School In Spain

Teaching Math from a Constructivist viewpoint

2009-03-15T10:50:00.003+01:00

That is one of the classes I'm taking this semester, and it's a doozy. It's required because my certification will allow me to teach as a regular Primary teacher as well as an English teacher. Anyway, the class is 7 credits (the normal amount for a semester-long course is 4.5) and it is a huge amount of work. For one thing, outside of the class syllabus, we also have to master (be able to do and explain) everything in the Primary math curriculum, and while obviously it's not as complicated as higher level math, it has also been a loooong time since I've had to do any of this. Long division is a distant memory (and here they do it differently than I was taught...) and a whole bunch of other stuff will require a lot of brushing up on.

And of course, math from a Constructivist standpoint is a lot more complicated, because not only do you have to be able to do the stuff, you have to have a much deeper level of understanding as to how and why things are done the way they are done. Still, it is interesting. I was working with Pedro this morning on operations with "decenas y unidades" (basically, tens place and ones place) and we were using Legos to do it, which was fun.

Anyway, I will finish student teaching very soon, so hopefully then I will be able to dedicate more time to the numerous assignments of my classes this semester, and to Dani as he is becoming more and more mobile!

More on textbooks

2009-02-26T22:55:00.004+01:00

I thought I'd update with another post about textbooks and teaching. I have been looking over the program for 1st grade Art where I am teaching (here teachers have to develop the "programación" for the whole year in advance-- not step-by-step lesson plans, but an overview of each unit and what the objectives, methodology, and evaluation criteria are.) According to the program, there is a whole lot more to it in theory that is not actually being put into practice. They start from the textbook, which actually has a framework for a whole lot of engaging, significant learning experiences. The cutting out and assembling paper models, coloring, etc, are mostly supposed to be complementary activities, or "extra." So if the program were actually put into effect, even though it is textbook-based, I think it would be a whole other ball game, so to speak. I don't really want to go into why the program is not being implemented as envisioned-- there are some good reasons, but it's still unfortunate that it has to be like this. But I did think I should rectify on here a bit-- I don't think the textbook itself is really the problem.

I haven't seen the Music plan in detail, but I suspect that it is a similar situation.

And, after talking to the classroom teacher some more, I have a better understanding of why that class is run the way it is (meaning, the science/math/reading parts.) I still am not convinced by the way the reading is set up (everyone reading the same material and doing the same activities, despite some significant differences in ability), but I don't really know what the solution to that is, either.

And I am not writing much on this blog about the student teaching, for reasons of discretion/confidentiality, but I did want to say something positive about my observations so far. I am really impressed with the way the classroom teacher handles conflicts/ relational or emotional issues that come up in the classroom. She is very willing to spend class time on working through things, and I think the students feel heard and respected. She clearly belives-- and I agree-- that for first graders especially, learning how to get along with others and manage their own feelings is just as important as the more academic stuff.

Textbook mania

2009-02-19T21:49:00.007+01:00

There are a lot of things I want to write about regarding my student teaching experience-- reflections, thoughts, stuff I'm learning, etc. Not necessarily on here, but somewhere I need to get it down. There's a list of things to be recorded, but right now I'd like to discuss textbooks, and I think this blog is the right place to do it.

When I was in elementary school (public school in a well-funded district, way back in the late seventies, early eighties) we had textbooks, but they were owned by the school and only lent to the students each year. I don't remember when we started with textbooks in earnest-- there were always reading books and math books, but I'm fuzzy on the other subjects. I do remember that in fifth grade we had a big unit on the weather, and for that we copied notes from the board-- maybe the same for the digestive system unit in fourth grade?

We had Art once a week, and for that we went to the Art Room and did all sorts of art projects using paint, paper-maiche, oak tag, etc. For music we went to the Music room and learned songs from the history and folklore of the US, as well as some basic musical notation, used different kinds of instruments, and other more popular and recent songs. Periodically we had Assemblies in the Auditorium with performances of different types to watch (one I remember was "Germs", a play about hygiene).

At the school I'm in now, and probably in many others, the kids stay in their classrooms for Art and Music, and the teachers come to them. So certainly the types of activities that are feasible are more limited (no paper maiche, for one thing.) But there is another limiting factor in classes of all subjects. The textbook.

Although Spain supposedly uses a Constructivist approach to education (as evidenced in their laws and statutes), and we have been learning about these methods and precepts in the university where I am getting my teaching degree, in practice it seems that textbook learning is the norm. (This is not to say that use of textbooks incompatible with Constructivism-- of course that's not true-- but at the elementary level, such dependence on textbooks is not necessarily to the students' advantage.)

It's not to the parents' advantage, either, because here even in the public schools, kids have to buy all of their textbooks and only in some circumstances is it possible to use books from another year, say a brother or sister's old ones. Yes, there are subsidies for families who meet the income requirements, but many--or most?-- families aren't elegible. I have ranted about the textbook industry before, but it is a firmly-entrenched institution, (i.e. big business) with millions of schoolchildren needing to buy new books every single year.

What are these textbooks like? First of all, each subject usually has at least two different books-- one of them is a workbook, and the other one has other types of activitites. The workbooks are often, well, worksheets. So far I have seen two music classes with my first grade class, and they have done color-cut-and-paste activities about sounds that are high and low (in this case, animal sounds) and a "color the pictures and number them 1, 2, or 3 to show the order they come in during the song." The song in question had played in the background on both days while they colored, and they also sang along (words are of course in their "class book") and seemed to enjoy that, but still. Personally, color-cut-and-paste isn't my idea of a particularly interesting or useful way to teach music. True, I have only seen two classes and flipped through the books, but I look fondly back on the music classes of my youth when we did things quite differently.

Art class also has two books, and I have seen four art classes so far. They have only used one of the books, which features paper models to assemble and stuff to color (like a mask for Carnival, and a pirate hat.) Frankly, each hour of wandering around watching kids coloring and assembling premade paper models has been boring me to tears. The other art book had some interesting projects in it-- instead of coloring they pasted in lentils to fill in the middle of a sunflower, or pencil shavings and toothpicks for a forest scene-- I can't remember what else. But it seems to me shame that the kids just buy the books at the beginning of the year and dutifully work their way through them, leaving little room for other types of projects that don't fit in a book.

I guess my beef is that first graders don't really need to have books for everything, do they? Where's the spontaneity, the adapting to the students' interests or teacher's talents or to other factors outside of a textbook? Art and music, especially. I realize it's easier for the teachers, who have several different grade levels to teach, and don't have their own rooms full of materials and space. Still, it seems (to me) a shame.

And of course once the parents have spent the money on the books, they want to see them get used. So, there is a pressure to "get through the book."

As for other subjects, I can see the benefits of using a textbook. For Science and Social Studies, I don't think it's necessary in the early grades, and it does limit what gets presented and how. However, a textbook also provides a certain guarantee, since it is carefully planned and researched as far as content, presentation, layout, exercises. And it is a way to reinforce reading and writing skills in a methodical way, as well as higher-level skills such as getting information from a written text. It also ensures that all the classes who use the book are getting very similar input.

My school is using a globalized method, which means that they have one Class Book (actually they get a new one each trimester) with language arts, math, and science content grouped into multidisciplinary units. I like this approach quite a bit. They also have separate math and language arts workbooks for more practice, and a reading book.

But still, I'm not entirely on the textbook bandwagon here. What are your thoughts? Anyone?

(I will say that I recognize the apparent irony in the fact that not long ago I was lamenting--sort of-- the lack of textbook use at the university level, but actually I think that is an entirely different situation.)

Miscellaneous

2009-02-14T07:51:00.003+01:00

Just a few bits and pieces here.

First, student teaching is going well, and at some point I will post about it on here, but right now I'm just getting used to not having any free time until after 9pm, by which point coherent thought is in scarce supply. But I will get over it, I hope, or this doesn't bode well for my future...

Second, the lovely people at Lycos Tripod have announced that they have been saved at the last minute and will continue their free web hosting service, so my web page on building an intercultural classroom will continue to be available. Which presents a bit of a problem, actually-- since it will be up indefinitely, I need to change a few parts of it and I can't remember how to do that, and probably won't have a lot of time to figure it out. But anyway.

Here is a site that will allow you to create text for kids to practice cursive writing. You put in the text, the font, and the size, and it will arrange it on a pauta (the guide lines for writing) on one line, then leave the next one blank for copying. Since here kids learn to read and write using cursive first, it is a good way for them to practice using a story that they make up or whatever text you want. OS needs to work on his writing, and it's more fun this way than buying a typical libro de caligrafía.

And finally, I still have a few more classes to write about in my series on the Spanish Magisterio Lengua Extranjera degree (I'm sure you are waiting with bated breath for that...), and I do intend to get to that soon. So, watch this space-- eventually I will post again.

Construyendo un aula intercultural

2009-02-04T10:18:00.002+01:00

Just a note to say that the web page I created for a class I took the first year of my studies is going to be deleted soon. It was done on a free hosting site that will no longer be offering this service, and as of Februray 15th the page will be gone. I don't have time to figure out how to save all the files and look for a new hosting site and upload everything again, so it will be gone. I'm no computer wizard, and the page is pretty simple. It's also in Spanish, but again, probably not too difficult.

I mention it because I think (I hope) that it might be of interest to some of you (maybe not, because I think most of the people who land here are not teachers but are expats looking for information on schools in Spain- imagine that!). It's in Spanish, and it is called Construyendo un aula intercultural, or "Creating an intercultural classroom." I'd love to hear your reactions or thoughts. And I thought I'd give it one last hurrah before its demise.

(Note: I loaded the page correctly a few minutes ago, but now when I went back again I got a page load error message (problema al cargar la página). If you get this message, please try again later, because it should still work until the 15th.)

...still more on that degree program...

2009-02-02T22:51:00.001+01:00

I forgot to mention that starting next fall (I think), students entering Spanish universities will be under a new plan, so what I'm describing here will be somewhat different. Currently the teaching degrees are 3-year degrees, whereas things like Literature or Psychology or Architecture or what have you are 5-year degrees. Next year, everything will be four years, to bring the Spanish degrees more in line with a common European Union standard to ease mobility and recognition of credentials between countries. I suspect that there will be more student teaching and obviously, more of a lot of other stuff, too, to fill out the extra year. This won't affect me because I will be finished after I do my last student teaching in the fall, but I thought I should mention it anyway. I wish I knew where to find the information about what will be included in the new plans, but that may very well not even be dteremined yet.

And I forgot one of the English-specific courses, so I'll add that in here:

8) Investigation in the Foreign Language Classroom. Semester-long course, taught in English. As always with this instructor, the notes were clear and well-presented. The course discusses different types of research that can be done, and focuses on Action Research. It's still a pretty basic overview (for example, it doesn't go into any detail about interpretation of statisics, which is too bad because throughout the degree program I have come across articles reporting findings and I am always at a loss as to the statistical parts-- I could have used a crash course or basic introduction. Also it would have been nice to see a discussion of how to design a questionnaire, etc.) Really, the course is meant to encourage future teachers to think of AR as something they can and should be doing in their classrooms, even without a lot of technical knowledge, which is probably a good thing beacuse otherwise most people wouldn't bother. So it serves its purpose well. No exam-- instead you have to carry out an AR project and write it up, or if you don't have access to a classroom (and are too ethical to use made-up data) you can do a research proposal and a critical review of two published research articles. This was a good class, but still, didn't delve deeply into the subject matter.

In fact, that is a common characteristic of all of the classes I've taken for the degree, with a few exceptions. I'm sure that college-level classes at most US universities (and actually, from what I hear, for other degrees in Spanish universities) require much more work. Magisterio is seen as an easy degree, and my impression is that it is likely quite a bit easier than an Education degree in the States. I am still quite curious about what courses are required or offered for US Ed degrees.

Now, on to the non-English classes required for the foreign language degree (because the degree will also allow me to teach as a regular classroom teacher in bilingual schools, so we still need to get the basics of general ed.)

8) Physical Education. Semester-long course, taught in Spanish. Since this is online, we don't do any actual physical activity for this-- there were a couple of sessions I think at the jornadas, but I was pregnant and couldn't go to them. The class was not as boring as I thought it would be, though parts of it were very technical and/or dry. It also gave way too much emphasis, IMHO, to the history and evolution of Physical Education, as opposed to more practical and useful stuff. In any case, Physical Education in schools is taught by specialists (though this university doesn't offer that particular specialization) so it's unlikely that a regular classroom teacher would actually be in the position of teaching Phys. Ed. But we study it anyway.

9) Knowledge of the Natural, Physical, and Social Environment. Semester-long course, taught in Spanish. This subject shares the same name as a subject area taught in Primary school that is basically Science and Social Studies. Our class focused only on the science part, and was intended not to teach you how to teach science, but instead to make sure that future elementary teachers have a basic background in science. This subject is one that is often taught in English at bilingual schools (as is the case at my kids' school.) The class was interesting enough, but I've already forgotten much of what I learned in it, and will need to refresh my memory with a textbook if I ever have to teach it. Given that, I would rather have had a class more focused on teaching science-- I think that would have been much more useful. Oh well.

