Week 4 down
First of all, anyone watch the Oscars? South Africa was representing with a Best Foreign Language Film win for “Tsotsi.” And now, my observations for the week:
The insects are huge here! There are these giant beetles that you can see scurrying through the house sometimes. I found one in my bedroom one night, and I tried to capture it so I could throw it out the window or something. But as I tried to catch this huge beetle, I realized that it was more scared of me than I was of it. I let it stay in my room and found it laying on its back, feet in the air, dead, outside my bedroom door in the morning. Then there are the rain spiders: they’re not too bad because they only come out when it rains, and since it’s still summer, that’s not often. But when they do come out, you see them hiding in corners of the house. The one that I saw was maybe only half the size of my hand, but I’ve heard they can get as big as your hand. Not looking forward to it.
Restaurants are so different here. Not even fast food is fast. They do have McDonalds and KFC, but I refuse to eat there while I’m here, so that may be actual fast food. Every single restaurant is sit-down. There are very very few that allow you to order at the counter and then sit down and wait for your food to be brought to do. The two big fast food chains here are Steers and Wimpy (isn’t that the worst name for a burger joint EVER? No one ever says, “man, I’m so hungry for a wimpy burger!”) and even these two places are sit-down, with a waitress and everything. So as you can see, meals tend to last a long time. If you go to a nice restaurant, you can be guaranteed to have time to thoroughly look through the menu, and you will definitely finish your appetizer or salad before your entrée arrives. Usually you have to flag down the server and ask for the check, because they leave you there for a while. You can count on dinner lasting about 2 hours. It’s actually really nice and relaxing. Then, my favorite part: everywhere you go, even if you just get coffee, brings you mints with the check. They also hate splitting the check, and sometimes they really can’t, so you have to make sure you have cash on you (and small bills!) In addition to the “no free refills,” which still weirds me out, they don’t have “diet” coke or sprite: they have “coke light” and “sprite light.”
I went to see a movie with friends the other day: “North Country,” with Charlize Theron. By now you should know (I’ve told almost everyone) that she is from South Africa. She is Afrikaans, which means she naturally has a thick accent. When she went to Hollywood, she locked herself in a room for months listening to TV and the radio and practicing an American accent (she’s good, isn’t she?). Also, she changed her name, or at least the pronunciation of it: in Afrikaans, Theron is pronounced “te-rone.” South Africans aren’t very happy about her “Americanizing” her name to get acting jobs.
Although it’s not safe to park in certain areas at night, there are parking attendants who patrol the parking lots for you. At the beach during the day, or in large parking lots at night, they see you get out of your car and they yell to you, “I watch your car!” Then when you come back to your car to leave, you have to tip them. I guess it’s cheaper than paying a parking meter, and much safer.
One thing I promised myself before I came here was that I would make the time to get out and do things that I didn’t have time to do in the US. So, I have not turned down a single opportunity or invitation to go out. I have joined up with two of the sports teams (road running, we do about 3 km’s twice a week, and dancesport on Thursday evenings) and an adult ballroom dance class. Also, I’m apparently very good at bowling here (a talent that never appeared when I bowled in the US). Either that, or the people I went with were REALLY bad. The school had BEAT (Be Entertained by Alex Talent) one evening, which was an open stage for students to share their poetry, music, dancing, and so on. It was great to see all the different cultures represented, and hear the African drumming, chanting, and dancing. On Saturday, there was a band spit-braai: a braai is like a barbeque, and they made lamb (so good!). This was kind of like their band concert, only the band played as kind of background music between dinner courses. There are 3 bands at the school, for different age/ability levels, and they are all incredibly talented.
Now about my teaching….
I’ve been teaching my 2 grade 8 classes for about a week now, and I love the students. They are very polite, part of which has to do with the rules of the school. They must line up outside your classroom door, boys on one side, girls on the other, and wait to be invited in. They then stand at their desks, wait for you to say good morning, they say good morning back and sit. It’s very nice. Of course, they’re not perfect: you often have to wait for them to quiet down to say good morning, but usually the students who see you waiting say “shh!” to the rest of the class. They also tend to speak out during class a lot: at least the 2 classes I have are absolutely horrible about raising their hands.
