am also able to employ differentiated instruction in order to best teach my students, however given his class size of around 20 students and the nature of the class, this technique isn't really required. Regardless Mr. Mayo manages to keep things light in such a heavy course and has the students best interests in mind.