10) Art and Music Education. Semester-long course that consisted of two different parts. It really should have counted as two separate classes, based on the amount of work required for each part. The music part requires you to read music, keeping the beat and using correct rhythm while saying the correct name of the notes as you read them. The actual pieces of music they used on the (individual) exam were given to us at the beginning of the semester so we could practice them, and the music wasn't that difficult, but for some reason it took me way more time to get it down than I had anticipated-- I really struggled with this. Also, they use the "Do-Re-Mi" system of note names. The second part of the music exam was playing the recorder-- we had to learn how to play it and had a selection of 8 songs to practice for the exams (reading from the score, not memorized.) I got through this pretty well, after a lot of work, and I suppose it is good background for a well-rounded education professional to have. Not to mention the fact that both reading music and learning to play the recorder are required activities in many Spanish elementary schools, so in that sense it is relevant, though the regular classroom teacher would not be the one teaching Music.

The Art half of the class (and again, it was easily enough work to qualify for its own 4.5 credits, dammit) was great. I'm not a particularly crafty or artistic person, and in fact not only am I not good at it, I don't even enjoy it. But the class was very interesting. I even liked the part on history and trends in art education. Also good was the topic on evolution and interpretation of children's drawings-- especially interesting to me since I could use my own kids' artwork for comparison purposes. In addition to some annoying--to me-- art-making assignments, we had to do a Power Point on an environmental artist (loosely interpreted-- could be someone who makes art out of recycled materials, whose art has an ecological message, or even just shows a very strong sense of place etc.) and then create our own artwork inspired by that artist. I choose Andy Goldsworthy, who I had never even heard of before this class so getting to know his work and watching this amazing film was enough to make the whole class worthwhile for me. In any case, the notes were very well put together and complete, and assignments were relevant and engaging. The class is very relevant to the FL degree because in bilingual schools, Art is another class that is typically taught in English. Unfortunately, after learning about all these neat approaches to teaching art, it may come as quite a let down when you receive the English-language textbook (yes, a textbook-- maybe workbook is a better term-- for art class) that you must use to teach the class and see how unimaginative it is (at least that is what I thought of the book my son is using for Art this year.)

Hmm, this post is getting long. I think I'll end here for today and continue on again tomorrow...

Getting a teaching job in Spain

2009-02-02T13:45:00.000+01:00

I thought I'd interrupt the course descriptions for a moment to talk a bit about the hiring process for Primary school teachers here in Spain, since a couple of people have asked about it.

First of all, there are three types of schools here: public, private, and concertado (semi-private.) The concertado schools are mostly, but not all, Catholic schools, and are not run by the State. However, they do receive State funds, and because of that they must follow certain rules. One of the rules is that all elementary teachers must hold the Spanish Elementary Education degree, or an officialy-recognized elem. education degree from another country. (Getting a foreign degree recognized is a huge PITA.) Another rule is that they must use the same admissions criteria as the public schools for students, and also I think that they may not require students to take religion classes (meaning that an alternative is offered for the time that religion is being taught for those who don't wish to take it.)

The private schools can hire anyone they want to, I believe.

And the public schools do not have any say at all in who they hire as teachers. If you want to opt for a public school teaching position, not only must you have the Magisterio degree, but you must also pass a difficult civil service exam. Those who pass are ranked according to their score, and then they get to choose from the available job openings based on their position in the ranking. Usually the positions that are open to those who have just passed are the least desireable ones, but once you have been in the system longer and have built up points for seniority etc. you can request a transfer, again based on your relative ranking and the available openings.

If you pass the exam but do not score high enough to qualify for a post (i.e. there are more people who passed than available jobs) you are put on a list to be an interino, which means you will be offered jobs as they become available due to a maternity leave, extended medical leave, etc. This is only a temporary posting for you, but it earns you points toward the next exam.

Those who get a full post basically have a job for life with lots of benefits, so it behooves degree-holders to take the exam and try to get a post. However, it is also difficult-- it is common for people to spend an entire year studying full-time for the exam-- so some people prefer to work in one of the other types of schools. Also, when you first get a post, it may well be in another city, so until you build enough points to transfer, it is not necessarily very convenient.

Still, I will probably take the exam. Unfortunately, the next time it is being offered when I will be elegible is in June of 2011 (if things go as planned and it is actually offered then). This presents a bit of a problem, because I will complete my degree in Feb. 2010, but if I plan to take the exam, it might behoove me to spend the 2010-2011 school year studying instead of teaching, which would delay my entry into the workforce for quite a few more years. So, I'm not exactly sure what I will do. Right now, I just want to finish my degree!

Degree program, continued...

2009-02-01T17:20:00.001+01:00

Oops, I guess the "Education in the European Union" class is only for the English specialization. And of course the two blocks of student teaching are required for all the programs, but I will get to those later.

I also wanted to say more about the online program. A friend of mine did the program online at this university a few years ago, and things have changed in many of the classes. Now less work is being required, and more rides on the exams. I assume this is due to the exponential increase in online enrollment-- even with assistants, the instructors can't keep up with the grading. It is one of the few online Education degree programs in the country, and it is popular among those who have day jobs but want to change careers, those who may already have one teaching degree but want to add another specialization to be more competitive, those who are already teaching and are working against the clock to get certified so they can keep their jobs, and people--especially English majors-- who see in the rise in popularity of bilingual schools a chance to find a good job. From the university's perspective, the online program is a good way to make lots of money with little investment-- they may have to pay more teaching assistants, but enrollment is not limited by classroom space or infrastructure. In any case, the students who are actually attending classes on campus may be getting quite a different learning experience from the same instructors.

Also, I forgot to mention that there are several Saturday sessions (jornadas presenciales) throughout the year-- not quite one every month, but almost-- where you can go and meet your instructors, ask questions, etc. These are not required, but are recommended.

Right now I have in front of me my course requirements and also those for the General Primary degree, and I will talk about the classes that are for the English degree-- some are also included in Gen. Primary, but not in the other programs.

1) English Phonetics. Semester-long course. Taught in English. On the whole this was pretty useful, I'd say, and the notes were well put-together.

2) Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics. Year-long course, taught in English. Also well done, and relevant to the degree.

3) History and Geography of Anglophone Countries. Semester-long course. This was not taught in English, and it covered an enormous amount of material. Really, a huge amount. Luckily the exam was not too difficult, and the notes were very well organized. Again, I suppose this is necessary background for an EFL teacher to have.

4) Philosophy of Language. Semester-long course. This was taught in Spanish, and was pretty interesting, though fairly basic. It covered topics like What is language? Can we consider that animals (especially apes) have the capacity for some sort of language or intentional communication? When did language use evolve in humans or protohumans?

5) English and American Literature. Full-year course, taught in English. This is interesting, though so far the first semester is over and all we have studied is an introduction to Anglo-Saxon literature (think Beowulf) and to literature in the Middle Ages (a bit on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and The Canterbury Tales.) We only have to read the fragmnents of text provided in the notes, not whole novels or books. The class is supoosed to cover up to the present, a brief overview of British and American literature, but at this rate I think we will be covering only a fraction of that.

6) Linguistics. Semester-long course, taught in Spanish. This was a bit strange, because a chunk of it was devoted to stuff like grammar, syntax, and morphology, which are covered in detail in another required course taught by the same instructor in the same year of the program. The rest of it was theory, and a pretty basic overview. It didn't get into any interesting questions or delve deeply into any of the particular theories or schools of thought. Still, good background information to have, I suppose.

7) English Teaching, I and II. These are both full-year courses, taught in English, and should be where the bulk of our preparation comes from. However, both of these classes were huge disappointments, as neither provided much at all in the way of practical, relevant, and necessary information about teaching English. I can honestly say that the only thing of value I got out of these classes was in doing the required term papers, because then I was able to investigate some of the topics that I need to know. I don't want to go into any more detail, but suffice it to say that I am furious about this situation. Luckily I did a "Teaching Young Learners" course at International House back when MS was a baby, so I have plenty of notes from that to help me through.

This is getting too long, so I will continue with the non-English-related classes in another post.

Looking back on my degree program

2009-01-31T23:19:00.000+01:00

Next Saturday I have my last exam of the semester, and then on Monday I start student teaching. I only have four subjects this semester (two of which are year-long courses, so I already have a pretty good idea of how they are going), and then one more student teaching block in the fall, and I will be done.

In anticipation of the student teaching (I will be in a first grade classroom at a Catholic school) I have been perusing teacher websites with discussion forums, and it has been interesting to see a bit of what Education programs are like in the US. I thought it might be interesting to review my experiences with the program I'm in. I have to say I'm underwhelmed, though it's not terrible. A quick overview:

First I should mention a few things. For one, the program I'm doing is online (except for exams and student teaching), which obviously impacts the way the classes are taught. Perhaps I would be happier with some of the classes if I had attended them in the on-campus versions. Second, the program is pretty rigid, in that most of it is predetermined (only two electives, and there were very few options to choose from in the online program.) In fact, I believe that the program is pretty much the same in every university as far as required classes, so my particular university does not necessarily have much leeway to decide what classes to offer.

There are also 21 "free" credits that can be taken in any subject at all, and the people in my program just have the corresponding number of credits transferred from their prior studies (the online program is only open to people who already hold degrees of some sort.) Instead of trying to go through all of the hoops necessary to have credits transferred from the US, I just took a few extra electives and classes from other degree programs, so I will discuss those separately.

Another thing to keep in mind is that universities here don't seem to use textbooks-- it's all based on handouts and the notes you take in class. (Okay, maybe not all universities work this way, but this one does and from people I've talked to, it seems to be the most common way.) Since in the online program you don't actually go to class, the input is all based on the notes that the professors provide online (Though they also provide bibliographies for further study, and are available to address questions or respond to comments via email.) Obviously this presents a number of challenges, and the quality of the class depends in large part on the instructor's ability to create clear, relevant, well-organized and well-written notes, and to propose assignments that are useful and engaging. It will probably come as no surprise to hear me say that some of the instructors are quite good at this, while others are pretty poor at it. Fortunately, most fall into the "acceptable to very good" range, but differences among them are apparent, and it matters more than it would with typical textbook-based learning.

Finally, I should explain that the Primary education degree is available with different "specializations." My university offers General Primary, Foreign Language (English), Special Ed, Early Childhood (this means 3-6 year olds), and Speech, Hearing, and Language Specialist. As a FL degree holder, I will be elegible to teach elementary students as either their regular classroom teacher or as an English teacher who teaches different groups at the same school. The people who get the General Primary degree have to take a semester of English teaching as well, plus a whole bunch of science classes.

I was going to group the subjects by which year you take them in, but it makes more sense to group them by type, so that's what I'll do.

Classes required for all of the teaching specializations:

1) Special Ed. Full-year course, probably one of the best and most useful of the whole degree. Excellent instructor.

2) General Didactics. Full-year course. Also practical and interesting.

3) Psychology. Full-year course, but it was divided into two thematic blocks. First semester was Psychology of Education, and second semester was Developmental Psychology. Everybody complained about this one, because of the enormous amount of material it covered, but that was one of the reasons I liked it. It was almost like having a textbook (in fact, it was like having several textbooks, because most of the notes were taken from actual textbooks.) Anyway, the material covered in this class was also highly relevant and useful.

4) Theories and Institutions in Contemporary Education. Semester-long course. I understand why this is required, and I suppose it is important background to have. Still, it wasn't particularly engaging-- mostly just a lot of stuff to memorize.

5) New Technologies Applied to Education. Semester-long course. This one was interesting. It included media literacy, visual literacy, and also different types of multimedia applications that can be used in teaching, and how to evaluate them for effectiveness, etc. On the whole, pretty useful, I'd say.

6) School Organization and Administration. Semester-long course. This was about as (un)interesting as it sounds. I could probably just repeat my comment for number 4, and in fact there are several classes for which I could probably use that same description.

7) Sociology of Education. Semester-long course. I had high hopes for this class, but in effect it was another number 4. It was a pretty basic introduction to sociology in general and as applied to education, with brief explanations of several different theories and authors, but again, not particularly engaging or interesting. Lots to memorize and forget.

8) Education in the European Community. Semester-long course, which I haven't started yet. From what students from other years have said, it basically involves working with a group of other students to fill in a table about aspects of education in a particular EU country, then sharing the information about your country with all the other groups. Based on that description and other students' impression, this class is basically just a big Pain In The Ass. I get to find out soon...

Okay, I'll continue some other time with the classes specific to the Foreign Language degree, and the electives. Once again, I have no idea who, if anyone, is reading this (I do have a site meter but I'm too lazy to look up my password to check it, and it doesn't give info about search terms or geography or other stuff like that anyway). But, I am quite curious about what Education degree programs look like in other places, so if anyone cares to comment about that or anything else, I'd love to hear it!

What makes a good teacher?

2008-12-12T09:51:00.000+01:00

Interesting article from the New Yorker, via aldaily.com. Though I confess I skipped the football metaphor paragraphs-- time is at a premium, internet-shortened attention span, and all that.

It does mention some examples of typical preschool behavior, and how some teachers don't recognize what's developmentally appropriate, though in this example it's girls.

The Trouble With Boys

2008-12-11T12:36:00.000+01:00

Have you heard about this book? It has garned a fair amount of media attention, as did the Newseek cover story on the same subject, which the book grew out of. I was very curious about the whole thing, both as a mother of three boys and as a teacher-to-be. Well, I just put up a review of the book at my other blog, and instead of cross-posting, I'll just direct you over there. If I possibly can (despite projects due, upcoming exams, and most importantly the upcoming school vacation which whittles my work/blogging time to pretty much nothing) I'd like to discuss it more in depth.

In the meantime, here's a video from the Today Show that features an interview with the author, Peg Tyre, about her findings, and also shows some programs being put into place to help boys succeed. It's only 15 minutes long, and wuite interesting.