Since there was a public holiday on Wednesday (municipal elections), I only taught Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. On Tuesday, we marked a review sheet and I passed out another one. I had the first class get into pairs with the person sitting beside them to work. In the second class, they had only had to do half of the review sheet for homework, but some had already finished. Since the students were all at different places, I passed out the homework assignment at the beginning and had everyone work individually. We slowly went over each question on the review sheet (4 or 5 at a time, as students finished) until the end of the class. It’s amazing how much more work was completed in the second class (the class that was “behind”) as opposed to the first one (who worked in groups). I think a lot of talking was happening, but not necessarily about math. I like groupwork and I think it can really help students who are struggling, but we might need to practice this or set a timeline for them to have a certain number of problems done by a certain time. Thursday, we went over the homework and the students had a short, 4-question class test. The grades were very disappointing.
The students are just not getting order of operations, or as they call it here, order of working. I think it’s a confusing concept anyway, but they don’t really teach it the same here. They have students circle each term, simplify inside terms, and then combine like terms. There is a saying to help you remember what to do: BODMAS (brackets, of, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction) which is like our PEMDAS, but they don’t use it to teach order of working in grade 8: they use terms. I think part of the reason my classes are having such a hard time is that they don’t actually get much direct instruction about what the order of working is and how they need to think through each problem. They get a lot of practice time in class, and many many examples written on the board, but I could see this being a waste of time if they really have no clue what the correct order is. On Friday/Monday (one class meets Monday, the other meets Friday), instead of going over the test like teachers usually do, I just gave them the correct answers. I went over on the board the concepts that were being consistently missed, and reminded them what order they must do certain operations. Then, I put the students in groups of 2 (just with the person sitting beside them, to save time moving around) and had them work together to figure out how to do each problem. I also had them write one sentence for each mark missed, explaining what they did and why they missed it. I am having them finish this for homework and then turn in their corrections and sentences with the test on Tuesday. On Tuesday they also have a grade wide (control) test over order of working and some concepts covered earlier. They had a review sheet to do on Thursday for homework, which we also went over on Friday/Monday. Hopefully the review and the test corrections will help.
Sometimes I feel limited in the fact that I cannot create my own projects or assignments for grades; but then I realize that students will do the assignments even if they aren’t graded on it. They have to, or they will get an academic default and detention. It’s really nice, but it’s so different from what I’m used to that it’s hard to wrap my mind around.
I’m still working on pronouncing my students’ names: I have a seating chart, but about half the names are something I’ve never seen before. It disrupts the class if I say a name wrong, because the kids all laugh. 8th graders will laugh at ANYTHING.
I like one thing that Mrs. Emery does with her classes (Grade 10 and 12): she will have the students put all pens and pencils down, then will go through one of the exercises (maybe 10 or 15 problems) outloud, asking students for the answers. When they’ve finished, she will assign that exercise for homework. She says that this way, they get practice doing each problem 2 or 3 times. I think it’s a good idea for things like trigonometry proofs, where students have a hard time knowing where to start, or for the introduction of a lesson, but I don’t think the process should be abused. It’s definitely something that I will try, though.
They pray in the schools, which at first caught me off guard; I thought, “What are they doing? You can’t do this at a school assembly!” until I realized I was in another country with other laws. It’s funny how you consciously KNOW that the laws are different, but you’re still surprised when you come across one. They read bible verses, sing hymns, and pray at school assemblies, even though many of the students and teachers are Muslim or Hindu.
I do enjoy this experience better than my student teaching in the US. I’m meeting more teachers and seeing different methods of teaching, and the environment is really much happier. It seems that the teachers in the US can be beaten down and disgruntled, whereas here, they seem more content. You can feel the atmosphere in the staff room: instead of whining about the students and teaching like in the US, we discuss things outside of school. It’s a refreshing break during the day. Now, I know that not every school and teacher in the US is like that, but from the schools I have seen in Athens County, many of them are.
