Differences and Similarities

Describe two differences and two similarities between teaching abroad and teaching in America. Consider teaching styles, classroom layout, schedules, collaboration between teachers, student requirements, etc.

Before arriving in Ecuador, I never took the time to research the school where I would be teaching. I was so worried about connecting with my host family and learning Spanish that I never searched the school on the Internet. While this is unlike me, I am so glad I approached the situation as I did. Upon arriving at Colegio Menor San Franciso de Quito, I was awe struck by the beauty of this school. It is set outside of Quito in a suburban neighborhood, Cumbayá. The school ranges from early childhood to high school and is upper class. The entire school is taught in English except for time dedicated to Spanish.

On our first day we were able to meet with the principle of the primary school and were assigned our cooperating teachers. I was going to work in a 4^th grade classroom with a teacher named, Gaby Cocios. We also took a tour of the school and were able to meet different teachers, assistants, and staff around the campus. One of the biggest differences I noticed between teaching in the United States and in a private school in Ecuador is the availability of support. Last semester I taught in the Thomas Edison School in Brighton and their lack of resources was very evident. I always expected the same or worse to happen in the school I was going to teach at in Ecuador but I was wrong. The amount of resources that are available to the teachers at Colegio Menor is outstanding. I suppose a reason is because the students need to pay a hefty tuition to attend the school. During our tour we were brought to the Teacher Resource Room, which is lined with maps, posters, books, colored pencils, movies, and anything else you can think of. Each grade has a section in the Teacher Resource Room and teachers are able to come in at any time to check out any resources they need. From my experience last semester, I learned the importance of having an endless supply of materials because the Thomas Edison did not even have crayons to give the Kindergarteners during Science class. On top of this, Colegio Menor also has a room dedicated to the sciences that is crowded with different experiments. I really believe students are able to learn more when there is more space, supplies, and support from the school.

My classroom in Colegio Menor with Gaby also shows the importance of space and availability of materials. Gaby has a separate location in the room that is completely dedicated to reading. Depending on what she is teaching each week she changes the books that are on display in the classroom. Each teacher is also given a website that they are required to keep up-to-date. Because of this the students are never able to say they did not receive assignments because they were not in school. It is the job of the teacher to upload every worksheet, workbook page, and homework assignment to the web. I know some teachers choose to do this in the United States but I have never heard of it being a requirement. I feel that it is beneficial for the students because they are able to go online if they have any doubts. It is helpful because it becomes the responsibility of the student instead of the teacher.

Another major difference between Colegio Menor and the schools I have taught at in the United States is they do not use a letter grade system. After a certain time period the teachers have individual meetings with the student’s parents and let them know about their son or daughter’s progress. Each teacher keeps a number grade in his or her grade book but never lets the student see this. The student is either doing good, normal, or poor work. This type of grading seems fair at first glance but it is important that students who are doing extremely well are rewarded for their efforts and I think this goes unnoticed with a grading system like this. On top of this a student who is doing poorly may feel that they are doing normal work. While a letter and number grade encourage competitiveness, it is valuable for the students to see how they are truly doing in school.

My first day at Colegio Menor was better than I imagined. The faculty and staff are so welcoming and the availability of resources makes me truly excited for my semester here! I cannot wait to get up and teach my first lesson with my students but I do hope they do not ask me to speak in Spanish because it is still terrible!

Aboriginal Performance at St.Ignatius Riverview

National Reconciliation Day is on May 26 in Australia and it is a day for healing for the Indigenous peoples of Australia who were moved out of their communities when the Europeans settled in Australia. This day fell on a school day for me and I was fortunate enough to watch a very interesting assembly. The school has a number of Aboriginal boys because they give out scholarships every year to provide these boys with an education. The Aboriginal boys from the high school worked together with the younger Aboriginal boys to choreograph a performance that told a story of the indigenous animals to Australia. The whole upper and lower school gathered in the auditorium to watch this performance. A guest speaker was brought in to talk about the Day of Reconciliation and a small prayer service was conducted. The boys ended the ceremony by playing Aboriginal instruments.

I though this assembly was such a great thing for the school to do. I learned so much about the "Stolen Generation" of the indigenous people of Australia just from this assembly and I think it was great for the whole school to experience. One of the most interesting things about it was that the Aboriginal boys were responsible for coming up with their own performance and practicing it. They also took turns saying little speeches about how their families were affected and it was very personal and moving to hear. It was very reflective of the culture of Australia and the racism that still is present in Australia. The country is definitely making progress in removing this racism by raising awareness and information but they still have a lot of progress to make.