The part where she talks about preschool is especially interesting considering the way Spanish preschools are set up. I'd love to hear from other parents and what you think about the issue.

But for now, I'd love for you all to click over to the review!

More on accents and bilingual kids (mine!)

2008-12-04T10:47:00.000+01:00

This one is the last repost, and is not directly related to school, but it is related to the topic of the previous post, accents.

So it just dawned on me a couple of days ago that MS was using his own version of the accent technique. I've noticed this a few times now: when he is speaking to me in English and either doesn't know or can't remember the word he wants to use, he will say it in Spanish with an English-speaker's accent. This is somewhat more interesting to me, as the only native English speaker he ever hears speaking Spanish is me, and while I do have somewhat of an accent, (people have told me it is a hard-to-place accent) it is most definitely not anything like what MS uses in these situations. That means he is applying English phonetics to Spanish, all on his own. I bet some of you are thinking that my accent is probably more noticeable than I think it is, and of course the most logical explanation would be that he is imitating me. But I really, really do distinguish English /t/ from Spanish /t/, for example, and that was one of the phonemes that he substituted. Of course I may slip ocasionally, and maybe he heard my English-speaking family saying a word or two in Spanish on this visit (he does have a very good auditory memory), but I don't think that would be enough to account for his accent.

I also realized that I do my own version of imitating the Spanish accent at times-- when I am in a pharmacy or restaurant and asking for a product whose name is in English, I usually pronounce it the Spanish way instead of the correct English way. This is mostly to make sure that the person understands what I am asking for, though it is possible that at times I underestimate their ability to understand. It's funny, though, that I often have a really hard time understanding what people are saying when they try to talk to me about American actors or singers or place names. They expect me to know exactly what they are talking about, since of course I am American, but half the time I am nodding politely while frantically trying to figure it out.

I also remember a Saturday Night Live sketch (from the eighties, probably), about American newscasters trying to outdo each other with their "authentic" pronunciations of Spanish words like "Nicaragua." It was pretty hilarious, and just goes to show that in some situations, affecting authentic pronunciation just sounds, well, affected and artificial.

Bilingual Education

2008-12-04T10:40:00.000+01:00

Bear with me for just two more reposts from the other blog, then I will get into some new stuff. I would love to hear some insights if anyone out there cares to share. Please chime in!

We just had a wonderful visit from family who only speak English, so when they were around my husband was speaking a lot of English. On the weekend, when we were all together, he interrupted his usual role as Spanish-speaker to the kids in our OPOL system (one parent, one language: each parent speaks his/her native language to the kids) and spoke to them in English. When OS answered him in English, I noticed a new phenomenon. OS was speaking English to his father with a Spanish accent, one he never uses with me. Apparently he was transferring the principle of speaking differently to each parent to include accents!

Then yesterday we were talking about it, and OS said that kids at at school pronounce "lettuce" as if it were Spanish, "leh- tooth- ay." He said he didn't want to say it the wrong way, because then he might forget how to say it the right way. Apparently the conundrum of "speaking correctly because that's what comes naturally" vs. "speaking like everyone else in my class" has begun. He said the teacher even says it wrong: Let- toos. I asked, and he said that this was not his regular English and classroom teacher (who, much to my disappointment, has left the school) but someone else. To be fair, this someone else might not be an actual English teacher, just someone filling in while they look for a replacement.) Luckily, school will not be the kids' most important source of input in English, and the fact that it is a bilingual school (meaning that they have some of their subjects in English, plus English class) means that they will be getting lots of extra exposure to English, written and spoken (regardless of the pronunciation.)

It does make me wonder, however, about the wisdom of using written language with such young learners. They are still consolidating their reading skills in Spanish, and it seems to me that maybe it would be better if they still worked mostly orally in English. Obviously the lettuce mispronunciation is due to them reading the word as if it were Spanish, which indicates to me that they are learning it incorrectly. On the other hand, when I have heard kids speaking phrases that are mostly used in class (open the door, quite please, etc) and also songs and chants, they seem to do much better with the pronunciation, probably because they are reproducing oral input rather than working with written words.

Of course, I am not an auditory learner, and I would find it difficult to remember vocabulary without a written support-- not to mention that without that (or a substitute like a CD to listen to) I wouldn't really be able to study. I don't know what the answer is. To be fair, I have seen the English book they use, and it is pretty heavily-weighted toward pictures rather than text. They do also have a companion book which is for reading and is more text-heavy. If they are going to be using English as a vehicular language for other school subjects, they really do need to learn how to read it well, too. I really don't know much about teaching English to young learners who are still learning how to read and write their native language as well. Anyone have any insight (or book recommendations?)

Biliteracy... Our Experience, Part II

2008-12-02T12:01:00.000+01:00

This post was written at the end of October of this year:

Last year, in the 5-year-old class of Educación Infantil, the kids learned to read. They start out very slowly at 3 years old, and at 4 they begin to pick up the pace slightly (so far, as far as I know, they are still just working on the vowels in MS's class) but by the end of the last year of Infantil, the kids are reading. Of course this is a somewhat easier task in Spanish than in English, because in Spanish the written language corresponds very closely to the sounds of speech (meaning that a given combination of letters most likely has only one possible pronunciation, unlike our bough, cough, enough, though... you get the idea.)

It did take a lot of work on OS's part (and his father's part, as his father worked with him quite a bit) but he did it. I didn't want to start in with reading English at the same time, so as not to overwhelm or confuse him, so I didn't try to do any formal teaching. Now, though, OS is reading in English, too-- on his own!

While we haven't done anything formal, the groundwork was laid in various ways. First, of course, I have been reading to the kids in English from the very beginning. Also, they have watched lots of Sesame Street, and we have a Between the Lions DVD. I have made it a point to talk about sounds in different words as they come up in reading or speaking (lately, especially things that differ from Spanish, like silent "e" and not-silent "h".) And finally, since OS enjoys playing on the computer, I have encouraged him to play games that involve reading, like Super Why. Probably we've done other things, too, but only in short doses. But the upshot of all of this is that he has successfully transferred his reading skills in Spanish to reading in English, despite the many differences in pronunciation.

Oddly, though, he has a Spanish accent when reading in English, even though he doesn't have this accent while speaking. I'm assuming it's only temporary, while he consolidates his skills, but it did give me pause. I imagine it is due in part to the act of reading itself, as he applies his Spanish reading procedure (since it's a phonetic language, they basically teach by phonics, as opposed to a more whole-language approach) to English. And possibly some of it is influenced by the accents of his teachers at the bilingual school he attends. I know he can really read, though, and is not just sounding out the sounds. One indication of this is the fact that the other day we were playing Bingo (instead of numbers, with words for OS and pictures for MS). When OS was in charge of reading off the cards, he was able to do so confidently and without the accent. Maybe because they were isolated words and not a longer text?

Anyway, I thought that was interesting, and the whole reading-in-English thing was something I was concerned about (how to go about it, etc.) So I'm sharing this about how it worked out for us in case anyone else is interested (and I'd love to hear about your experiences as well-- even if you've never commented here before!)

Biliteracy... Our Experience, Part I

2008-11-30T22:00:00.000+01:00

Okay, I do want to go ahead and post here, now that I said I would. But I'm kind of pressed for time right now, so the new stuff will have to wait. I thought I would post a little bit about our family's experience with the kids and learning to read (mostly pulled from the other blog, so I'm sorry for the repetition.) Anyway, the oldest is now 6, in first grade, and also in his fourth year of formal schooling, since that starts with full-day preschool at age 3 here (though schooling is not obligatory until first grade.) He is already reading in both languages, and his 4 year-old brother is now learning vowels, and can write his name-- a new development in the past month or so.

Part I is from a post I wrote at the beginning of the school year last year, when the oldest was in his last year of Infantil (I did edit a bit.) First, though, I will post links to the posts immediately before it, because they also fit in with the "School in Spain" theme and provide some background:

Kindergarten Curriculum, Math Edition
Kindergarten Curriculum, Reading Edition

And now, the post:

Someone commented on my last post asking how/whether I am teaching the kids to read in English, and if it is confusing to them as they are learning Spanish. Very good question, and in fact I asked something very similar to one of the expert linguists at Multilingual Living Magazine. (It was in the Jan-Feb 2007 issue, and there was also an article about biliteracy, so anyone who is a current subscriber can check it out in the archives.)

The experts seemed to think that it is usually best to let the child learn to read in one language first (probably the community language) and then those reading skills will transfer over to the minority language when the child is ready to learn. They caution that it may indeed be confusing for the child to be taught two different systems at once, and not really necessary.

However, our kids have not been at all confused by the fact that the letter "A" has one name in Spanish and another name in English. They already know that they speak two languages and that there are at least two different words for the same thing, one in each language. I have been singing the alphabet song with them since they were tiny, and they have watched a lot of Sesame Street, so they are familiar with the alphabet. I started teaching them to read the letters, not in any formal way, but just as it would come up, quite awhile ago, and Santi has done the same with the Spanish alphabet. OS knows his letters in both languages and MS knows some of them. I think they just assume that if the person speaking to them is speaking in Spanish, the /ei/ sound refers to the letter "E" and if it's an English speaker, they mean "A."

I have also done a lot of nursery rhymes, pointing out rhymes when they occur in books or in real life, and talking about sounds. With this last I don't make a big point of associating the sound with the written letter, though we took advantage of OS's Superman stage by associating the letter "S" with the sound /s/ and talking about different words that start with that sound, in both Spanish and English (since that is one letter whose sound is pretty consistent between the two languages.)

But, other than general phonological awareness stuff and the names of the letters, I am not consciously trying to teach him (OS) to read in English. English is such a confusing language to read because of the different sound/spelling combinations that I really do think it would confuse him. Better that he get reading Spanish down first, as that is a very transparent language, and then when he's ready, we can work on English. (On the other hand, if he starts to ask about writing in English or show particular interest, then I would go ahead and start with some easy stuff...)

And, if I hadn't been working on this stuff all along, I wouldn't just start on it right as he's learning the letters and sounds in Spanish. On one hand, it seems like the logical time to start, but on the other hand, if it's new to him as a concept, I think it would be unnecessarily confusing to try to do both at once.

So that's my experience, though I am not an expert, and obviously different people will have different experiences.

I'm back...

2008-11-27T15:36:00.000+01:00

No, I haven't given up on this blog-- I just got busy! I do want to get back into it, though, now that I have some more interesting issues to explore. For one thing, I will be starting my student teaching in February, and while I won't be blogging about specifics due to confidentiality concerns, I will probably have lots to say more generally. Also, I want to talk a bit about bilingual education, and teaching EFL to kids, and at some point I will be reviewing Peg Tyre's The Trouble With Boys. I just got it in the mail and have read only a few pages but I'm already eager to discuss it.

And I'm eager to have some discussion in general, so I hope that those of you who have been stopping by will come back and participate, now there there will actually be some new content up. I imagine I will have to go searching you all back out again (or wait until your searches land you back here)-- or maybe some of you will see this pop up on your feed reader, if you haven't purged un-updated blogs from it in about a year or so.

Yes, I see from my tag list that there are labels for four-year-olds and two-year-olds-- but now I have a four-year-old and a six-year-old (and a nine month old, but he's not in school.) So, time to update! Please stay tuned.

Is anybody with me????

Resource for EFL/ESL teachers

2007-10-01T12:28:00.000+02:00

Hmm, the future of this blog is uncertain. I'm leaning toward deleting it and just writing about school and education on my other blog, which is what I've been doing lately, anyway. But I did want to share this first.

I was contacted by the owner of the site ESL Printables, who told me about the site and asked me to pass it on. I had actually seen it before, when searching for materials for various projects, and I liked the idea of it. You can register for free, and then you can download ten printables (lesson plans, worksheets, etc) for every one you contribute. The idea is to be a place where teachers can share what they've done with other teachers. I didn't end up joining at that point, since I had nothing to contribute (and I was on some tight deadlines) but I will definitely keep it in mind for the future.

On Teaching History

2007-06-06T12:13:00.000+02:00

A great article (or actually, Commentary), from Education Week. I get their weekly newsletter so I'm a registered guest, eligible to read two free articles a week (I mention this because I'm not sure whether the link will allow you to go directly to the article.)

And I am mulling over the question of values in education, and a post is in the works about the Spanish ed system in this respect (they mandate certain values as part of the curriculum.) But it may be awhile before I get to it...

Answering my own question

2007-06-04T18:23:00.001+02:00

As I was going to get the boys from school, a solution (to the question below about ability grouping and attention to diversity) occurred to me. Instead of fixed reading groups, each with a different textbook, (like we had when I was in school) everyone could use the same text. The activities could be done in flexible groupings-- sometimes mixed ability, sometimes same-level. The same-level groupings could be composed of different students at different times, according to each situation. They could be used so that those who need extra practice with a particular aspect could get that, while others could work on some kind of extension activity. The mixed-level groupings could be used at other times so that students could help each other and learn cooperation skills etc. Of course, in this ideal classroom, they wouldn't be limited to a textbook, but rather use it as a jumping-off point for further exploration.

I think that this approach is what fits in best with the attention to diversity focus, because all students are getting the same curriculum, but with adaptations when necessary. The teacher would have to work a lot harder, though, to make sure that this approach was actually meeting everyone's needs...

Equity in Education, among other things

2007-06-03T23:13:00.001+02:00

This is a repost of something from the other blog, but is in fact quite a bit longer and more involved, so if you've read it over there, you can just skip down to the line of asterisks to read the rest.

