First Day and Floods

I live in Richmond, Vermont which is around 15 miles down I89 from St. Mike's and it usually takes me 15 minutes to drive. This morning I left my house around 7:30 to get to my 9:50 class on time. I didn't make it. 3 of the 4 routes out of Richmond were flooded. This meant a long diversion north and then through Essex. I finally arrived in Essex only to be met by a parking-lot on Route 15. I returned home and sadly canceled my first class.

I later made it in to my 1:20-4:20 class after rush hour had died down. This was my Elementary Math and Science class and it was great to see many of the students I had in Schools and Society last Fall or Spring. I joked with several of them that they sat in the same seats as they had in the earlier class. The first class is always a time of nervousness and excitement for me. I'm never sure that they will get my somewhat droll British sense of humor ("We've got a lot to get through today so we may have to keep going until 6pm" said with a straight face). I also wonder whether I can convince them that math really can be user-friendly, interesting, relevant and aesthetic, and , most importantly, understandable. This usually takes quite a few classes but it's so important to start the course in the right direction.

I did miss meeting my first Schools and Society class but I will see them on Wednesday when we'll finalize the details for the interviews I have set up for them with a visiting group of Japanese students. We interview the students in small groups to find out what schools and education are like in Japan. Later in the semester we do this with students from a wide variety of countries. This helps my students get a better perspective on Education in the US as well as the type of schools immigrant children in the Burlington Schools might have attended before coming to the US. The global differences in K-12 education are sometimes quite unbelievable.

The picture is of Bridge Street in Richmond. The road continues a further 200 yards before it crosses the Winooski river.

A Teaching License is Like a Passport

Every country in the world has teachers. When you get your teaching license you can potentially go anywhere in the world to teach. That deosn't mean that teaching and Education are the same the world over.

Two weeks ago the students in my Schools and Society course discoverd this by interviewing a group of international students studying at St. Mike's. The goal of the activity was for the SMC students to get a sense of the similarities and differences that exist in K -12 education on a global scale. The international students were from China, Japan, France, Venezuela, Congo, Peru and Panama. The interview contained ten questions ranging from simple (At what age does school begin in your country?) to more complex (Did you like school?). An additional goal of the activity was to help the students identify the difference between ideographic (pertaining to an individual) and nomothetic (related to a group or norm) data. Whenever we use an interview as a data-gathering device it's really important to make this distinction.

Yesterday in class we discussed the results of the interviews. Of all the questions they asked the one that provided the most surprising answers concerned the way students with special needs are educated in other countries. In most of the countries represented, sadly, there are still special schools for students with special needs. In many countries they are treated as "inferior" citizens and not allowed to integrate at all with the rest of the population. Interestingly, the notable exception is Peru; at least according to the individuals interviewed.

When we teach students from other countries in our US classrooms it's important to understand
something about the education experiences they have already had before coming to the US.

The picture is of part of Sefton Park school in which I started my teaching career in Bristol, England. The windows to my classroom are just to the left of the inside corner of the building. My fourth-grade classes averaged thirty students for the 5 years I taught there. The students' families had ethnic origins primarily in Pakistan, India, the West Indies and,of course, England. My first professional development as a teacher involved learning about some of the cultural characteristics of the Indian, Pakistani, and West Indian cultures and way of life.