The insects are huge here! There are these giant beetles that you can see scurrying through the house sometimes. I found one in my bedroom one night, and I tried to capture it so I could throw it out the window or something. But as I tried to catch this huge beetle, I realized that it was more scared of me than I was of it. I let it stay in my room and found it laying on its back, feet in the air, dead, outside my bedroom door in the morning. Then there are the rain spiders: they’re not too bad because they only come out when it rains, and since it’s still summer, that’s not often. But when they do come out, you see them hiding in corners of the house. The one that I saw was maybe only half the size of my hand, but I’ve heard they can get as big as your hand. Not looking forward to it.
Restaurants are so different here. Not even fast food is fast. They do have McDonalds and KFC, but I refuse to eat there while I’m here, so that may be actual fast food. Every single restaurant is sit-down. There are very very few that allow you to order at the counter and then sit down and wait for your food to be brought to do. The two big fast food chains here are Steers and Wimpy (isn’t that the worst name for a burger joint EVER? No one ever says, “man, I’m so hungry for a wimpy burger!”) and even these two places are sit-down, with a waitress and everything. So as you can see, meals tend to last a long time. If you go to a nice restaurant, you can be guaranteed to have time to thoroughly look through the menu, and you will definitely finish your appetizer or salad before your entrée arrives. Usually you have to flag down the server and ask for the check, because they leave you there for a while. You can count on dinner lasting about 2 hours. It’s actually really nice and relaxing. Then, my favorite part: everywhere you go, even if you just get coffee, brings you mints with the check. They also hate splitting the check, and sometimes they really can’t, so you have to make sure you have cash on you (and small bills!) In addition to the “no free refills,” which still weirds me out, they don’t have “diet” coke or sprite: they have “coke light” and “sprite light.”
I went to see a movie with friends the other day: “North Country,” with Charlize Theron. By now you should know (I’ve told almost everyone) that she is from South Africa. She is Afrikaans, which means she naturally has a thick accent. When she went to Hollywood, she locked herself in a room for months listening to TV and the radio and practicing an American accent (she’s good, isn’t she?). Also, she changed her name, or at least the pronunciation of it: in Afrikaans, Theron is pronounced “te-rone.” South Africans aren’t very happy about her “Americanizing” her name to get acting jobs.
Although it’s not safe to park in certain areas at night, there are parking attendants who patrol the parking lots for you. At the beach during the day, or in large parking lots at night, they see you get out of your car and they yell to you, “I watch your car!” Then when you come back to your car to leave, you have to tip them. I guess it’s cheaper than paying a parking meter, and much safer.
One thing I promised myself before I came here was that I would make the time to get out and do things that I didn’t have time to do in the US. So, I have not turned down a single opportunity or invitation to go out. I have joined up with two of the sports teams (road running, we do about 3 km’s twice a week, and dancesport on Thursday evenings) and an adult ballroom dance class. Also, I’m apparently very good at bowling here (a talent that never appeared when I bowled in the US). Either that, or the people I went with were REALLY bad. The school had BEAT (Be Entertained by Alex Talent) one evening, which was an open stage for students to share their poetry, music, dancing, and so on. It was great to see all the different cultures represented, and hear the African drumming, chanting, and dancing. On Saturday, there was a band spit-braai: a braai is like a barbeque, and they made lamb (so good!). This was kind of like their band concert, only the band played as kind of background music between dinner courses. There are 3 bands at the school, for different age/ability levels, and they are all incredibly talented.
Now about my teaching….
I’ve been teaching my 2 grade 8 classes for about a week now, and I love the students. They are very polite, part of which has to do with the rules of the school. They must line up outside your classroom door, boys on one side, girls on the other, and wait to be invited in. They then stand at their desks, wait for you to say good morning, they say good morning back and sit. It’s very nice. Of course, they’re not perfect: you often have to wait for them to quiet down to say good morning, but usually the students who see you waiting say “shh!” to the rest of the class. They also tend to speak out during class a lot: at least the 2 classes I have are absolutely horrible about raising their hands.