Have you seen this article in the NYT Magazine about when to send your child to kindergarten? I had a little window into this question as I listened to (okay, read) the moms on a discussion group I belong to discuss their thoughts on the issue and decisions about whether to send their kids this coming year or wait. (It's an Internet group for parents of kids born in summer 2002.) Here it was never really an issue, as most parents send their kids to preschool at age three, when the public school system begins (though it's not obligatory until age six.)And the cutoff is that you must turn three in the calendar year in which you start, so that means the ages can range almost a full year, with some kids born in January and others born in December.

Of course, the article brings up the important point that for some kids, cutoffs that involve waiting longer to start school put them at a real disadvantage. While well-off families can afford quality preschools or other programs, kids from families who are economically strapped may end up having to, in the words of a literacy specialist quoted in the article, "spend one more year watching TV in the basement with Grandma," thereby falling even further behind their peers. I was shocked to see the mention of a "$10,000-a-year preschool." And also this tidbit, which may come as no surprise to some of you, referring to the US:

In 49 out of 50 states, the average annual cost of day care for a 4-year-old in an urban area is more than the average annual public college tuition. Yikes.

So I am grateful that a) daycare is not that expensive here-- at least, where we live; b) The kids can start school for free at age 3; and c) Public universities here are nowhere near as expensive as my alma mater, a state school that I just looked up. Even my private university here is much less expensive.

But actually, after reading the article, I am feeling extremely fortunate for having had all of the privileges I have enjoyed, beginning at birth, that have allowed me to fully (?) develop whatever innate aptitudes I may carry in my genes. And of course it begins before birth, doesn't it, with adequate prenatal care and nutrition and non-exposure to toxic chemicals...

Which relates to something I've been thinking about lately, also. In a book I read awhile ago (and wanted to blog about, but never actually did), I learned that one of the Nordic countries (maybe Finland?) has no private schools at all, so that the well-off parents concentrate their efforts on improving the public school system instead of migrating their children out of it. This has been on my mind, because next year we are putting the kids into a semi-private school, which will lead us to be seen, in some circles, as raging right-wingers. The truth is that the public school closest to us does not seem to be very ethnically diverse, and in fact does not seem to be all that economically diverse, either, but probably will be more so-- on both counts-- than the new school. We were very happy with Pedro's public school, and our reasons for changing him have much more to do with convenience in location than with any desire on our part to provide the kids with an elitist education, but the reality is that that is probably what they are going to get.

*********************************************************************

One of the approaches we have studied is cooperative learning with heterogeneous groupings, in which students of differing abilities learn from each other. This approach, combined with certain techniques in managing the groups, can help insure that successes are more equitably shared in the classroom, so that the same students aren't always getting all the props, so to speak, while others don't have the opportunity to get recognition from the teacher or their classmates.

This certainly sounds like a valuable strategy that can be used in different contexts, and actually can be used in conjunction with ability grouping-- some activities in heterogeneous groups and some in same-level groups.

The larger questions, though, are what's puzzling me. Obviously what's better for some is worse for others. Then there is the question of what is better for society-- having everyone achieve a similar level so that no one is left behind, or allowing for some individuals to achieve more even if that means that others won't get their fair share? (No, I'm not going to go all Ayn Rand on you all, I promise. Just thinking out loud, and obviously the situation is much more complex than I'm making it out to be. It's hard to even know how to formulate the questions.)

Building an intercultural classroom

2007-05-27T11:40:00.000+02:00

That's the name of my website (well, the translation of the name. The website is in Spanish.) I'm almost done with this first year of classes-- just a month of exams and a few more assignments. I haven't been writing much here lately, obviously, and in fact I have been thinking about deleting this blog. I may, or may not, but just in case, you might want to save any links you may use from this page. Also, if anyone actually does read this and thinks I should continue, please let me know-- especially what exactly you are interested in seeing more of.

But on to the webpage. I have had a few technical glitches, but except for the midi sound files, it is now up and running here: Construyendo un aula intercultural. And because I'm in a hurry, I'll just copy and paste an explanation from my other blog:

The class I did this for is called "Applied Informática" (I guess that would be "computer science?" They borrow the term from the French, who invented it by combining "information" and "automatic") and the focus is not so much on learning all the technical details as it is about how to use the shortcuts (like FrontPage, where you don't need to know html) to create educational materials. Basically the class consists of doing a PowerPoint presentation (though more than a presentation, a simple multimedia application) so I did that on Sports in English (go vs.play... "go biking, play football"... and vocabulary) and the website.

The website had to be on one of the transversal topics, which are topics that have to be woven in throughout the curriculum. They are mostly attitudes and values, and include issues like the environment, gender equality, conflict resolution, and interculturalism, among others. It has been interesting to see how these topics have been included in Pedro's classes. Lots of good stuff to choose from, but I ended up with interculturalism. Since that is a huge topic, I needed to break it down, and I wanted to contribute something that could actually be useful, and not too generic.

I chose to focus on how to choose intercultural educational materials (the difference between multicultural and intercultural will have to wait for another post, though the borders are very blurred.) I think this is important because there is a lot of stuff out there, but not all of it is culturally sensitive/ appropriate/ non-promoting of stereotypes, etc. The title of the page is "Building an Intercultural Classroom," and it was a bit strange to set myself up as an authority, since I am only in my first year of school and I haven't had any experience in constructing any kind of classroom yet. Still, I do think there is a need for this, so I chose to go ahead and gear it towards teachers rather than students. I think the best part is the links, which send the reader to stuff written by people who are experts on the subject. I also think my position as a cultural outsider gives me a different perspective. For example, the Conguitos chocolate thing, which as that article points out, most Spanish people don't even think about because it's something they've seen their whole lives. Also the "I is for Indian" thing (here's a good article on that.)

Really what I'm hoping for is to get people thinking about these issues, and that some of them will click through the links for more information. Of course I realize that choosing the materials is only one part of the equation, but I think it's enough to focus on for a small website.

Learning to read

2007-05-04T12:04:00.000+02:00

I haven't been posting here, but that is due more to a lack of time than to a lack of things to say. I am in the final stretch of the semester, and hardly have time to breathe. I'd like to come back and post on a few more topics, but for now just a quickie:

In the Developing Language Skills class, we are on the last unit, devoted to learning to read and write. I have to analyze a method, and in the one I am using I found one explanation of why kids here learn to read in cursive: the cursive form of the letters prevents difficulty for dyslexics, because the b and d and p and q are all suficiently different from each other. I still wouldn't choose this approach myself, but so far it's the only explanation that I can really see the value of...

And now, I slip away again!

Constructivism

2007-03-05T22:24:00.000+01:00

Susan asked for more information about Constructivism in Spain. So, I will attempt to oblige, but the truth is that I have very little experience with how it actually plays out in the schools here-- so far, all I really know about is OS's school experience, which was last year at 3 and this year in the 4-year-old class. And even that knowledge is very limited, as I am not actually in the classroom. I know that when we were looking at schools, someone said that one of the schools doesn't use textbooks in their Infantil (ages 3-5) program because "they're Constructivists." But actually, you can still use textbooks as Constructivists (which incidentally, all public schools are supposed to be, as laid out in the Educational Reform.) You probably wouldn't rely on them exclusively, and in fact they might not be the best way of achieving your educational goals (especially at the Infantil level), but you can still use them.

All of what I know about Constructivism comes from the classes I'm taking, which deal with how we should teach, but until I do my student teaching I won't know to what extent the precepts are followed in actual classrooms (and I suspect that varies widely from one school to another.)

So, here goes my minilecture...

Constructivism is a model of learning that grew out of the Cognitivist (sorry if I'm botching the translation here) paradigm. The Cognitivist paradigm grew out of a dissatisfaction with the Behavioralist paradigm, which considered that all learning takes place due to conditioning, i.e. an association between a stimulus and its effect.

This site sums it up:

The constructivist theories take on a variety of forms just like the behavioristic and cognitivistic. The basic distinction, however, is that while the behaviorists viewed knowledge as nothing more than passive, largely automatic responses to external factors in the environment and the cognitivists viewed knowledge as abstract symbolic representations in the head of individuals, the constructivistic shool views knowledge as a constructed entity made by each and every learner through a learning process. Knowledge can thus not be transmitted from one person to the other, it will have to be (re)constructed by each person. This means that the view of knowledge differs from the "knowledge as given and absolute" views of behaviorism and cognitivism.

Googling "Constructivism" has confirmed what I was going to say, which is basically that it represents a very broad conceptual framework that includes many different approaches. Often mentioned as founders are Dewey, Piaget, Bruner, and Vygotsky, but I don't think that most schools here base their instruction on pure discovery-based learning. For example, we had a unit in Psych about David Ausubel's idea of Significant Verbal Reception, which means that students can be actively constructing knowledge while listening to a teacher speak or while reading a textbook. The key is in three points: First, the student must possess some prior knowledge that is somehow related to the new knowledge that s/he is expected to acquire. In order for a student to really learn, she must make adjustments to her mental framework in order to accomodate the new information. If there is no relevant prior knowledge, there is nothing to accomodate the new stuff into. So the first step is always activating students' prior knowledge-- finding out what they know, what misconceptions they have about the subject, etc. This is referred to as "psychological significance."

The second aspect is making sure that the material to be learned is organized and presented in such a way as to facilitate the accomodation/assimilation/construction of knowledge process. This is referred to as "logical significance."

The third point is that the student must be willing to undertake the task of learning this particular content. This is referred to as "disposition." Since we are not talking about mere memorization or rote learning, the student must take an active role-- not necessarily active in the sense of physically doing things, manipulating material, etc, though that may be the most effective way of learning certain types of material, and some Constructivists argue that it is indeed necessary. That would be Discovery-based learning, Inductive learning, etc. and may involve a fairly "hands-off" approach from the teacher. This kind of interpretation is probably what the PRI report was concentrating on. However, Ausubel's model focuses on the activity at a cognitive level.

Awhile ago I got a book out of the library which was about a Constructivist approach to teaching kids to read and write, developed by a group of teachers here in Spain (the book was put out in conjunction with the Ministry of Ed) and I have been meaning to write about it here. It was actually a series of books, and I was most interested in the stuff aimed at 3-5 year olds, since that's the age of OS and I wanted to compare their approach with what he was actually being taught. Obviously there's a whole lot to say about this (a whole other post...), but even the fact that they were doing these writing activities with kids so young shows that it is not all a free-for-all, do-whatever-strikes-your-fancy kind of approach. The kids are being creative and exploring and having fun with language, but the teacher is guiding and observing and suggesting and giving feedback and structuring etc.

OS's school uses a textbook (worksheets) for practicing making the letters and recognizing the sounds in different words. It's not just drills-- the worksheets involve different techniques and seem fun-- but it is not the approach in the book I read. On the other hand, the workbook is just one part of what they do in class, and it is likely that there are other approaches being used as well. I do know that Pedro often will write down some random letters and then ask me what it says-- he is clearly interested in the process and understands that we use letters to make words. If he's writing his name and gets to the end of the page before he finishes, he might go back and add the rest of the letters to the left of the first letter of his name, so he obviously hasn't yet gotten the whole concept down, but it's a good start.

Anyway, I don't really know much more than that at this point. I am curious to see what things are like in the school I do my student teaching at, but that won't be until next year...

Multiculturalism Revisited

2007-02-27T12:32:00.000+01:00

So, I finally wrote and sent the letter (email) to the teaching magazine. I had sort of given up on the idea, first because I was starting to second-guess myself, saying, "What right do I have to tell Spanish people how to treat multicultural issues, when it's not even my country?" Then, I got caught up with exams, and now the March issue of the magazine is about to come out, so it seemed too late to comment about something from January. But then I read this post over at ReadingWritingLiving and I thought to myself, "You know, it may not be my country, but I live here, my children are growuing up here, and I am going to form part of the education system here, so of course I have a right to express my opinion. Even if they ignore my letter, it's worth sending." Thanks, Susan! So, here is what I wrote. I'll paste in the original, then translate it below:

¡Hola y saludos a vuestro equipo de redactores!

Estoy estudiando primer curso de Magisterio, y estoy encantada con la revista. Sólo querría hacer un comentario respecto al calendario de enero. En él, aparece un dibujo para conmemorar la instalación de la base española en la Antártida, en lo cual un esquimal toca una guitarra. Dejando a un lado el hecho de que los esquimales son nativos del Árctico, y no de Antártida, me ha chocado mucho la imágen.

Soy de los EEUU, y en mi país un dibujo así, con rasgos muy estereotipados (tono de piel amarillo, ojos excesivamente alargados, dientes sobresalientes) sería considerado como una caracterización racista y muy ofensiva.

Por supuesto reconozco que la intención del artista era buena: acompañar la fecha con un dibujo lúdico y colorido para atraer la atención de los alumnos. Al incluir la guitarra, elemento que también juega con un estereotipo sobre los españoles, seguramente querría aludir a un intercambio positivo de culturas.

Sin embargo, aún cuando nuestras intenciones son buenas, imágenes de este tipo realmente pueden hacer daño. Es una caracterización de una persona asiática como una figura de burla, poco atractiva, y muy "otro." Desafortunadamente, en EEUU desde la propaganda antijaponesa de la segunda guerra mundial hasta ejemplos menos malintencionados pero aún así racistas de la cultura popular, hemos visto imágenes similares, y sí que tienen efectos sobre el autoconcepto de los niños asiáticos y también sobre las actitudes de los niños de la cultura mayoritaria.

