Promoting Equity and Social Justice (Bath, England)

At Widcombe Infant School in Bath, England, equal opportunities are given to each student regardless of the circumstances that they find themselves in which are out of their control.  It is clear that the teachers take the time to know about each individual’s background and family life as well as any other contexts that play a part in a child’s education.  In general, the school, while maintaining a great reputation, takes students from the surrounding area and accommodates their needs as they come about.  In this way, they are not discriminating against any issues that arose early on in the child’s life, allowing everyone to be on equal ground in the school context of their lives.

One example of accommodating to ensure equal opportunities for all students revolves around one student’s family life.  His father came forward and said that he would encourage his son’s school work as best as he could, but that he could not read and write himself, so he would not be able to help complete homework with the student or read the required books with him at home.  In knowing this, the teachers then ensure that the student gets extra help during school time so that he has someone to read to him or read to because this is a crucial exercise in the reception (pre-school) class.  When they have to communicate with the student’s father at home, they talk on the telephone and keep him up to date verbally as opposed to doing so through notes or e-mails.  This is one way in a series of many that I have noticed at the school in which students are guaranteed an equal opportunity for the best education possible.

Spain/United States similarities and differences

Teaching in Spain is wonderful and I have been having an amazing time doing it. However, while I have seen many small differences between the education in Spain and ours, there are two things that have stood out. The primary difference that I have observed has had to do with student-teacher relations. In the United States, we are taught to call our teachers “Mr.” or “Mrs. /Miss” and only by their last names. This demonstrates respect and makes it clear from the beginning that teacher and student relationships have limits. Furthermore, most American students have also been taught, since childhood, that teachers are a major fountain of discipline away from home. This does not seem to be the case for students that go to public or charter schools in Spain (I do not include private schools because, from what I have seen, the teachers there are shown a great amount of respect from both students and parents). In these schools, the students call the teachers by their first name and treat them like friends. They make jokes at the teachers´ expense and make demands like they run the class and this is normal for the teachers. Furthermore, the parents’ don´t seem to have respect for the teachers either. In the school I was pre-pracing in, teachers had parent-teacher conferences almost every day and almost all the teachers dreaded these meetings. This was because most of the parents would come in to demand that the teacher give their son/daughter a better grade on a test, or for the semester, no matter if the child deserved the grade they got. One of the most unbelievable stories that I heard was that, there were a couple of parents that had brought in lawyers to analyze the exams that the students had failed, so they could assert that the grading was unfair. However, since the students had left more than half the exam unanswered, they could not do anything. After that, the teachers have to keep all the exams and work that the students do during the year as evidence in case parents try this stunt again.

Another difference that surprised me a lot was the amount of information students are required to learn from early on. Students are required to learn a second language from the moment they start school. Moreover, in history class the study of geography is obligatory and students are required to learn the names of all the countries, rivers, and mountains of the world. In my history class, I was taught extremely basic geography and was required only to learn the names of three or four river and mountains. Furthermore, my ten and eleven year old students were required to learn biology in English. But not just simple biology with basic vocabulary, no. They were required to learn all of the bodies systems (digestive, excretory, reproductive, nervous, etc.) with each organ and their function in a language that was foreign to them. This is extremely difficult for them because it is a completely new subject taught in a language that they are just learning. In the United States, I did not start learning biology in such depth until I was thirteen years old. It is amazing to me the demands they give these students and the fact that they are completely able to comply with these demands. This gives me the feeling that, in the United States, they underestimate what and how much information can be taught to the younger students and this is something that needs to be evaluated and fixed.

  However, there were also some similarities in teaching instruction that I thought were interesting. For examples, the classroom layout for both countries is the same. Students sit in groups of four or five until they are thirteen or fourteen years old, which is when they start sitting more in rows. This observation interested me and I started wondering the reason for this. Does this change in classroom structure at that age increase classroom learning? Another similarity that I thought was interesting was that standards were also measured in the same way. Most teachers taught by the book and gave a lot of importance to exams. I consider this format of teaching to be erroneous and it needs to be changed here as well as in Spain.

  

Classroom Management in Australia

I found that classroom management in my Australian school placement was very similar to what I have seen in my placements in Boston. When the students come into the classroom each morning they are expected to hang their coats, lunches, and bags up outside and then sit down in the front of the room on the rug. The kids know the routine very well, and it's very clear that my CT has stressed the importance of coming in quietly from the beginning of the year. If students are misbehaving at this time my CT will just ask them nicely to calm down, but if the problem persists she usually asks the student to move up in front of her.

