Ahh today was a much better day in headland! Migraine was gone, hopefully never to return, and I felt well enough to involve myself in my classrooms to a degree that I'm happy with. My second grade kiddos were rambunctious but awesome as always (there's a six year old that was moved up to the 7 year old class and he's almost surpassing everyone in his third day... its incredible to see!); some of these kids have thought processes and minds that amaze me! After working with them on reading and math, they went to lunch and I had my Kazakh quesadilla (the school lunch for the day... more like a strange vegetable and cheese burrito wrapped in a non-sweet crepe. I loved it though! First time I've seen broccoli since coming here!) and discussed my new host family with Keri and her mentor teacher who teaches the youngest. Wasn't intending to be gossip, just as it isn't now, we were just trying to get a feel for what's going on at home.
The situation is somewhat strange as we're learning more about their home life; dad is in New Orleans and referred to by first name by the kids, but mom still refers to him as her husband... the teachers don't know what's going on and how that affects the kids, so its kind of a mystery. Also, we learned of their coming to the school and what took place. The mom alerted the school of her eldest's arrival and his need for special education, so the school hired a specialist to work with him. On the first day of school, she arrived with both boys and said that her youngest was ready for his 5th grade class. She said he never had an IEP back in New Orleans and was almost offended by their questions. I mean this in no slight whatsoever, but her youngest is quite noticeably severely developmentally delayed and in need of special services, especially speech therapy, but it seems as if their mother is almost in a little denial of that fact. I can imagine having two sons with special needs, no spouse (we think) and a very high-paying, powerful job must be taxing and not as she expected... I don't know, we're speculating quite a bit as to how that plays into Alexander's education.
After lunch I went to English and helped students write descriptive paragraphs on the animal of their choice. Also I spoke to the teacher about standards since I heard a lot of conversations about Environmental standards during yesterday's staff meeting. He handed me a huge book about QSI's standards as an institution and explained that it was very prescriptive. It tells you exactly what you need to teach, how they want you to teach it, what materials to use down to the edition of the text, and even which problems in the text are to be done. I was shocked at how constrictive it was. Mr. Cloyed said that the experienced teachers (who know how they like to teach and what they spend time on) complain about this curriculum, while the younger teachers are thankful for the framework seeing as they haven't begun to build a routine and curriculum of their own. I find this interesting because I began to think; I wonder if QSI does this intentionally. They probably expect more novice teachers to be younger and more willing to move and travel internationally, while they probably expect more expert teachers to be happily settled into a comfortable school district where their families and themselves have no want or need to go abroad. This may be speculation, but it makes sense; although it is not typical here. Some of the teachers are relatively young but most have teaching experience and spouse, not to mention children that have been moving with them between countries. Anyway, the curriculum is very set-in-stone and emphasizes rote learning; lots of out of book work and worksheets provided by texts. Leaves very little room for creativity. I started asking myself when I got here: could I work in an international school like this in another country?! For these kids, absolutely. The different cultural dynamics and learning based on that are incredible and I've fallen in love with it. But do I want to be under this curriculum umbrella with little to no room for my own ideas? And can I be that far away from my family and feel somewhat isolated from my host society? I don't think so... I kind of want to explore possible international schools in the U.S., if they exist. Either that or I'll just find a very culturally diverse city to teach in in the Pacific Northwest :)
Grading is also different at QSI. Students either meet A mastery, B mastery, or are P "in progress". Their rubric basically says that any student receiving a P is not failing but the teacher will focus on that subject with the student until they reach at least B level. Those are the only three grades, besides W for withdrawal. Quite interesting, not sure how I feel about it yet...
After English came science with my middle school/high school class. It once again reemphasized their importance on rote learning. The students every day have a section of the text to read, write down the vocabulary words and define them, answer the section review questions and fill out a worksheet. Yup. Awesome. They have a chapter review assignment on Friday that I'm hoping won't take too long because I want to plan a fun review game... can anyone say Jeopardy?! :) it was fine, I wanted to discuss the chapter in greater detail and discussed how the students learned best at the beginning of the class (asking if they preferred to read alone as they have been or if they preferred to popcorn or group read and discuss the work; they chose working alone) but ran out of time for class discussion. Boo.
Anyway, I was taught numbers one through ten in Russian by a 7 year old American today :) and finally learned a word in Russian I've been wanting to know and struggling to keep in my head since I got here: I'm sorry! Very important since I mess up constantly here... well, and in the U.S., nothing's changed much it's just amplified!
Keri sent you some questions we both had about our portfolio assignments, let me know if you didn't get them and I can send them along! Thanks
Chels
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