inquiry project.

In order to fully understand, you need to know what you know. 


 Assignment Two: Inquiry Project: Documented Pedagogical Travel Logs

Part 1: Preparing for your TAB experience,

 Here is a little slice of what I know of how I got here, participating in Teaching Across Borders, Barcelona, Spain.

The premise of my Biography of Learning 2 from last semester was “Why do I learn?” In addition to the many amazing teachers, and school based experiences that filled the pages of my portfolio, there were two experiences that I feel have marked my life more than anything: the six weeks I spent traveling through Greece, (the place of my family’s heritage) after my first year of university: and this past summer traveling and doing aid work in Guatemala.

            Prior to traveling throughout Greece, I was 19, pursuing my music degree at Concordia University College of Alberta in Edmonton, my home town, enjoying this new ‘thing’ called post secondary education, and growing up in ways I could not have predicted. However, I needed somewhere larger: somewhere that I could have an influence on, that I could contribute to. I needed to see the world through the world’s eyes. That summer I packed my back-pack, and set off to experience a new world. While exploring my family’s village, Doliana, I found family I had no idea I had, and a culture with a rich history that I now feel so blessed to be a part of. While I was in Greece I learned a lot about myself. However, I learned even more when I came home. I experienced culture shock upon returning to Edmonton, and I was quite upset with many features of our western life style. I found I had a choice to make: to be angry, or to be proactive. I chose to be proactive and share my experiences with those around me.  What I believed to be important had completely shifted.

            The second experience abroad that I feel has completely re-shaped my life was my time spent in Guatemala, summer 2010. When I was 15, my mother and I made a promise to each other to do a Habitat for Humanity build together. We chose Guatemala as it was the first place she backpacked through when she was only a year older than I. Two days after my June convocation we set out for the adventure that absolutely confirmed that I need to be a teacher, and that education needs people like me.

     

            Just a few weeks before we departed for Guatemala, the country was hit with the disastrous Tropical Storm Agatha, and the eruption of previously ‘dormant’ Pacaya volcano.  We were not even sure if we were going to be able to go, as the airport in Guatemala City had been closed for days due to the thick blanket of volcanic ash. Fortunately the airport re-opened a few days before our flight. Upon arriving in Guatemala City, we took a shuttle bus directly to Antigua – the old capital – where we did a home stay with a local family while studying Spanish at Tecun Uman Spanish School. We met up with one of our Habitat for Humanity team leaders, Tim Fisher, who was also studying at the school. It was through Tim that I met one of the most amazing individuals that I’ve ever known, David Kiblinger..

             David was in Antigua during the storm and the volcanic eruption and experienced first hand the aftermath of the mudslides. As a result, he began gathering whomever he could to go to Ciudad Vieja, a town nearby Antigua where many homes had been devastated. My mother and I leapt at the opportunity to go and help these people. David, Tim, my Mom and I, bought gumboots at the local market, took the local ‘chicken bus’ and arrived in a place that has forever changed my life. These homes were filled often over 10 feet deep with mud. Every single material possession, gone, buried in mud, or washed away. I do not have accurate words to describe the sheer devastation, so I’ve included several photographs.

            We met other traveling volunteers as we spent hours shoveling mud into pails and wheelbarrows to move the mud up to street level to be carried away by dumptrucks. What was truly amazing and inspiring was the morale of the local people. Everyone was determined and smiling as they worked. The children were always helping. The girls went to school in the mornings and came home to shovel in the afternoon and the boys vice versa. Despite the language barrier, we were truly welcomed and accepted by the local people. About halfway through my first afternoon spent in the mud, I had an emotional breakdown in front of my mother. I just cried and explained that these people, who have so little, are truly remarkable.  I felt that if what had happened to them, happened to me, I wouldn’t be strong enough to recover from it. I wanted to give that family all of the money that I had on me, but I knew that I couldn’t. I was so upset by the entire situation, so we did what we knew we were capable of. We continued to shovel in the afternoon after Spanish lessons, and wrote emails to our friends and family in the evenings. In one week we raised over $2500.00 American.