My second grade classroom had a motto that my CT always reminded the students of: "Choose the right." It could be applied to a lot of things, but much of the time it was applied to the choices that students made about their own behavior. If they were misbehaving my CT would remind them to choose the right and correct their behavior. The motto also applied to when the kids would choose a spot to sit on the front rug. My CT or the full prac would remind them to choose the right and pick a place to sit where they would not be distracted by something or someone else. This seemed to work pretty well, as the students would remind each other to choose the right and took a lot of pride in themselves when they knew they made the right decision.

If problems persisted in my classroom, my CT would often pull the misbehaving student aside and have a talk with them. She used a very calm tone and often asked the student why they were behaving the way they were or how they were feeling. A few kids in my class had ADHD, and I always noticed that my CT could quickly turn around their misbehavior when she added that she knew they were trying really hard. Just knowing that their teaching had faith in them seemed to make a huge difference in the behavior of a lot of the second graders in my class.

These techniques are ones that I know will be very useful in the future when I continue my student teaching in Boston. I hope that I can incorporate my CT's calm demeanor and her ability to relate to students while still holding their respect into my own classroom management techniques as a teacher.

Aussie Culture in the Classroom

Australian culture was definitely very prominent in my classroom at South Coogee Public School. The school is situated about two blocks from a beach, and as the weather is seasonally much warmer than in Boston, only classrooms are inside. The school takes advantage of the beautiful Australian weather by having all of the hallways outside and by having students eat lunch and snack outside and have gym class outside. Much more learning occurred outdoors there than at home in the U.S. because being outside and being active is a very important part of Australian culture.

 

In addition the culture being reflected in the layout of the school, the subjects taught also showed Aussie culture. Australians have a fierce love of sport and intense pride in their country, so naturally the Olympics were a very big deal in Australia. My class spent about five or six weeks learning everything about the Olympics, from when it started to where it has been held to what the different events are. They also learned about important Australian athletes like Cathy Freeman, and they followed to games closely to count how many medals Australia had won. I thought it was really fun that my teacher designed a whole unit around the Olympics, because the students could really get involved and relate to everything they were learning as they were watching it all happen right in front of them! The enthusiasm about the Olympics in my classroom was a very accurate microcosm of what was happening everywhere in Australia.

 

In addition to the Olympics, my students learned about a lot of other famous Australians. Among them was Brett Whiteley, an artist. They studied a lot of his paintings, which were basically all of uniquely Australian things like the lyrebird or the Sydney Opera House. It was great to see their interpretations of his art, especially of the opera house which is basically in their own backyard.

 

All of the units and lessons incorporating Australian culture were probably my favorite during my student teaching experience because they gave me a very unique experience that I would not get anywhere else. It was definitely an enjoyable insight into both the country and the Australian school system.

A Typical Day of Teaching in Australia

A typical day of teaching in my second grade Aussie classroom was usually pretty eventful. We would start out each day with the huge class (thirty-two kids) on the front rug. My CT was also acting as deputy principal of the school, so every Thursday she would be absent from the classroom and the full-time student teacher would take over. Either my CT or the full prac would lead the class in a good morning routine, where attendance was taken and they usually played a little game with grammar. A fun example was that each student had to give an adjective of how they were feeling when their name was called for attendance. A few of the students got creative, with adjectives like "fierce" and "contemplative" coming out of these little seven-year-olds' mouths.

 

Next the class would move on to reading groups. The class was split into leveled groups that were labeled by color, and each group was given a different task for the day. Sometimes it would be work on reading comprehension, sometimes it would be expositions, and sometimes it would be just reading to the teacher. Most days I got to work with Peter and Will, two students who were big misbehavers and who were in the lowest leveled group. This was my favorite thing to do during reading groups, because it was great to see how motivated they were to learn when reading. They had a real interest in making sure they understood the words and passages that we used. Working with them was definitely a highlight of my student teaching experience.

 

Next was "Crunch n' Sip", when the students would get a healthy snack and listen to each other give short speeches. Each day of the week five students had the opportunity to share with the class about a certain topic. Some weeks they had to share about a set topic and sometimes they got to share whatever they wanted. I was very impressed by the adorable speeches some of these second graders gave to the class.

 

Next it was time for "maths". The kids would do a variety of things, like worksheets or math games. This was the most difficult time of the day for me. The students were getting restless and it was so close to lunch and recess. A lot of the time the students would be off task, and especially when the entire class got wound up they were very hard to control. I was always glad when the lunch bell went off and I knew that the kids would get to go run around outside for an hour. During lunch I usually went to the faculty lounge and talked with the other Australian teachers. We had some interesting conversations about the differences between American and Australian classrooms, and they were very intrigued by my experiences at home.

 

When the students came back from lunch, we would work on science or art. Some days we studied famous artists and tried to replicate their work, and sometimes we worked on technology and science. A fun example of that was when the students got to create and then make their own toy.

 

After a long day it would finally be time for the kids to head home. We would take them downstairs to meet their parents and send them off before another exhausting day!