Since there was a public holiday on Wednesday (municipal elections), I only taught Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. On Tuesday, we marked a review sheet and I passed out another one. I had the first class get into pairs with the person sitting beside them to work. In the second class, they had only had to do half of the review sheet for homework, but some had already finished. Since the students were all at different places, I passed out the homework assignment at the beginning and had everyone work individually. We slowly went over each question on the review sheet (4 or 5 at a time, as students finished) until the end of the class. It’s amazing how much more work was completed in the second class (the class that was “behind”) as opposed to the first one (who worked in groups). I think a lot of talking was happening, but not necessarily about math. I like groupwork and I think it can really help students who are struggling, but we might need to practice this or set a timeline for them to have a certain number of problems done by a certain time. Thursday, we went over the homework and the students had a short, 4-question class test. The grades were very disappointing.
The students are just not getting order of operations, or as they call it here, order of working. I think it’s a confusing concept anyway, but they don’t really teach it the same here. They have students circle each term, simplify inside terms, and then combine like terms. There is a saying to help you remember what to do: BODMAS (brackets, of, division, multiplication, addition, subtraction) which is like our PEMDAS, but they don’t use it to teach order of working in grade 8: they use terms. I think part of the reason my classes are having such a hard time is that they don’t actually get much direct instruction about what the order of working is and how they need to think through each problem. They get a lot of practice time in class, and many many examples written on the board, but I could see this being a waste of time if they really have no clue what the correct order is. On Friday/Monday (one class meets Monday, the other meets Friday), instead of going over the test like teachers usually do, I just gave them the correct answers. I went over on the board the concepts that were being consistently missed, and reminded them what order they must do certain operations. Then, I put the students in groups of 2 (just with the person sitting beside them, to save time moving around) and had them work together to figure out how to do each problem. I also had them write one sentence for each mark missed, explaining what they did and why they missed it. I am having them finish this for homework and then turn in their corrections and sentences with the test on Tuesday. On Tuesday they also have a grade wide (control) test over order of working and some concepts covered earlier. They had a review sheet to do on Thursday for homework, which we also went over on Friday/Monday. Hopefully the review and the test corrections will help.
Sometimes I feel limited in the fact that I cannot create my own projects or assignments for grades; but then I realize that students will do the assignments even if they aren’t graded on it. They have to, or they will get an academic default and detention. It’s really nice, but it’s so different from what I’m used to that it’s hard to wrap my mind around.
I’m still working on pronouncing my students’ names: I have a seating chart, but about half the names are something I’ve never seen before. It disrupts the class if I say a name wrong, because the kids all laugh. 8th graders will laugh at ANYTHING.
I like one thing that Mrs. Emery does with her classes (Grade 10 and 12): she will have the students put all pens and pencils down, then will go through one of the exercises (maybe 10 or 15 problems) outloud, asking students for the answers. When they’ve finished, she will assign that exercise for homework. She says that this way, they get practice doing each problem 2 or 3 times. I think it’s a good idea for things like trigonometry proofs, where students have a hard time knowing where to start, or for the introduction of a lesson, but I don’t think the process should be abused. It’s definitely something that I will try, though.
They pray in the schools, which at first caught me off guard; I thought, “What are they doing? You can’t do this at a school assembly!” until I realized I was in another country with other laws. It’s funny how you consciously KNOW that the laws are different, but you’re still surprised when you come across one. They read bible verses, sing hymns, and pray at school assemblies, even though many of the students and teachers are Muslim or Hindu.
I do enjoy this experience better than my student teaching in the US. I’m meeting more teachers and seeing different methods of teaching, and the environment is really much happier. It seems that the teachers in the US can be beaten down and disgruntled, whereas here, they seem more content. You can feel the atmosphere in the staff room: instead of whining about the students and teaching like in the US, we discuss things outside of school. It’s a refreshing break during the day. Now, I know that not every school and teacher in the US is like that, but from the schools I have seen in Athens County, many of them are.
posted by Katie | 2:52 AM
1 Comments:
Hi Katie,
It sounds like a pretty unique experience, outside of the box. I guess you were right about that. You would have gotten an experience that you have already witnessed had you done student teaching inside the US.
btw, do they have Bud Lite there?
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