Today was full of knowledge on the education system in the UK and a beautiful trip to the botanical gardens. We started the day at the Joseph Chamberlain college which has very high OFSTED scores showing its excellence. College here is much different than the United States because it begins after 16 and is a 2 year school that is focused on completing compulsory schooling in order to prepare for exams to get into university. This college is very diverse with 30 different languages being spoken which is very different from my high school. When we went there they kindly provided us with chocolate croissants which were delicious and the best I have ever had.
The first classroom we observed was an English language course. It was a decently small class with a diverse array of students. These students are preparing for their English GCSE exams in a few weeks. These students are actually taking it for the second time because they failed this GCSE last year. I learned a lot about this test and its focus. The teacher was very engaged with the students and randomly selecting a student to call on is very common in the classroom. We later learned their teaching technique includes pause, pose, pounce, and bounce when interacting with students. The teacher was emphasizing the importance of being extra detailed, unique, and more complex on their exam to get that extra point. The teacher gave the students a step by step explanation of the exam and the questions. It is very structured and specific on how they should write and answer the questions. I could tell this prepares the students really well. The teacher said that the examiners want the students to pass the exam and they give clues in the exam to help them achieve this, which I find to be very helpful for the students. For one of the questions on the exam, they do fictional writing and the teacher told them to write in first person and present tense to keep students from mixing tenses. I find this interesting because for our exams we are rarely told to write in first person, we focus more on 3rd person, but this seems to be a strategy for them to not lose points.
I learned from the assistant principal that poverty is very prevalent in this school area and poverty tends to lead to a lowering of expectations in their home life and for themselves. Therefore the teachers tend to try to raise the expectations and emphasize that they are capable of getting those high scores. This explains why the teacher I observed was very focused on telling the students what scores he expects and even expect higher for some.
After a tour of the school, the assistant principal explained some strategies of teaching. One strategy, a diagram, that began with expert input, then to student output, then assessment which informs the expert, and finally feedback. He explained how learning needs all these aspects to effectively teach and learn. I really enjoyed how engaging he was with us and he was really amazing at explaining to us their process of teaching and their practice. I learned how important feedback is to get a student not to just improve to regular understanding, but an advanced understanding. The imbalances of this strategy lead to the problems, misunderstanding, and poor behavior of students and the learning process.
The next class we observed was an English as a second language course. The teacher was very expressive and he was very helpful towards the students. The students were very interactive with each other, learning off each other’s use of English. They were working on lessons on describing things like places, people, and more. And they were learning subjects, objects, and pronouns. Also the students repeat the teacher a lot when he is teaching which I find really interesting. I believe they were doing this to try to understand and try to validate their understanding. The teacher also explained better use of terms, for example alternate words to fat or thin because they can be offensive terms. Also he explained instead of saying “the black man down stairs” you just say “the man.” This technique I find really amazing and I believe we need more of this technique just in our regular elementary classes because it helps students speak more respectively towards and about people. When the student tries to ask a question like asking for a piece of paper the teacher says “How do you ask me in detail,” so they are always trying to incorporate communication throughout the entire class. This class was very interesting to observe and a great learning experience.
The school provided us with a delicious lunch and then we headed to BCU for the botanical gardens. The botanical gardens were beautiful and I could have spent hours in there exploring all the flowers and other plants. I really enjoy how Birmingham has an even mix of nature into their city. This was a very eventful and beautiful day. And tonight we are on our own for dinner and we are planning on eating near the canal, which should also be a beautiful experience.
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