            With the help of David and his ‘house mother’ (the woman whose home he was staying in, who was also a principle in the local school district) we put together ~200 aid packages including; eggs, flour, grains, toilet paper, soap, diapers for those with babies and other necessities, and distributed them to the families in crisis. We donated the rest of the money to a local charity, Mayan Families that specializes in water filtration systems, building schools and sending children to school. As an aspiring teacher, the fact that 53.5% of indigenous youth age 15-19 have not completed primary education and by age 16 only 25% of indigenous girls are in school, is utterly heart breaking.          

      Following our time spent in Antigua and Ciudad Vieja, we met up with our Habitat for Humanity team in Guatemala City and continued to our build site located in Jutiapa. Within our team I now have 18 life–long friends. Every person on this team was an inspiration, and it was reassuring after our time spent in the mud, that there are other amazing people out there who are committed to making a difference. We worked as a team in conjunction with the locals to do what felt like building something from nothing. With the most basic materials: cinderblock, rebar, wire, and cement; and the most rudimentary tools, we cut, tied and laid the better half of two homes that will withstand the seismic environment that is Guatemala.

            Coming home from this experience I was surprised that the culture shock I encountered was actually positive. I wasn’t angry about the injustices in our world. I was simply ready to do what I could to change the way I live.  The majority of the world does not have safe drinking water flowing from its taps, so the fact that North American society lives on bottled water disgusts me. While I have never been a ‘bottled water drinker,’ my boyfriend grew up in a family of them. He received a Brita Filter from me immediately upon my return, and no longer drinks bottled water. My family now supports an elementary student, a jr. high student, and a high school student, in their school studies and life aspirations through Mayan Families. In collaboration with four of my colleagues I am a founder of Music Is For Everyone Society, a registered non-profit society that enriches the lives of under privileged children through scholarships in music education. 

      I truly believe that my time spent immersed in other cultures has been the highlight and most influential aspect of what I view as my education. I want to be a person who can inspire young people to take action, and I believe I have the passion and skills to evoke change.

If you look back to the beginning of this written explanation, I began with “Why to I learn?”

“I learn because the world is rich, and I can’t imagine not knowing it.”

In preparation for my TAB experience I’ve studied Spanish through Continuing Education at the University of Calgary, to improve my rudimentary language skills. Brianne and I have studied numerous travel books from Lonely Planet to Frommer’s. We have Google’d upon Google’s. But what I’ve found to be the most valuable have been my correspondence with our partner teacher Elisa Sanz, and our miraculous new friend Pia. Barcelona is in Catalonia province, and therefore it is bilingual. This may prove to be an obstacle Brianne and I must overcome.

I feel like I could write you a list of things we have read about our temporary homeland. Where we need to be careful, when we can be more laid back. However, I feel that the purpose of travel, and when I say travel I mean pure, take no prisoners, jumping with both feet, kind of cultural digestion, is experienced when you step off the pages of the guidebooks, and dance in the mystery of a new place. I feel my past experiences will provide me with the guidance to play safe, while allowing me to pursue my love of our magical world.

So stay tuned if you dare.

“The world is Rich, and I can’t Imagine not Knowing It” - Bryndan

Assignment Two: Inquiry Project: Documented Pedagogical Travel Logs

Part 2: The Cultural and Educational Context of Your TAB Placement

Well, I’ve been living in Barcelona for a little over a month now and therefore have much to report.  To begin I’m going to talk about the cultural context of Catalunya, the province in which both Barcelona and San Cugat, the location of my school, are located. Catalunya, like the whole of Spain, acknowledges siesta.  A period in the day from approximately 2 pm till 5 pm where businesses close, children and professionals alike leave the day behind and go home for a much needed lunch. Unless you’re walking around a tourist center, you’ll be hard pressed to find a tienda open during siesta. Now you might have noticed that I indicated that Catalunyans enjoy lunch at this time. In general, people eat much later here. Breakfast is similar, depending on when one gets up in the morning. However lunch is eaten at about 4pm, and dinner between 9 and 11 pm. The restaurants don’t even open until 8:30 Pm. So this was something I had to adjust to. Also, people actually go to the café to enjoy their rich and creamy caffeinated beverage of choice. Usually an espresso or a café con leche. And imagine this. They actually sit down to drink it. They stay in the café until they have fully consumed that potent aromatic beverage. So yes, we look utterly ridiculous carrying our handy travel mugs one would simply take for granted back home. If my long blonde hair didn’t scream tourist enough, the travel mug certainly sealed the deal.

