Today we woke up and got ready to go to Joseph Chamberlain Sixth Firm College. Thank God it’s Friday! Someone play Last Friday Night by Katy Perry! I’m super excited for today because I’m excited to see how the English equivalent of a high school works and how they’re preparing for their A Levels that start on Monday.
We got split into two groups during the welcome session, group A and B, and began getting ready to split up and see our first classes. But, before that we sat down with Tim Williams, Associate Assistant Principal, who spoke to us about the basic facts of the school. Many students here have English as a second language, and there are 30+ languages spoken here. It creates a very cool culture of success in the school because it’s a lot of underprivileged students that attend school in one of the poorest sections of Birmingham, yet the school they attend has some of the highest ratings in the city. They continued to get high scores when being evaluated by outside groups and provide the highest level of education ranging from students taking their A levels, GCSE, and English learners.
The first class that we went to was Observation of Maths for Intensive English Student. This is a math class structured for students who don’t speak English as a first language. Walking in the teacher alerted us to the fact that the kids would be learning more about IT things today. While I was expecting math this is a nice surprise. They were learning how to build a website on google sites, a skill that I think is very important for kids to learn. When I was taught about this they dropped us on the website and basically told us to figure it out on our own. I wish that we had a class like this to focus on practical learning skills. Everyone figures it out on their own usually in America and while it’s not the most difficult I think guiding kids through these skills is extremely beneficial for them.
After we got introduced to the class and what it was about we got a chance to interact with the kids and work with them on the website they were building. It’s a personal website about their own lives that features pictures, videos, blurbs of text, and voice recordings. Today we got to be an interviewer for a voice recording. We asked the students three questions. Where were you born? What kind of house did you live in? Who did you live with? Because all these students are learning English as a second language, many of them were born in other places and there is a mix of lots of different backgrounds in the classroom. Some of the students were very receptive to the talk, and some were very shy because they didn’t believe they could speak good enough english but the teacher was very patient with them and clearly wanted to succeed in class and learning English.
We got picked up by Tom after our first lecture observation and began touring the college. He informed us that it was relatively new and there are more facilities being built constantly. It’s a beautiful school full of lots of resources for their students.
After the tour Tom gave us a slight lecture about his theory of teach and how he believes it works. While I don’t fully get what’s going on and it doesn’t apply to me I really appreciate how much work the school has put into developing it’s teachers. We did a quick version of the basic teacher training lesson and learned a lot about this cycle. it’s all about expert input, student output, assessment, and feedback. He spoke lots about how newly qualified teachers must be aware of all of these and the cycle at all time.
Now we’re on our way to our second lecture observation for the day. We’re going to see an Intensive English Conversation class now which is very different from the first class. Everyone in this class is solid with their English and are either training for their GCSEs or A levels that are both happening soon. In this room the learning is much more intense, but the teacher has the same kinda aura. She is very encouraging to the students and stick with them. They aren’t aloud to give up on the question and they work until the answer has been figured out. She issues acronyms to help students understand the prompt and how to structure their essays, similar to things that we do in the United States. While the acronyms aren’t the exact same I definitely understand everything she’s saying and it’s very similar to my AP english classes that were geared towards writing quick but sensible essays for exams. She says things like, “Think before you speak, very good, not quite, and keep going.” I’ve noticed that lots of the teachers here say similar things to these phrases and it seems like it really encourages the kids.
Looking around the room I figured out that this lecture is for kids that had failed their first attempt at the English GCSE. The language that their teacher is using appears to be working to build up their confidence as they may believe that they are failures after their first attempt. I like how deep the teacher understands her role in not only reteachching her students but building them up as going into the test again with no confidence would probably lead to another failed attempt.
Overall today was super cool. I loved seeing what their college looked like. After visiting the college we went to the local botanical gardens which was also super cool.
