As the new year begins most people like to make a commitment to themselves to change and some of those things are losing weight, trying out for a sports team, reading more, and putting themselves out there more often, however, some of the changes Rialto High School AVID 12 and AP World History teacher Patrick Kimmons is making is in his classroom.
The changes that were made, as of the new year, are experimenting with new seating arrangements, making more time to make one on one tutoring, finding new ways to approach students with information, offering help with extra credit assignments, and using a new website that monitors how loud the classroom is and tells them to be quiet when too loud.
Kimmons shares, “I want to try out some things that could be beneficial to not only me but my students.” He also comments that he doesn’t know yet if he likes the seating arrangements and might change them because although he has a noise monitor it is still loud in his classroom.
When students came in on Friday, January 13, 2023, they were surprised to see the noise monitor on the screen mainly because the website used eyeballs that would bounce high if the monitor picked up any loud noise, lots of students found it funny and others found it strange. Senior Jerry Valdivia remarks, “It’s definitely weird and funny to see eyeballs bounce high, but it also fits Mr. Kimmons’ odd but friendly behavior.”
Going into the changed classroom, most of the students were happy mainly because of the new seating arrangement put into place. Senior Alan Rodriguez says, “I hope the new seating arrangement sticks for a long time because we were blessed to not have been given assigned seats so sitting next to someone I feel good with and sitting in a spot that I like makes all the difference when completing assignments or doing anything in that classroom.”
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I think this is a good way to quiet down the class.
The monitor was a good addition to the class and is fun to watch.
The noise monitor was a good idea for controlling the loud noise, but my class is too noisy, so he had to assign a seating chart. It can be funny when he is talking and trying to explain something and then the eyeballs shush him.
This is so typical of Mr. Kimmons.
It seemed like a good idea and like he really wanted to try it out but like 2 days later he stopped doing