Evidentamente, España es un país con contexto histórico-cultural propio, y con sus propias formas de vivir el en encuentro entre culturas. No se trata de importar formas de lo "políticamente correcto" desde otro país, pero sí creo que es importante hacer una reflexión partiendo de la realidad española, cada vez más multicultural.

Como inmigrante, madre de niños en el sistema educativa española, y futura maestra, me preocupa mucho la cuestión de como podemos reconocer y celebrar las diferencias culturales sin caer en estereotipos o mensajes negativos. Me encantaría que en un número futuro de vuestra revista tratéises el tema de como educar para la interculturalidad.

Atentamente,

Translation (on the fly, but here's the gist):

Hello and greetings to your staff!

I'm in my first year of a teacher-training program, and I love your magazine. I just wanted to comment on the calendar in the January issue. In it there is a drawing to conmemorate the establishment of the Spanish base in Antartica, in which an Esquimo is playing a guitar. Aside from the fact that Eskimos are native to the Arctic, not Antartica, I was disturbed by the image.

I'm from the USA, and in my country a drawing like that, with such stereotypical features (yellow skin, slanty eyes, buck teeth) would be considered racist and very offensive.

Of course I understand that the artist had good intentions: to accompany the date with a fun and colorful drawing that would attract kids' attention. By including the guitar, which plays off a stereotype of Spanish people, probably s/he wanted to convey a positive interchange of cultures.

However, even when our intentions are good, these types of images can really be harmful. It is a characterization of an Asian person as someone to be made fun of, unattractive, and very "other." Unfortunately, in the USA, from the anti-Japanese propagande of WWII to other examples, less malintentioned but nonetheless racist, in popular culture, we have seen similar images, and they do have effects on the self-concept of Asian-American children as well as on the attitudes of children from the majority culture.

Obviously, Spain is a country with its own historical-cultural context and its own ways of experiencing the encounter between cultures. The point is not to import "politically correct" forms from another country, but I do think it is important to reflect on the issue, from the perspective of a Spain which is becoming increasingly multicultural.

As an immigrant, mother of children in the Spanish education system, and future teacher, I am very interested in the question of how we can recognize and celebrate cultural differences without falling into stereotypes or negative messages. I would love to see your magazine, in a future issue, address the topic of how to educate for interculturalism.

Sincerely,....

***********

I'll report back if I hear anything from them.

In the meantime, here is a link to an article about how racial caricatures perpetuate stereotypes . Also, The National Resource Center for the Healing of Racism, which has a set of links for educators K-12, among other things.

English Teaching

2007-02-19T09:50:00.000+01:00

I've just added a great new blog to my blogroll-- apparently it hasn't been updated since November, but a quick browse turns up all sorts of interesting posts, regardless...

On Praise

2007-02-15T10:36:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting article about the unintended effects of praise. I would like to read more of Carol Dweck's work, but to start, this has some very important implications for teachers...

Fanatacism and school spirit

2007-02-06T06:59:00.000+01:00

Heh. I bet this post is not going to be what you are expecting from that title...

The other day I got an envelope from the university (the large public one with which mine is affiliated.) The return address, apart from the university seal, just said "Libros." Inside was a little book whose cover was about the size of an index card. It turned out to be a reprint, special to the university, of the first chapter of Amos Oz's How to Cure a Fanatic. Apparently every year they choose a text to print and distribute to all of the students. Pretty neat tradition.

It reminded me of something the Latin teacher said last year. Background: last year, in preparation for the university entrance exams, I took a Latin class one night a week at the university. The class was geared toward preparing students for a different access exam (not the one I had to take,) one that is for people over the age of 25 who did not complete (or pass) the two-year college prep course that comes after the obligatory secondary education ends at age 16. In the class were mostly students my age (early thirties) or older, most of them working, who had never attended university.

Anyway, the teacher (professor, actually, but she was probably my age or younger-- so the fact that she had earned a professorship already is pretty impressive) was very enthusiastic about her subject, and seemed excited about helping these people get into university. One day she waxed eloquent about what she called "espíritu de universidad," university spirit. She wasn't referring to cheering on the sports teams; rather, she was talking about an attitude of intellectual curiosity-- the years you spend at university are opportunities to read, think, develop, etc.

Certainly not the prevailing sentiment at US universities. Of course, it may not be the prevailing sentiment here, either, but I do think it is present to a greater degree. I remember reading an article not too long ago that was featured on aldaily with the teaser that "too many Americans go to college." It was a three-part series in the Wall Street Opinion Journal, and basically said that not everyone is capable of succesfully doing university-level work, and instead of dumbing-down the curriculum and requiring everyone to get a college degree in order to find a decent job, we would be better off optimizing other types of training programs and providing more options for people who just aren't college material (and according to the author, that would be a significant number.) The articles probably caused quite a stir, as there was a lot in them that was controversial (another example: he posited that while it is important to provide a quality education to everyone so that they can achieve as much as they are capable of, the bottom line is that what you are ultimately capable of has an upper limit marked by your IQ, or at least by a genetically-determined level of cognitive ability, so that it is not realistic or fair to expect all students to be high achievers.) Here are the second and third parts in the series.

I think that here in Spain, up until fairly recently, it was not expected that everyone go to college, nor was it necessary for getting many jobs. My husband was studying engineering when the opportunity arose to get an entry-level position in a major telecommunications company. He took it, while continuing to study, but eventually left school and concentrated on the internal promotion exams withing the company, working his way up to where he is now. This was fairly common a generation or so ago, but now even degree-holders have a hard time getting a foot in the door.

It is harder to get into college than in the States, it seems, and you are accepted into a specific program with a rigid sequence of classes such that everyone graduating with a specific degree, even to a large extent among different universities, has a common body of knowledge about their discipline upon graduation. There are some degrees that are only three years, like the teaching degree (though that will most likely be changed in the near future), but most are five years long, and quite challenging. The Latin teacher told us about her fifth year, when they had five-hour long exams translating Latin and Greek.

So all of this implies a certain selection process: first, the top scorers on the entrance exams get first choice at which program they want to study; then once in, the first couple of years are fairly difficult, as a "weeding out" process. (At least that is how it was in my husband's engineering program way back when-- perhaps that has changed, and it may be different in the humanities. The teaching program is not structured that way; rather, the first year is dedicated mostly to general teaching/education theory and skills, while the second two years are specialized according to what you want to teach. The three-year programs are considered to be easier, and there has been a stigma attached to teaching that the people who choose it do so because they aren't capable of or don't want to pursue higher-level studies. However, that may be changing. In my program, everyone already has a degree, and I think many have turned to teaching because they haven't found work in the field they studied.)

In that sense, the people who are in college, or at least in certain programs, already tend to be people who are intellectually curious or at least who enjoy/ have a certain degree of affinity for the type of work that is required. (Here I should insert a disclaimer saying that this is only my impression, and may not actually be the case.)

And here, what you do for a living is not considered your defining characteristic. People don't necessarily expect to be fulfilled by their jobs; work is just what you do to get a paycheck. Of course, long hours and long commutes make it increasingly difficult for many people to cultivate any sort of interest or activity outside of the workday, which is unfortunate. And of course there are high-status professions and lower-status professions, but in the end, it doesn't seem to matter as much, at least to other people, what you do.

I'm going to end here-- lots of work to do!

Constructivism under fire

2007-01-30T10:51:00.000+01:00

The other day I found a report (from 2001) from the Pacific Research Institute called "Facing the Classroom Challenge: Teacher Quality and Teacher Training in California's Schools of Education." (You can try this link, but if it doesn't work, try searching from their site.) I haven't read it all in detail, but it is basically a critique (maybe just a criticism) of the Constructivist methods taught to and employed by teachers in California. This was interesting to me, as here in Spain, by law, the education system is inscribed within the Constructivist paradigm. The PRI is a conservative group, and they don't think much of these new-fangled, touchy-feely methods, and actually they make a pretty good case, to a certain degree.

From what I've seen in my classes, the Spanish system--or at least my professors--seem to take a more moderate view of the constructivist model, one that allows for (and in fact, requires) more teacher guidance and intervention (i.e. it's not completely discovery-based, inductive learning.) The model of Significant Verbal-Receptive Learning (I'm undoubtedly mangling the translation here, but I really have to get back to studying so I'm not going to check now) posited by David Ausubel was given a very prominent place in the Ed. Psych curriculum, whereas it was not mentioned in the PRI report. In fact, many of the authors cited by the report as promoting alternatives to constructivist approaches are also featured in the curriculum here. So it seems that the PRI (or maybe, the State of California) has taken a narrower view of the model than what we are learning.

Still, it is quite interesting to get another perspective. I'd love to hear about other teachers' experiences with Constructivism: to what extent was it featured in your training and to what extent do you apply it in your teaching?

I realize that I probably won't get much by way of answers, here, and at the moment I really don't have time to a) analyze the report in more detail or b) visit more teaching blogs and make more comments in an effort to attract some traffic here.

Still, if you do find this and have something to say, I'd love to hear it-- even if you find it well into the future, because if someone comments I will get an email notification, and then I can even repost and continue the conversation.

I know, I know...

2007-01-17T09:39:00.000+01:00

I've been remiss in posting. Unfortunately I'm trying to squeeze out every possible drop of studying time for all my exams-- on the 27th I have Special Ed, Didactics, and Educational Psych, and the following Saturday two more, and then two more. So I haven't gotten around to writing that letter to the teaching magazine, though I think I'll go ahead and post the pictures, and if anyone wants to comment in the meantime, please do!

Here's the worst one, on a calendar. The drawing commemorates the first Spanish base in Antarctica. Of course they would say, "Yeah, but look-- he's got a Spanish guitar! That's another stereotype, but that's okay, it's all in good fun."

By way of context, images from the same calendar of Mozart and Gandhi:

And here are a few from the Chinese folktale. You can judge for yourself-- what do you think? I'd love to hear...

Multiculturalism, Part II

2007-01-05T10:57:00.000+01:00

Okay, so I edited the last post to include one more picture and also the titles of the folktales. I don't necesarily have a problem with all of them, but I wanted to give more context. Oreneta, I would love some resources if you can find them and post a link. For right now, though, I am not going to intervene at OS's school-- for one thing, I'm still not sure it's my place to do so, seeing as Spain is a different country with a different history and culture, and I don't know how appropriate it is for me to try to impose my way of thinking about the issue on them. I will, however, look for alternatives when I am a teacher, and intervene (or, really, raise questions for discussion) at the school I end up teaching at. Of course if I see something really horrible at OS's school, I will say something, but for right now I'm going to just sit back and reflect a bit. And in a future post, I will post some other pictures from a teaching magazine and also the letter I'm going to write to them about those pictures.

Anyway, I emailed the Special Ed teacher, who is fantastic, about the issues I mentioned in my last post, and I explained that I was really taken aback when my son did that to his eyes, because in my country that was a way of making fun of people of Asian heritage, and also because I was alarmed that the most salient piece of "cultural awareness" that he got out the story was that Chinese people have elongated eyes.

He wrote back a long email, saying among other things that it's true that we have to be careful not to fall into stereotypes, but that it is also important to consider the intentions with which we address these differences. He said that of course my son wasn't making fun of anyone, he was just noticing a physical difference that indeed exists, and that it's not a negative thing, just a fact that should be treated naturally just like any other kind of variation among people (I'm paraphrasing wildly here.)

I'll just interject to say that in this culture, as well as in Costa Rica where I also lived for a few years, people are much more straightforward about noticing and commenting on aspects of people's physical appearance, often attributing nicknames based on those differences that aren't necessarily (in fact, usually aren't) used in a negative way. It's very common for relatives to notice and comment on the fact that you've gained weight (again, not necessarily with negative intentions), and in CR there was a guy in our barrio called El Manco, which referred to the fact that one of his arms ended at the elbow. Again, not with any sort of bad intention.

So, back to the Special Ed instructor. He continued and said that the next step, of course, was to explain that yes, Chinese kids have differently-shaped eyes, but they like to play and have fun just like he does, and they feel bad when people make fun of them, just like he does, etc. Which I agree with, and of course I didn't think my son was trying to make fun of anyone, either. I do think intention is important, but...

...but, of course we can't just stop there and say, "But I meant it in a good way!" or "These pictures aren't trying to be racist, that's just the artist's style." Etc. To be honest, while some of the pictures in the stories made me uncomfortable, I don't think that they are necessarily negative. Of course they are stereotypes, but to some extent that comes from the fact that these are folktales, set in a time when customs and clothing were different from what they are now. Which is one issue I have with the Constitution Day poster-- do Chinese kids today really wear those hats with the braid? That doesn't seem to be a positive and realistic portrayal. But if it is a story set in a different era when those forms of dress etc. were used, is it bad to portray them? I have to admit that I don't know what forms of dress were used in which countries/regions during certain time periods-- I just know what I've seen portrayed in books, movies, etc. And of course that isn't very reliable. We all know, when we see a certain style of dress, that it's supposed to signify "Chinese"-- but that doesn't make it accurate. In children's books, where illustrations are often impressionistic and fantastical, evocative more than realistic, should we really hold the artists to a standard of absolute historical accuracy? I don't know the answer to that.

The other set of pictures I'm going to post includes another Chinese folktale, intended to be used in a classroom of elementary-school aged kids. This set is much more blatantly objectionable, in my opinion, which is why I am going to write to the editors-- not to complain, but to bring up the issue in the hopes that it will lead them to reflect on it for the future, and maybe even (I can only hope) inspire them to devote some space in the magazine to exploring these questions.

