So, I've been quiet for a few days as I was in New York for the weekend, where I tried to visit a school called "Quest to learn". Unfortunately (but understandably enough) I wasn't allowed to go inside the school grounds and take pictures, because I had no appointment. I only got to know about this school once I was already in Boston, so I didn't really have the time to plan this visit. I just decided to try my luck, but this time it didn't work out. Anyways, now I have the contact and I can book an appointment for the next time I visit the USA! Quest to learn is a middle and upper school which bases its approach on gamification. As I understood, it works together with the Institute of Play in order to create all the materials and develop all the curriculum with which all students and teachers must work.
For more information go to Quest to Learn or to the Institute of Play's website.
Other than that, it has been a few days since I've finished the observation week at Chickering School and I still can't really believe all the things I've seen. I've gone over my notes a few times and I've looked at the photos to try to put together a presentation about the school, but I still feel that I can not fully portray in a single presentation all what I've witnessed.
Not only because of the sheer difference between the reality of those students and the reality of the ones here in Cape Verde, but mainly because of the simplicity and the ease with which every teacher worked. Some of the things that baffled me the most were also some of the simplest.
For example, in my first year teaching, four weeks into the school year I lost my voice. I literally couldn't speak. I had no voice, because I had been using it to quiet down my students. And how did I do that? By raising my voice. And I have a pretty good projection but it still didn't work very efficiently and as a result I ended up losing my voice. So I had to think of another way to quiet them down. I looked up different methods, I tried a couple of them out and some worked better than others but all of them had a common line: they were still very disruptive. They were still very negative. (No, I never resorted to violence!) but the energy that was being created was still a negative one. I got mad, they got upset and so the tension was just always present.
At Chickering I saw more than one teacher using a very simple, and positive, method. Simply by clapping or "tchtching" (the sound we make when we exhale hitting the back of our teeth with the tip of our tongue) a rhythmic sequence. The teacher would do a sequence and the students had to repeat it. Sometimes it took only one sequence, sometimes it took three until the whole class was doing it, but it always worked. And because it was seen as a playful sound and not as an authoritarian one, the kids responded much faster.
Something else I loved witnessing was the autonomy that, even kindergarten students, already had. When they got to class they knew the first few minutes in class were Social Choice, so they knew their job was to pick some activity to do, whether it was reading to self or to someone else, or writing or illustrating a story they had written before. They knew what they had to do and they did it, without further instruction. Same for when they had to work in pairs or by themselves. If the teacher was working with a designated group of students, the other students knew that they should not interrupt their work unless they had an emergency.
These are just a few of the many many ideas I took from this experience. As I go along my notes, I will keep sharing some of the moments that inspired me.
I hope to one day be able to do that with many other teachers, not only in Cape Verde but around the world.
For more information go to Quest to Learn or to the Institute of Play's website.
Other than that, it has been a few days since I've finished the observation week at Chickering School and I still can't really believe all the things I've seen. I've gone over my notes a few times and I've looked at the photos to try to put together a presentation about the school, but I still feel that I can not fully portray in a single presentation all what I've witnessed.
Not only because of the sheer difference between the reality of those students and the reality of the ones here in Cape Verde, but mainly because of the simplicity and the ease with which every teacher worked. Some of the things that baffled me the most were also some of the simplest.
For example, in my first year teaching, four weeks into the school year I lost my voice. I literally couldn't speak. I had no voice, because I had been using it to quiet down my students. And how did I do that? By raising my voice. And I have a pretty good projection but it still didn't work very efficiently and as a result I ended up losing my voice. So I had to think of another way to quiet them down. I looked up different methods, I tried a couple of them out and some worked better than others but all of them had a common line: they were still very disruptive. They were still very negative. (No, I never resorted to violence!) but the energy that was being created was still a negative one. I got mad, they got upset and so the tension was just always present.
At Chickering I saw more than one teacher using a very simple, and positive, method. Simply by clapping or "tchtching" (the sound we make when we exhale hitting the back of our teeth with the tip of our tongue) a rhythmic sequence. The teacher would do a sequence and the students had to repeat it. Sometimes it took only one sequence, sometimes it took three until the whole class was doing it, but it always worked. And because it was seen as a playful sound and not as an authoritarian one, the kids responded much faster.
Something else I loved witnessing was the autonomy that, even kindergarten students, already had. When they got to class they knew the first few minutes in class were Social Choice, so they knew their job was to pick some activity to do, whether it was reading to self or to someone else, or writing or illustrating a story they had written before. They knew what they had to do and they did it, without further instruction. Same for when they had to work in pairs or by themselves. If the teacher was working with a designated group of students, the other students knew that they should not interrupt their work unless they had an emergency.
These are just a few of the many many ideas I took from this experience. As I go along my notes, I will keep sharing some of the moments that inspired me.
I hope to one day be able to do that with many other teachers, not only in Cape Verde but around the world.