Now these differences in daily life may seem trivial. But to my amazement, the change in eating hours has proven to be, well, impossible. In order to be at the school in the morning for 8 am, I have to get up at 5 am. This is required to complete my really-not-so-intense morning routine, which takes about 45 minutes from start to finish.  The tricky part comes in with the ten minute walk to the metro station, followed by the three trains one needs to take in order to get to the appropriate stop in San Cugat. This journey can take anywhere from an hour and fifteen minutes to two hours depending on the time of day. The journey is then concluded with a 10-15 minute walk from the train station to the school. So you can see the 5 am wake up is necessary. In conclusion, the idea of staying up till 10 pm to eat dinner when I need to get up a mere seven hours later isn’t appetizing. So with the exception of weekends, I’ve had to stick to a Canadian eating plan.

Now to address the more important contextual differences between Canadian and Spanish education.

   Welcome to IES Leonardo Da Vinci Secondary School

I will preface this section of my travel log with the notion that my observations have been made from participating in 19 different classrooms, conversations with 5 teachers, and numerous students. The information presented is only from contexts taken within one school, and the interpretation is coming from myself, an education student educated entirely within the province of Alberta. Therefore my opinions of education standards are those which have been ingrained in me since I was five years old.

To begin, education in Spain is compulsory until age 16, or what we would call the grade 10 level. Secondary school consists of four grades here ESO 1,2,3 and 4. ESO 1 is comparable to grade 7. If students wish to attend university they must achieve a grade standard that allows them to enter the two year post-compulsory education program named Baxillerat. This program can be compared to grade 11 and 12 in Canada.  If a student does not meet the academic standard to progress to this level, or chooses not to attend, they will enter the work force. At IES Leonardo Da Vinci there are currently four ESO4 classes of 35 students. As an aspiring teacher I find it saddening that there are only two classes in Baxillerat 1, and two classes in Baxillerat 2, each consisting of less than 20 students. While the notion of students needing to have a fairly clear idea of where they want to go upon completing compulsory education at age 14/15 is not so different from Canada, as our students need to choose courses for grade 10 at the end of grade 9 that will allow them to meet post-secondary entrance requirements, the concept is still beyond me. I feel like I was one of the lucky ones in my class when I was in school as I knew from the time I was 12 I wanted to pursue music and education. However, having now taught students in grade 4-12, in addition to experiences with my peers, I know that I was more than likely the exception.

The method in which universities accept applicants is also very different here. According to the head of the English department at IES, entrance into university is determined by grades achieved on the state exams. However, unlike Alberta, students are not required to take state exams in all academic subject areas.  The grades students receive on these exams will determine whether they gain entrance into a private university, which is seemingly superior to, a public university, or no university at all. Students at IES are plagued with the idea that because they attend public school, private university is unattainable. Currently there is a motion to vastly change education in Spain. I have read it in its entirety and will try to find a digital copy to post later.

Teachers at this particular school appear to fall in a category Canadian teaching professionals would label “incredibly burnt out”. They frequently say that they are overworked due to the current economic crisis in Spain. Their hours have increased while their salaries have allegedly decreased. However, coming in as a music teacher who is accustomed to teaching early morning rehearsals beginning at 7am, followed by a full day of classes with only the rare possibility of one prep every few days, and concluding with after school rehearsals ending between 5 and 9 pm depending on the season, I personally find it hard to fairly compare the educational working hours. Having said this, it is also clear from my experiences that education is generally quite different here, and therefore the increase in these teachers’ school hours is still an increase from previous standards and therefore likely does present those working within the contexts in Spain with new and alternative difficulties.  I am unaware of what the conditions were prior to the economic downfall; however any increase in working hours above the common standard would be complicated to deal with.  If Canadian teachers were expected to teach seven days a week we would likely feel the same way these teachers are feeling now. The standards are incomparable but the idea is universal. According to the Spanish government website, the average teacher salary in Spain is 65,000 Euros a year. This can currently be converted into $84,786.00 CAD according to the exchange rate on March 3^rd 2012. While this is lower than the Alberta standard for teachers with six years of education followed by eleven years of experience, it most definitely is not a number to be taken lightly.