Drama Class in St.Ignatius Riverview

RivRiverview School in Sydney is a Private Catholic School that is one of the most competitive, and most expensive, schools to get into in the Sydney area. It offers exceptional learning opportunities to the students including field trips, extra music training, and intense sports training. While I was there, I got to observe many of the elective classes that the students got to take such as art, library, computers, drama, band, and music. Each one of these classes was very different than the way I have seen elective or "specials" done in the US. The most interesting of these classes that I saw was the drama class. The teacher was doing a lesson on improvisation was doing activities with the students to get them thinking creatively in drama. The first activity he started with having the boys in four corners of the room. One boy from a corner would come in the middle of the class and start the activity by acting out a profession. When the teacher said freeze, a boy from the next corner would come out and assume the exact position that the boy who froze was in. He then would use that position to start acting out another position. No boy could go twice until all of the boys in their corner had gone. The biggest challenge that the teacher had with the boys was the they somehow turned everything into something violent. It was interesting to see this happen and I had never been in an all boys school before so it got be thinking about how this activity would have gone if it was done in an all girls class. The next activity was playing a game called "Things". This game was conducted by having everyone stand in a circle and the teacher would say a phrase such as "Things you would never say to your teacher" and when the students had an idea they would step into the circle and respond to the phrase. The students had to think on their feet and try and come up with humorous responses to the phrases that were provided. The boys did very well with this but it was very obvious which students were very confident and which students were very shy. The teacher had to scaffold for certain students by coming up with phrases that were easier or more common to respond to. This was very different than the schools that I have seen in the BPS because many schools do not have the time or flexibility to conduct classes like this. Many classroom teachers do what they can to include drama into their teaching but I have never seen an actual class dedicated to drama. I think it is an excellent way to not only further passions of children who may be interested in drama but also to develop confidence in all of the students in being in front of their classmates and using their creative minds in a different way than they do in music or art. The assessment is based on effort and improvement which creates a safe environment for the students. However, this is not a possible class that can be conducted in any school. This school is fortunate enough to have enough room to have a drama room filled with costumes and props. I would love to take some of the activities that I observed in lessons in drama and implement them into my classroom one day.

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Observed English Lessons at the Pioneer Primary School

I mainly observed English lessons since my main CT is an English teacher.

Singapore is very heavily dependent on the books that they use. Students would be carrying a minimum of 3 books for each subject: a textbook, an activity book, and a homework book. The English lessons would be taught according to the textbook. In Singapore, the textbooks are carefully written and updated for each grade level. The higher streamed classrooms would receive the higher level textbook, A and the lower streamed classrooms would receive B. There would be more materials and information in A than in B.

My CT would first begin the lesson by showing a video that is related to the lesson Topic. She would then teach from her PowerPoints. Sometimes, she would dive right into the textbook and teach from it. Then, she would assign worksheets from the activity book for the students to complete in class. If all of the students are near complete, she would review the worksheet with the whole class. Sometimes, she would have the students create a writing piece in the format of a different writing style such as letters, emails, biographies, fiction, newspaper articles, etc. Most of the lessons observed were similar as described.

This type of teaching style that I observed was similar compared to those used to teach high school students. Students would face the teachers and the teachers would start teaching the content for the topic. After the teaching session, the teacher would assign group work or individual work. The teaching styles used in elementary schools in the States are quite different compared to the ones used in Singapore. There would usually be more group work and more interactive learning. There would be plenty of discussion between the students and teacher; however, I feel that in Singapore, it was more explicit teaching and the students were assigned to complete their assigned work in their activity book.

I feel that in the States, teachers usually use discussions and questions to assess whether the students have acquired the concept that taught; however, in Singapore, the activity book is used to assess the students. If the students are able to complete their worksheets without many problems, then they are learning the materials taught.

I feel that the classroom layout plays an important part to the teaching style. In the elementary schools in the States, I have seen desks in groups of 4 or 6. It promotes group work and interactive learning. When the desks are placed in columns, facing the teacher, it allows the students to give the teacher their full attention. It promotes more individual work than group work.

One challenge that my CT faced teaching was having the students speak in proper English. Students would sometimes answer in Singlish, which is a colloquial Singaporean English. Since it is an English class, my CT would always correct the students by repeating the response in proper English or she would ask the students to respond in proper English. She would always have to remind the students that they are in English class, and thus they had to speak English properly. Some examples would be when a student asked to use the restroom, s/he would say, “Can use toilet?” My teacher would thus ask the student to ask in proper English, “May I use the restroom?”