I think for me, right now, (as I mentioned in my email) it comes down to this question: How can we recognize and celebrate cultural differences without falling into stereotypes?

There is always the issue of oppression and prejudice and the inequal balance of power among different groups that obviously underlies the whole question, and comes up when I hear Spanish people defend stereotypical (and even outright racist) portrayals of other cultures by saying "Yes, but it's just like when they portray Spanish people as dancing flamenco and bullfighting all the time. It's not accurate, but it's no big deal." Which would be true if all cultures were on even footing, but that is obviously not the case, so on a deeper level, no it's not "just like" that.

But that's all I have time for for now.

I'd still love to hear from other people!!!

Multiculturalism

2007-01-04T10:53:00.000+01:00

I'm still working on that post on multiculturalism in the schools here, and right now the topic I'm working on in Special Ed is attention to students with specific educational needs for equal opportunities in education (this covers students in rural areas, itinerant populations, immigrants, socioeconomically disadvantaged students, minority students, etc.) Part of the topic is devoted to multiculturalism/interculturalism, so it fits in very well. I don't have time to do a full poist right now, but I did want to post some pictures of different educational materials and see what people's reactions are.

OS (4) brought this home from school when they celebrated Constitution Day (which is perhaps more of a big deal here because their current Constitution is only a bit over a quarter of a century old). The intention was, I'm sure, to show kids from different cultures living together and resolving their problems peacefully. I'm also pretty sure that they were told what colors to use, at least for certain parts. I asked him to tell me about the picture, and he identified the Spanish flag and said something about not fighting, but he couldn't tell me anything specific about the kids in the picture, like where they were from, or why they were dressed like that. (Either he didn't know, didn't care, or just didn't feel like answering.)

Also, recently he found a slip of paper with a toy that said "Made in China" and asked me what it said. When I told him, he started asking me "What happened with their eyes?" and when I asked him to explain, he pulled at the corners of his eyes to make them elongated, and asked again. I then asked him where he had seen that, and he explained,"El Mandarín," referring to a Chinese folktale they had read in class last year, one in a series of folktales from different cultures. Here's a photo:

"The Mandarin and the birds"

Here are a couple more pages from the stories from that series:

"The Birds and the Rainbow"

"Why the Sky Is So Far Away"

"Yehá and the Moon"

I have more pictures, and more to say, but right now I have to finish (um, and start) an assignment for this class, a case study in which I, the teacher, am informed a few days before the school year begins, that this year I will have two students in my class who don't speak any Spanish. A very real situation that I may encounter (though as the English teacher, I would only see any one particular class for short periods of time.)

Anyway, I would love to hear people's reactions to the pictures and situations above. I promise I will come back and post my own reactions soon!

Why Psychology is like learning another language

2006-12-19T14:17:00.000+01:00

Just a snippet from my current reading (translated for your ease of understanding):

"[The stable periods of child development according to Vygotsky] are characterized by the construction of new formations in the processes of socio-instrumental mediation, which mark the crises of the child's socio-cultural growth."

Imagine pages and pages of that, and the fact that I'm several chapters behind, and you'll know why I still haven't gotten around to posting about political correctness and multiculturalism in the Spanish educational system, and another post I've been itching to write expanding on the methods of learning to read and write which are being used in my son's class of 4-year-olds.

Maybe someday...

Christmas in the schools

2006-12-13T09:44:00.000+01:00

Spain is officially a "lay state" (don't know if that's the right translation of "estado laico"), but the Catholic Church does maintain certain privileges. Religion is taught in public schools but it's optional, and if there are enough students in any given school who request another religious option, I believe the school usually complies (one school near us also has an evangelical Christian option.) The whole question of religion in the schools is periodically up for debate, but for the moment there haven't been any major changes at a legislative level.

In another school nearby there are probably some Muslim students, as it is located in a neighborhood where there are more immigrants, but at OS's school, I'm guessing that the percentage of students who practice a non-Christian religion is negligible. Here, and I suspect in most Spanish schools, Christmas is taught and celebrated as part of regular classroom activities. I'm guessing that they leave the emphasis on the more theological questions (like the Divinity of Jesus) to the Religion classes, but they do cover the basic Nativity story. In the US this would not go over well at all, obviously, but here no one seems to think much about it (though I did see the question "Should Christmas be celebrated in school?" on the cover of a teacher magazine here, so I guess at least some people are posing the question.)

Edited to add: When I say that this is taught in the schools, I mean that, for example, the theme for the December workbook is Christmas, so not only are they are singing Christmas carols and making Christmas decorations etc. but there are Christmas-themed worksheets and activities in their textbooks. So it's not just the teachers deciding to throw in some extra activities. I doubt that knowing about Christmas is an evaluable curricular objective, but it is used as a theme for working on other areas...

I tend to be a Separation-of-Church-and-State kind of gal, but in this context it doesn't get my hackles up (as does, say, the idea of teaching Creationism in public schools, something that would never even occur to anyone here.) I think it is a good thing for students, even non-Christian students, to be familiar with something that is such a large part of the culture at large, though I also think it is a good idea to be familiar with the holidays of other religions that are present, to a lesser degree, in Spain. I imagine that schools with a large Muslim population might deal with the whole issue differently. If anyone reading this knows of any examples of this, I'd love to hear about it!

And I think that in the USA societal dynamics are such that teaching about the Nativity story in a public school would not be appropriate. So is it really so different here? Maybe, with the sharp increase in immigration that has occured over the past several years, new approaches will eventually be discussed.

I do have another post in the works about the difference in what is considered "politically correct" in Spain vs. the USA. Here at times there are attempts to celebrate diversity, but this is not always done in ways that would be considered culturally sensitive by US standards. It is interesting to see and reflect upon, so look for a post on that sometime soon (or not so soon, as I am a bit overwhelmed with work at the moment...)

Adaptations

2006-11-27T23:02:00.000+01:00

In the Special Ed class we are learning about curricular adaptations. Significant adaptations can be applied (and must be, if the student requires them) to students with an official designation of Specific Needs. (To get this designation, the student must be evaluated by the psychopedagogical team, and have certain documentation in their file.) Significant adaptations are those which modify the regular curriculum (objectives, evaluations, etc) in such a way that the student is working at a significantly different level than the rest of the class.

However, in addition to making these significant adaptations when necessary, the teacher is also expected to make less-significant adaptations for other students when they require them. This is a new concept for me, so I'm still trying to figure it all out. Apparently, the State (meaning the Ministry of Education) determines the minimum objectives for each grade level in each subject. This is to ensure that there is some coherence between schools, and that each student receives an education that covers at least the minimums, no matter what school he or she attends. Perhaps this is the same impulse toward standardization that is behind NCLB.

Then, each school takes into account its particular population and situation to develop the curriculum for each grade, complying with the minimums, but with the freedom to adjust the rest.

Then each teacher takes into account his/her particular group of students, and plans for them (with the school curriculum as a base, but with some freedom within that.)

The last level of specificity (not the right word, probably, but if I stop to ponder I'll never post this) is the adaptations that are made for a special needs student as explained above.

But back to the classroom level planning for a moment. Within this curriculum plan, the teacher must take into account the variety of abilities present in the class and do several things: One, specify what the minimums are for each topic. Two: Specify what adaptations can be made for differing abilities. (Here we are talking about general adaptations that can apply to any student; the ones that are significant are specific to a particular student and must be noted in that student's Curricular Adaptations Document.) After reading the notes about all of this, I still had some questions, so I emailed the professor to ask.

It turns out (as I understand it) that in the spirit of Attention to Diversity, you as a teacher cannot just make a plan aimed at the average-level student and let it go at that. Rather, you must (or should...) alter the activities, methodology, etc. to address the needs of each particular student. How do we do this?

Again, as I understand it: The minimums are what you need to take into account for evaluation purposes. If the minimum for a class is, for example, to be able to distinguish between the third-person form of the verb and the other forms in present simple, it is perfectly possible to have different exams for different students. For the weaker students, you can ask them to circle the correct form, play or plays, for the sentence "Mary play/plays in her room." For the stronger students, you can ask them to translate the sentence from Spanish to English. (This is an example the professor gave; I'm not sure whether they use translation in this way in the primary schools.) Thus, different students would be evaluated differently for the same concept (though probably you wouldn't take points off for mistakes in the translation that don't relate to the verb form.)

Obviously this technique is especially useful in classroom activities. I think that calibrating class activities to different abilities is very common in EFL teaching-- it's easy to ask students with a higher level of comprehension and fluency more difficult questions and weaker students easier questions in a way that still allows everyone to participate. "What did you do last weekend, Mary?" and when Mary finishes talking about the club she went dancing at, ask "Do you like dancing, Tim?" and he can answer, "Yes, I do." The possibilities for this type of calibration are endless.

The thing that is new for me, though, is the idea of giving different kids different tests or homework or class assignments. On one hand, it can be a tough judgement call-- students will probably work (and learn) less if less is expected of them, and of course one must be ever-vigilant not to set expectations, even unconsciously, based on things like gender, race, ethnicity, etc.

On the other hand, the kids that really need these kinds of adaptations are the kids that are really struggling, and if they aren't accomodated, will just slip further and further behind, with the corresponding impact on their self-esteem and self-efficacy, to the point where they may just give up.

I guess the guarantee is in enforcing the minimums (meaning working to help the student achieve them, even if s/he is really struggling.) In some ways, it really makes sense, but a part of me is still vaguely uncomfortable with it, feeling that I may shortchange students by not asking of them what I do of their classmates. Of course it is a delicate balance, and I hope it's one that becomes more clear with time and experience.

So, does the system you work within call for or permit this level of individualization with students? I'd love to hear more thoughts!

Edited to add: I guess I should specify that this is all theory for me at this point; I certainly have no idea to what extent real teachers actually carry out these kind of adaptations in real classrooms...

Edited again: Last night I forgot to add that my professor also said that while it is not required to officially write up the non-significant curricular adaptations, it is still a good idea to notify the parents and make note of the adaptations on the comments in the grade reports. I suppose that with these, as well as with any type of adaptation, the idea is to go from least significant to more significant, progressing along the spectrum only as necessary. Start with the assumption that the students will all be able to do the work you set (and set work and expectations that are reasonable for the group of students that you have) and only move on to modifications if it becomes clear that a student is really struggling and other methods haven't helped (like extra help, different teaching approach, helping them apply learning strategies, peer teaching, etc.)

Thanks for sticking around while I puzzle this out!

What it Takes to Make a Student

2006-11-26T14:54:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting article from the New York Times Magazine. What it Takes to Make a Student: Can teaching poor children to act more like middle-class children help close the education gap?

Click quick, because the link is only available for a limited time (a week?) unless you are a Times Select subscriber. NYT does require a free registration to view their content.

In Education News

2006-11-22T09:52:00.000+01:00

I've been wondering what No Child Left Behind has meant for schools in the US, and while surfing around I just happened to find this post by this blogger on the subject. Very interesting (and unfortunate...) Does anyone else have anything to say?

But really I wanted to mention a few things that have been in the news re: education around these parts. One thing is a study on violence in the schools of the Community of Madrid done by the teacher's union, after a number of cases of violence against teachers have been making the news (aggressions by students or parents.) Some of the study results: 22% of teachers suffer from burnout, twice the average among other types of workers in Madrid. 43% of teachers in Madrid present some sign of psychological damage due to classroom violence and lack of support from the parents. This breaks down as 33.6% who show signs of anxiety, 34.9% show signs of depression, and 33.8% nausea, vomiting, stomachache, or other somatic syptoms.

According to the study, half of the 25,000 teachers in the Comunity of Madrid suffer physical or verbal agressions in the course of their work (2 out of 3 in the middle school/high school range.)

Not a very cheery scenario. Hopefully this won't be so much of a problem in Primary ed, which is what I'll be teaching, but you never know.

In other news, the Archbishops of Toledo and Granada said on Saturday that the new required classes in "Educación para la Ciudadanía" (Civic Education) are an infringement of parental rights, and if those rights can not be protected, then conscientious objection and civil disobedience are in order. The class will be given, in different versions, to 10-12 year-olds, once between the ages of 12-15, and again at the ages of 15-16.

Topics to be discussed include rights and responsibilties of living in a democracy, human rights and women's equality, cultural and religious diversity, emotions, among other things. The 12-15 year olds discuss the human dimension of sexuality, gender relations, traffic safety, rational consumption, equality, diversity, and respect for different religious and nonreligious options. The 15-16 year olds will talk about questions of humanity, moral pluralism and ethics theories, democracy and constitutional values,social problems in today's world, and gender equality. As I understand it, each school will have the freedom to work within certain parameters to adapt the curriculum to the particularities of their situation.

Objections have been raised from different sectors of society (notably the Church and the Partido Popular, the more right-leaning political party) and the class has been called "indoctrination by the state."

Basically the controversy seems to be over the question of to what extent values should be taught in school. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out...

Educational Psychology

2006-11-21T10:02:00.000+01:00

I was surfing around a bit checking out the syllabi for US Ed. Psych courses, and I found a lot of variety. Some of them seem pretty similar to the course I'm taking, and some are quite different.

So far this class is the one that's taking up the most time for me, partly because the professor gives us a ton of reading for each topic, and partly because of his insistence on having us do Concept Maps. Not only does planning the maps take huge amounts of time, but I have yet to sit down and actually learn how to do it on the computer, which I suspect will take quite a bit of time in itself. Do I think it's a useful tool for teaching and for evaluating student knowledge? Of course. Does it help me clarify the connections between the concepts I'm learning? Yes, but... Once I understand all the connections and have written them out in my own style of taking notes, does spending the extra 2+ hours to plot them into a neat, coherent concept map add anything to my understanding? Not so much. I do have to learn to do this, as there will be one or two on the midterm and final exam, but it's still a PITA. I have a whole bunch of assignments that I haven't done yet for this class (they have to be done before the midterm in January), and they will be very time-consuming. The relative weight of the assignments and the projects and exams on the final grade is such that if I don't do all of the assignments, I could still do well in the class. Someone I know who took this class a couple of years ago said that she only turned in 3 or 4 of the assignments and still got one of the highest grades in the class. So I will keep that in mind, too.

Anyway, the real point of this post was to share the course syllabus. It's arranged into two main blocks: the first semester concentrates on Educational Psychology and the second semester is Developmental Psychology. Each topic involves a lot of reading and some assignments (and there is also a final project, which I won't get into now.)

1.1 Introduction and Concept Mapping
1.2 Historical framework of ed. psych and its objectives
1.3 Cognitive Styles and learning (this is not multiple intelligence theory, this is stuff like "field dependence/independence" etc. Tons of reading.)
1.4 Behavioralism: Pavlov and Skinner
1.5 Behavioralism: Bandura
1.6 Prescriptive Model of Instruction: Gagné and Bruner
1.7 Significant Learning: Ausubel
1.8 Social Cognitive Learning: Vygotski
1.9: Genetic-Constuctive Conception: Piaget
1.10 Motivation in the Classroom
1.11 Psychology and Laws. Educational Strategies (a closer look at...)

Then midterms. There doesn't seem to be any discussion of different methods of psychological investigation, which I guess is beyond the scope of this course and would be covered in the degree program for Pedagogy (which seems to be an in-depth study of the psychological forces behind learning and how to help students discover and use different cognitive strategies for learning.)

In case you are wondering, I'm up to date on the readings (finishing up Bandura) but hopelessly behind on the assignments. Oh well. It is quite interesting material, anyway.

I know it's probably pretty pointless to ask this, until I build up a readership of current or future Education students, which I certainly don't have time to go about attempting to do. But as always, if anyone wants to compare your syllabus to mine, or if you have anything to say about anything remotely related, I'm all ears!

Edited to add: It seems that later on I will have a class called "Investigation in the Classroom" which, I assume, will cover the investigative methods...

Special Ed in Spain

2006-11-05T21:07:00.000+01:00

I wanted to say a few words about how the Special Ed system works here in Spain, from what I've learned so far in my class. When I saw that the class (Psychopedagogical Bases for Special Education) was required for all of the teaching specialties (Early Childhood, English, Speech and Hearing, Elementary Ed, Special Ed) I thought, "Well, that could be interesting, but it doesn't really affect me very much since I'm not doing Special Ed." But it turns out that it affects every teacher, and especially those who like me will be working with a series of different classes throughout the day. Here the concept of Special Ed has moved from a model of deficit to a model of "Specific Educational Needs" which, among other implications, means that students with special needs are to be integrated to the greatest degree possible given their individual situations into a regular classroom. So it's very likely that I will come across "special ed" students and I'll have to make the necessary curricular adaptions to serve them.

First I should say that a new education law was passed last May (it seems that a new one gets passed every time there is a change of government...) and the details have yet to be worked out, so currently everything is still being governed by the previous law from 2002. Each Comunidad Autonoma (like states or provinces) has a certain amount of freedom to govern their own schools, but the big things are set at the national level. Here is a very brief overview of the legal framework.

In 1985, the law signaled a move from a Deficit model (with an emphasis on diagnosing the deficiencies of the student, and without really expecting much development or change) to a focus on analyzing what types of pedagogical support are needed to help the student progress according to their needs and their particular educational objectives. Basically this means that instead of having the student adapt to the general school environment, it is the educational community that must adapt itself to best meet the differing needs of all of its students.

In 1990, a new education law was passed, with some changes. First of all, the term "Special Education" was replaced with the term "Special Educational Needs." However, the term is very general and fairly ambiguous, as the law doesn't spell out exactly who and what needs it refers to.

In 1995, the new law specified that SEN may also be transitory or temporary, and distinguishes between three groups: SEN due to serious behavioral disorders, SEN due to mental, motor, or sensory diabilities, and SEN of intellectually gifted students.

In 2002 the current law was passed, and here they also include some other groups as having Special Educational Needs. On one hand is the concept of Equal Opportunity, which means support for students who need to compensate for disadvantageous social situations. In part this refers to students living in rural areas who perhaps don't have access to schools where they live (assisting them with transportation, free boarding if necessary, etc.) Also students in migrant worker families who don't stay in one place all year, and students who have to spend extended periods in the hospital, etc. In the most recent law, it looks like this category will be taken out of the "SEN" designation and treated separately.

Another category of SEN, in response to the rapidly changing demographics of Spanish society, is that of immigrant students, many of whom don't speak Spanish. Support here includes programs to help them learn the language and programs to help parents understand the Spanish school system.

This law also emphasizes that students with SEN are to be integrated into normal classrooms to the greatest extent possible.

The newest law (May 2006 but still under development) presents new terminology, preferring "students with specific needs for educational support."

In general terms, for the past several years there has been a strong emphasis on what is called "attention to diversity in the classroom." This refers not to multiculturalism but to the range of differences in academic capabilities and needs. Basically, it means that not all students progress at the same rate or with the same degree of ease, and it is up to the teacher to account for the different needs and possibilities of all students, rather than merely aiming their teaching at the level of the average student.

Here we can introduce the concept of Learning Difficulties. This does not necessarily refer to what we in the US call learning disabilities. It can be any student who is unable to follow the established pace of instruction in a particular area or in more than one area. It can be a temporary situation or one that is present throughout the student's schooling. The difficulty may be due to biological, sociological, psychological, or educational factors.

When faced with a student like this, the teacher must begin with ordinary corrective measures (for example, changing the seating arrangement, giving that student extra help, even having the student repeat a grade) and move up from there, along a continuum which goes from "slight Learning Difficulties" to "Special Educational Needs."

Upcoming topics in my class will cover exactly what "ordinary corrective measures" are as opposed to "extraordinary measures" and how the teacher and other professionals go about determining what interventions are necessary in each case. I'm looking forward to learning more.

As usual, I don't know if anyone is reading this, but if you are, I'd love to hear about your experiences with or knowledge of the special ed system where you live.

Unit 2: This Is My House

2006-11-01T15:26:00.000+01:00

This is the second unit in YS' two-year-old class. It's about the different rooms of the house and also the family. They will continue to work on the concepts of the color yellow and same-different, and will introduce new concepts like big-small, quiet-loud, and textures (soft-not soft.) Also Christmas tradtions. The list of suggested activities is pre-printed from the chosen curriculum, so it's not something the school staff has come up with themselves.

To do at home:

--Talk to him about his grandparents.
--Ask him which room of the house you are in and what it's used for.
--Show him which things he shouldn't touch because they are dangerous.
--Ask him about Topi the squirrel: What happened when he touched the fire?
--Give him small tasks to do at home: help to set or clear the table, pick up his toys, leave his clothes in the proper place when he gets undressed, put away his shoes.
--Ask him about the size of objects: are they big or small?
--Touch objects and material and see if it is soft or not.
--Ask him to tell the stories the teacher tells in class and to sing a song.
--Let him participate in decorating the house for the holidays.
--When you go for a walk, ask him why the houses are decorated (also Christmas.)
--Discuss the toy ads together. (I'm not really sure exactly what kind of discussion you're supoosed to have here with your two-year-old, but whatever.)
--Don't buy him everything he wants; let him choose from his list. Don't get him in the habit of being materialistic (they say, "consumista") from a young age. (Well, he still is young enough that he doesn't really ask for things, and I certainly don't want to sit down with him and make a list. We will choose a few things that we think he will get a lot of use/enjoyment out of.

college life

2006-10-30T07:31:00.000+01:00

I have another post in the works about the Special Ed class I'm taking, but that will have to wait until my assignments are handed in. For now, just a few words.

For one, I have been favorably impressed by the speed with which my emails have been answered by everyone at the university, professors and administrators alike. In fact, on Friday I fired off two emails to my professors asking for clarifications (one on one of the assignments and another on a concept from the notes)and figured I wouldn't hear back until Monday. Well, both of them responded with very complete answers, on Sunday. Granted, university professors don't have a typical 9-to-5 schedule, so this may not be all that unusual, but I still thought it was gratifying. (Remember, I am doing an low-residency online program, so I can't just ask my questions in class. Though we do have an in-person class day this coming Saturday so I will get to meet all the profs for the first time.)

And second, did you know that here students call their professors by their first names? In fact, this might be the case throughout schooling-- I know at least in the three years of preschool they do the same. Of course, since I have yet to actually meet my professors, I erred (maybe) on the side of formality in my emails, and even used the "usted" form of address. But I think generally speaking the familiar form is used.

Unit 2: Playing House

2006-10-24T22:23:00.000+02:00

So OS's teacher sent home the Unit 2 sheet today. Here goes:

Over the next few weeks they will be working on:

--Identifying parts of the body and articles of clothing
--Identifying clothes that are appropriate for autumn
--Recognizing rooms in the house and the activities carried out therein*
--Consider the home as the place the family lives and where we all have to help out
--Understand stories
--Learn riddles
--Understanding temporal sequences
--Work on making inclined lines and zig zags
--Understand concepts such as: on top of, under, high, low
--Recognize and associate quantitity and written form of the number 2
--Create logical series with two elements
--The letter U. Recognize the letter U visually and aurally

You can help by:
--Playing guessing games: "A part of the body used for..."
--Talk about what happens in autumn: "The tree we see on the way to school is changing..."
--Write with your child on paper: zig zags**, his/her name in capital letters, the numbers 1 and 2.
--Look for words with the sound "u." Say them together.
--Look in magazines and cut out pictures of things with the "U" sound, and bring them to class on Monday, November 6th to make a class mural.
--Eat autumn fruits such as apples, oranges, grapes

*And no, the original didn't include the word "therein"-- this is a rough translation, going for function, not form.

So that's what the four-year-olds are doing now. I have to say that OS already knows most of this stuff, and I imagine the other kids do too. Areas that might be newer to him are the ones involving drawing lines, the logical series, riddles, and perhaps the letter U, though when we point one out he can name it. I am curious as to why the other things are chosen to be covered in class, if we assume that most four-year-olds already know them. Of course we can't necessarily assume that, but given the apparent socioeconomic status of the parents of kids in his class and the fact that none of the kids are learning Spanish as a second language (which would most likely only affect the language, not the concepts themselves), I'd guess that it is a pretty safe bet to say that at least some of the concepts have already been pretty well internalized by the majority of the kids prior to their presentation in class.

Which leads me to believe that perhaps the concepts themselves aren't the most important part. The kids are also learning how to listen and pay attention to the teacher and their classmates, how to participate in a class discussion, how to learn (building on concepts they already have experience with, storing and retrieving information, integrating new information into pre-existing frameworks... gee, can you tell I've been reading up on Concept Mapping and the Constructivists?) Imagine how difficult it would be to learn and practice all these things with totally new material. And all the different types of activities they do to work through the material also are important in and of themselves, I imagine. Not to mention that there is stuff they do throughout the day that isn't related to these particular learning objectives.

So while one might look at the list and think, "What a waste of time-- he knows most of this stuff already! He's going to be bored in class!" I think that's not really the case.

As for riddles (and here they mean guessing games, not riddles with puns), we have done this sometimes (I see something red..., and recently we have been playing the opposite game ("If I say big, you say... small!") but I will start trying new versions, too.

As for series, one thing I did with him once was to make a simple Lego construction (using four different-colored blocks)and have him copy it. He didn't quite get it right (maybe two many variables?) but he did seem to enjoy the activity. The logical extension could be having him build a model for me to copy, or building more complicated models, but although he had fun doing it once, he wanted to move on to something else pretty quickly. Preferably something self-directed, where I wasn't telling him what to do. As has been his personality from the start. While I would love to be able to send him to a Montessori or another alternative learning environment, that isn't an option, so it's probably important for him to be getting used to what is required of him in a traditionally-structured school.

Getting in

2006-10-22T08:02:00.000+02:00

I thought I'd talk a bit about the university admission process, since it's different from how things work in the US. First of all, most people want to get into a public university, since they are much cheaper and considered to be better than the private ones.

To get a spot at a public university, you first must take a series of college entrance exams called PAU, Pruebas de Acceso a la Universidad (though most people refer to it by the older name, Selectividad.) This consists of six exams over two days. Day one is the same for everyone, and consists of three exams: one in Lengua, which includes a strong focus on morpho-syntactical analysis, another which is a written text commentary, and a third which is Foreign Language (answer a few questions about a short text, than a brief essay question.)

The second day consists of three exams in subjects chosen by the student based on what s/he studied in the last two years of high school (Bachillerato, the college prep track) and on what subject s/he wants to study at university. Generally speaking, in Bachillerato (age 16-17) you choose either to study Sciences or Humanities, thinking ahead to what you hope to do in the future.