Another challenge that she faced that was similar to the challenge above. When the students write essays, their essays usually contain a lot of grammatical and sentence structure mistakes. Usually, when students first learn how to write essays and other writing styles, they usually write how the sentence would sound in their head, or how they would say it. Since students speak Singlish, their writing pieces would usually have many grammatical mistakes. Some students would learn from them, but some would have the same repeated mistakes. It takes Singaporean students a bit longer to produce a grammatically-correct sentence.

There would always be challenges in teaching and there isn’t one correct teaching style. Teaching varies across cultures and I am glad that I was able to observe the education system in Singapore.

Different Teachers, Different Management (Singapore)

Sorry for the sudden bombardment of posts!

Classroom management in Singapore (or at least in the classes that I have seen) finds its difficulty in the amount of students in a classroom. During my first pre-practicum in the US, there were 18 students in the classroom. In my second pre-practicum, I had 22 students in the classroom. I already felt the added difficulty with just four more students. In Singapore, each classroom has around 30-40 students. A general class is normally 40 students but because of pull-out programs, 20 or so students may leave during math or English. With so many students in classroom, I really understand the necessity of “having eyes everywhere.” Even with two teachers in the room, it is hard to keep an eye on each student. Since my students sit in rows, you can imagine that the students in the last few rows are actually quite far from the front of the room, where the teacher and the board is. It is not too hard for these students in the back to fool around during the lesson and teachers need to remind ourselves to pay attention to the back of the room. These students in the back may also fall behind because the teacher is in the front doing the work on the visualizer and it is easy for the students in the back to be distracted.

Although the large class size is a challenge, my experience with classroom management in Singapore is something I consider positive because of the respect students seem to have for teachers. While I did not hear about any official classroom rules, it seems like students are expected to know proper behavior and they are generally disciplined in the classroom. When a teacher walks into a classroom for the first time, the students stand up and say, “Good morning/Good afternoon, Miss. ___/Mr. ___.” Then they would bow their heads to you and you reply to them and tell them to be seated. This took a while for me to get used to. I think I was still awkward about it towards the end. Thirty students bowing to you is something I do not think I will ever experience again. The times that students do get rowdy or misbehave, teachers usually give them verbal reminders of how they should be acting and that is usually enough to solve the problem. There are times when the verbal discipline can get a bit harsh (by American standards). For example, once when the students were getting dismissed class by class from the auditorium, they were ordered to be quiet and a teacher had said, “Why do I hear talking? Your feet are not so stupid that you need your mouth to tell them to move.” However, the students seem immune to this and take it as they would any other form of discipline.

When verbal reminders are not enough or when students misbehave on a larger scale, parents are involved. I remember an instance where students were skipping their remedial, supplementary, or enrichment classes and going to an arcade instead. These three students changed out of their school uniforms after their regular classes and changed into casual clothes to go to the arcade. When the school had found out about this, the teacher called each student’s parents and informed them of the situation. The teacher also informed the parent that the students would be punished by having to stand against a wall for the first fifteen minutes of their lunch break. The teacher asked the parents if it was an appropriate punishment and all the parents agreed. I had asked my CT if there were any instances of caning (hitting students). My CT replied it is very rare and used only as a very extreme form of discipline. She said that she has never seen it happen in the school and general teachers are not allowed to hit students. If caning is being considered as a punishment, the school will definitely ask the parents if they agree to it. My CT also informed me that there is something called public caning for secondary students, when students are caned in the auditorium in front of everyone else.

It is difficult to give a general description of the classroom management for Singapore because, just like in the US, different teachers have different management techniques. I was lucky enough to be able to work with two different teachers and it reminded me that I should not take what I see to represent all of Singapore but just the particular classroom that I was in. For example, the two teachers I worked with had different ways of dealing with students who did not do their work. The math teacher would write down the names of the students who had not done their homework and put it on the visualizer. She would say that these are the students who I did not receive the homework from and then she would proceed to ask the individual students why they have not handed it in. The English teacher I worked with seemed to have a lot of faith in the honor system. She would just ask students, “Who did not read? Who did not do the work?” Students would raise their hands and she would make a mental note but it did not seem to be that big of a deal. (Most students did their work anyway.) She trusted the students to be in honest. The students in each class were well-adjusted to the technique their teacher was using.

The math teacher had the students in different groups that each had leaders. When work is assigned, once each member of the group has finished his or her work, the leader collects the work and races to get it into the work bins. Whichever group wins this race ggets 10 points added to a chart. At the end of the unit, the group with the most points gets a prize. This is similar to some positive reinforcement techniques I have seen in the US. I think that, in the end, classroom management is really more a representation of each teacher’s own values rather than a representation of a whole culture. Each teacher manages their own classroom the way they find the most effective and the students adjust accordingly. There will be similarities and differences across all cultures.