Since my college degree was not officially recognized by the Ministry of Education, I also had to take the Selectividad, though mine was a slightly different version for foreign students, based on an older program of study. Unfortunately, except for foreign language (English!), all of the subjects were ones I hadn't studied before, and therefore I had to spend an entire year preparing for this exam. In the end I chose Humanities (though for teaching you can choose either) and within that, the subjects of philosophy, modern history, and Latin. Many foreign students go to special academies to prepare for this exam, but since I didn't have that option, I did it all on my own, with the help of some message boards dedicated to the topic, and another foreign student who was kind enough to share some of her notes. (I won't mention here that I got very good grades on the exams, and that the English one was not among my highest three grades, despite the fact that the text they used was extremely poorly-written and there was a particularly egregious error in the questions themselves. Which begs the question of exactly how qualified they were to evaluate my command of English. Nope, I won't mention that. ;)

Anyway, the final grade for your file is based on both the exams and your high school grades, and this file grade is what you submit when applying to the university, and is the sole basis for admission. So, how does it work? Well, first of all, you consult the cutoff lists for the department and university where you want to study. These lists tell how many spots were available last year, and what grade was the cutoff point for getting in. Obviously it may vary from year to year, but it can give you a general idea. If, based on your grade, you think you have a chance at getting in to the program you want, you apply. If not, you look at other universities or other programs, and choose something else. If you are accepted, you're in luck. If not, you may get your second or third choice. If you don't get what you want, you may consider a private university.

Once admitted, your program of study is pretty much set-- everyone takes pretty much the same classes in the same order. In my program there are two electives that are chosen from a selection of teaching-related classes (study-skills, group dynamics, teaching drawing, etc.) Since I am doing the online program, however, I don't have a choice, as only two are offered online: Religion, Culture, and Values (since currently in the public schools one of the subjects taught is Religion, though students may opt to take "Values" or some other nonreligious substitute instead) and New Technologies Applied to Education (computers.)

There are also 21 credits of free electives, which can be chosen from any discipline and do not have to be related to your primary field of study. In the online teaching program, it is assumed that everyone already has a degree in something else and therefore this requirement is waived, but I am taking the 21 credits in another of the online programs. The "Developing Linguistic Abilities" class is actually from the Early Childhood Ed program.

As for fees, the public universities charge 11 euros per credit (this year) as a registration fee, which for me will be almost 800 euros (it can be paid in two installments.) Then, since my program is actually offered by a private university in conjunction with the public one, I will have to pay a hefty fee of 38 euros per credit, divided into monthly payments. Still a good deal compared with US college tuition.

Looking ahead, once I have the degree I will be elegible to teach in the concertado schools (semi-private) or to take the civil service exam for a spot in a public school. If I pass, I will get to choose my spot after everyone who has scored higher (or has more in-service points) than me has chosen theirs. The public schools themselves have no say in who they hire. If I don't pass, I go on the list for substitutions and to cover leave, which would earn me in-service points until I take the exam again and hopefully get a higher score.

So, that's a brief overview!

Comment changes, and the university

2006-10-20T12:15:00.000+02:00

Okay, so I didn't realize I had to type in my email so that Blogger could notify me when I had comments, and therefore I missed the two comments I had (sorry Karen and Lilian!) I had been assuming no one was reading and/or interested in this blog. Oops! Anyway, I have also changed the setting so that you don't have to register with Blogger to comment, though I would enjoy reading your blog if you do create one (hint, hint.)

Anyway, yesterday, finally, I was able to formally register for classes, but I still can't actually get in to the platform to access the course material. It's going to be a lot of work, I can tell, and I really hope they get me authorized sometime today because with every passing moment without access I am getting further behind. Well, not to be melodramatic, but I am anxious to see exactly what will be expected of me and on what timetable so I can begin to plan. Winter break here stretches from before Christmas to after Three King's Day on Jan. 6th, which means the kids will be home and I won't be able to do much of anything then-- so obviously I need to be able to plan well to get stuff out of the way before then.

And I added an extra class, Developing Language Abilities, which is 12 credits-- when most full-year classes are only 9-- so I really want to see what that will involve.

Back to comments for a minute: I would love to hear from anyone who drops by here-- and I would especially appreciate any insight, clarification, or correction of possible misinformation or general clueness that I inadvertently perpetuate on this blog. And of course any relevant links you can share.

So bring it on!

More on cursive

2006-10-18T23:02:00.000+02:00

From the Chicago Tribune.

I have to admit that I printed all of my college entrance exams last June, but mostly because the cursive they teach here is not exactly like what I learned, and I didn't want to confuse the examiners or have them take points off for spelling.

I do think that there is value in learning cursive, and I don't see it falling by the wayside anytime soon here in Spain. One thing did occur to me, though. If I am teaching at the elementary level, undoubtedly I will have to use cursive-- and the particular kind they teach here-- whenever I write on the board...

Back to School

2006-10-11T09:33:00.000+02:00

That is the title of Unit 1 in OS's class. I think they must be almost finished, but somehow I got the handout only today, so I'll transcribe it.

"Back to School"
In this unit we will work on:

--Difference between girls and boys
--Spatial relations: on one side of, on the other side of
--Getting to know the school and its facilities
--Taking care of our classroom materials and objects
--Drawing horizontal and vertical lines
--Associate quantity and written number: 1
--Recognize circle, triangle, square

(This is a review of concepts from last year. Last year they got through "3" on the numbers. Obviously there are other activities other than these, but this is what is in the curriculum.)

You can help by:

--Bringing a plant to school to take care of in class
--Getting them back into the school routine
--Once again encouraging autonomy: putting on our jackets, pushing up our sleeves when we wash our hands, etc.
--Identifying circles, triangles, and squares in the home environment
--Reading to them and reminding them that this year we are going to learn some letters

The letters they are going to learn are the vowels-- they will learn to recognize them and practice writing them, both in cursive. Which I really don't like. I suppose it is to save time so that they won't have to teach it twice, first printing and then cursive. But it just seems so narrowly-focused. I mean, all around them the world is full of writing to decipher-- street signs, cereal boxes, books, newspapers, labels, etc. There's so much to motivate them to recognize and read! But almost none of it is in cursive. What is? Their worksheets and curricular materials. So, yes, if you want them to focus all of their reading and writing energy on that, well, fine. I guess it is efficient. But I still think it is unfortunate.

I know Spanish is different than English-- we learn the alphabet from a young age, with the aid of the lovely Alphabet Song, but here I haven't heard of any equivalent, and indeed I don't know when the kids are taught that there is a set of all the letters in a particular order that should be memorized. When I was tutoring kids in reading in Costa Rica, they learned by syllables, not individual letters, which makes a lot of sense, considering that in Spanish each vowel only has one possible sound. So instead of learning the letter "m" on its own, for instance, they would learn to recognize a set of syllables, the consonant paired with each vowel in turn: ma, me, mi, mo, mu. And once they master that, they can put those syllables together and always know how to pronounce and write them. In English this would never work, as there are too many possible pronounciations for the different letter groups, so it makes more sense to learn each letter individually first.

As for me, I'm going to concentrate on making our sons aware of the letters they see in everyday life, the books we read, the signs we see, etc. OS has already got a good handle on "S" for Superman, as he always calls it, and can recognize his name and his first initial and various other letters. I hope that it won't be too confusing, because he will be learning two different names (English and Spanish) for each letter, as well as four different ways of writing it (uppercase and lowercase, cursive and printing.) That sounds like a lot. We'll see how it goes!

Younger Son's curriculum

2006-10-07T17:45:00.000+02:00

A brief update. They sent a note home explaining what they are doing in the first unit:

--Getting to know the school, and especially their classroom and classmates
--Same/different
--The color yellow

They are using a set of curricular materials similar to what OS (Older Son) is using in his 4-year-old class, but quite a bit cheaper, and truth be told, with much cheesier illustrations.

University

2006-10-07T16:18:00.000+02:00

I am going to be doing an online program to get a degree in teaching, with a specialization in teaching English. This will allow me to work in public schools, with ages 6-12. Today there was an on-campus meeting, and contrary to what I had been told, I didn't actually get to register then-- I won't be able to do that until Oct.16 and therefore cannot access any of the course material before then. But at least I found out a bit more about how the online campus works. Here is what I will be taking this year.

Full-year courses:

Psycho-pedagogical Bases for Special Education. 9 credits
Didactics. 9 credits. Or maybe I should call it Teaching. It covers a wide range of material: theory, historical framework, methodology, evaluation, and lots more.
English Language Teaching I. 9 credits.
Developmental and Educational Psychology. 9 credits

Half-year courses:

Contemporary Educational Theories and Institutions. 4.5 credits
Culture, Religion, and Values. 4.5 credits
Phonetics (English). 6 credits. Second semester
New Technology Applied to Education. (Computers...) 6 credits. Second semester.

And I have to take some other stuff, too, but I don't know what that will be yet. Sounds like a full load...

Meñiques

2006-10-06T12:39:00.000+02:00

That is the name of the curricular material used in Older Son's four-year-old class. I will post more about the content when I can, but right now I will give a brief overview. It is divided into nine units, roughly one each month. The first unit is called "Back to School". Each unit has a book of worksheets that work on different areas: 5 on "physical and social environment," 3 on "identity and personal autonomy," 4 on "oral and written expression," 4 on "logic/math," 1 on "physical expression," 2 on something they call "graphomotricidad," which is preparation for writing, including making lines (horizontal, vertical, zig-zag, curved, etc.) 1 on "artistic expression," and 1 on "musical expression." There is also a separate notebook with 16 grafomotricidad worksheets for them to work on throughout the year, and this class has a separate workbook (not part of the Meñiques system) on writing the vowels.

There is a story for each unit, and the kids get to take it home when they finish the unit-- we also have a CD with all the stories on it. And there is extra material for the classroom and special activities. This all cost us something like 60€, not including the other grafo notebook and the English book, Oxford's Three in a Tree. Though we can hardly complain since schooling is free from 3 years on.

It all seems to be very good-quality stuff, though I think the kids could probably learn just as well with teacher-produced materials and activities. I suppose this is a way of standardizing the curriculum, as well as making it easier for the teachers. Of course they do a lot of other things throughout the day besides worksheets. There is recess time in the patio, free play in the different areas (building toys, dress-up, kitchen corner, vehicles, books and puzzles, peg boards and bead stringing, computers) and specials: gym, English class, music, computers, and religion. The religion class seems not to actually deal with religion at this age-- they are doing school rules and social rules (like no fighting, no hitting, etc), the family, and I don't know what else, exactly.

Okay, it is a little bit strange to be blogging all of this, as it hardly makes interesting reading, but I guess my hope is that it might be useful for someone who will have kids in the Spanish school system and is wondering what to expect. Right now I doubt anyone who fits that description has come across this blog, but if you do, please drop me a line! If it seems that no one is reading, I may just shut this down. But not yet!

And tomorrow I have the first meeting at the university, where they explain how the virtual campus system works. I will also register for classes and hopefully get to start reading the course material. So expect an update about that soon, too.

Welcome!

2006-10-02T09:55:00.001+02:00

How to begin? Maybe for now I will start with the youngest member of the family. Our two-year-old son (henceforth, YS, or Younger Son) is in an Escuela Infantil, which is sort of a glorified day care, but it is considered part of the education system here. It is not, however, part of the free public system (though some lucky families can send their kids to a public one which is much cheaper.) Kids aged 0-3 are in what is called Primer Ciclo de Educación Infantil (which, of course, is not mandatory) and they are grouped by age. Each group follows an age-appropriate curriculum that works on different areas of development.

For the two year olds at YS's school (and probably most others) this means typical preschool activities such as songs, drawing and coloring, using modeling clay, listening to stories, doing physical activities, etc. They start the day with circle time, then do a structured activity, snack, free play, lunch, nap, and pick-up. The week before last they were talking about the Autumn, and last week was centered around toilet learning. This included frank discussion of the body parts used for this process, the products of the process (i.e. poop and pee), and the concepts of dirty/clean, front and back, etc. They apparently also did a lot of pretending to use the potty (there are three child-sized toilets in their classroom) because YS has been doing this at home all weekend. In his class there are maybe 12 two-year-olds (the oldest of them will turn three after the new year) and only a few are not yet potty trained. This is fairly typical for Spain, I think-- kids are trained early here.

YS is among those still in diapers, though he is definitely familiar with the whole concept of toilet use. Starting tomorrow we will send him to school in pull-ups instead of regular diapers, and the teachers will have him try to use the toilet like the other kids at the appointed times. If it turns out that he isn't ready yet, they won't pressure him, but I think the combination of the buildup from last week and watching the other kids use the toilet will be good motivation.

And no, I am not going to be providing a play-by-play of YS's toilet trials and tribulations, I promise. I did want to mention, though, that I have been impressed with the frank and natural way body parts are discussed here. When OS (Older Son, now 4) was 2 he was in a different escuela, but at the beginning of the year they also talked about "differences between boys and girls", complete with a simple line drawing of a naked boy and girl for each child to indicate which one they were. Actually I think this is part of the official curriculum of the Ministry of Education for this age group, and last year when OS was 3 and starting preschool in the public system, he had it again. And at YS's school, the sign on the classroom door under "What we are talking about today" was quite explicit: Differences between boys and girls: genit*lia, p*nis, v*lva. (Aside: yes, I do find it ironic to be using euphemisms and not spelling out the words when I'm ostensibly talking about how impressed I am at their openness. In my case it is to avoid having this blog turn up on searches for certain words, though maybe it will anyway, or maybe it wouldn't regardless. Anyway.)

Of course it makes a lot of sense to be so up-front, given that the kids are inevitably going to be seeing each others' parts anyway at this age, and they will be noticing the differences in the equipment and how it works. I just wonder how this all is dealt with in the US. I'm sure it varies greatly from center to center, but here in Spain I think this approach is pretty standard.