As a student of the inquiry based University of Calgary Master of Teaching program, I has been instilled in me that learning should be engaging, fun, interesting, relevant and lasting. Through my educational years and my practicum placements in Alberta I have experienced classrooms that thoroughly meet the standards set forth by these powerful words.  I have actively and successfully implemented these notions in my teaching both in the school classroom as well as my private musical instruction.  Therefore the classrooms I’ve been a part of here at IES have me quite puzzled.  With the exception of one of the five teachers Brianne and I have worked with, all, and I mean all, of the lessons are taught directly from the text and workbooks.  This method of instruction works very well for some students, as they have proven to have a level of fluency in the English language far beyond my abilities reached upon completing the comparable level of French while I was in high school. Some of the students in the second level of Baxillerat – grade 12 - are nearly fluent. However, the text-and-learn method fails to meet the requirements of the masses particularly in the ESO 1-4 grades.  Students complain about lessons being boring and less than half of each class I’ve worked with, actually completes homework assignments.  To further my point that the text-and-learn instructional method fails to meet the needs of the majority of students, when addressing the issue of incomplete homework with the necessary students, many of them have the skills to complete the work, but are unsure of themselves and therefore require one on one assistance. When given the opportunity to work with me these students all begin to understand the subject matter. I’m unsure of what the issue is in the regular classroom. Are they too shy to ask questions? Are they simply not interested?

       (At least the comic he was writing instead of doing his assignment was in English)

Another vast difference between Canadian school rooms and those of IES is that teachers do not have their own classrooms. There are student home room classes where all classes with the exception of gym and music, are taught. The teachers move from classroom to classroom bringing all their resources, typically a text book, sometimes a dvd, with them to each class. There is little to no work displayed on the walls and the rooms lack personality. When I showed photographs and gave an explanation of the appearance of Canadian classrooms, teachers at IES remarked that they were envious. As an education student having had to adapt to teaching in someone else’s classroom for nearly two years now, I am thoroughly grateful for the way our classroom structure is set up at home.

                                         Languages Department Teacher Lounge

The Library

With the exception of one of the five English teachers’ classrooms, lessons here in ESO1-4 are quite chaotic.  The noise level in the classroom can only be described as thoroughly unacceptable by Alberta teaching standards. I have puzzled with this for some time now, and have come to two personal conclusions. In some cases, the children have been so excited to talk to me which then results in the intense projection of their voices. However, in most classroom situations the noise comes from what we would characterize as off task students who haven’t been disciplined to focus while in the classroom. Please note that due to my educational experiences I have great difficulty writing about these classroom contexts without negative undertones. While I accept and am revelling in the differences between schools in Alberta and here at IES, the classroom management techniques, or lack thereof, that are employed by teachers here do not correspond with my beliefs and my teaching practice.  It appears that students are simply not expected to be on task while in the classroom, as the vast majority speak out of turn, and often yell to friends across the room. There is no hand raising here.  Students talk over one another continuously, and neglect to cease their conversations when their teacher is trying to provide instruction. Students also frequently move around the room disruptively, and I have seen several playful, yet in my opinion thoroughly unacceptable, physical fights between boys in various classrooms while the teacher simply ignores the situation. Many students are entirely unresponsive to their teachers here, even refusing to work, move to an alternative seat, or even leave the classroom when the teacher has indicated that they were no longer welcome.  I have struggled with determining how I will manage the classrooms I’m teaching in here, as I recognise that my teaching standards are not of the norm here, however, I cannot simply completely change who I am as a teacher and even more so as an individual to cater to a method which appears to be, in my opinion, thoroughly unsuccessful.  In most cases I try to maintain several of my classroom management techniques, such as wait time, while also trying to relax my methods in an effort to not step on the toes of the teachers I’ve been working with.  I have found that the students respond well to me in the classroom, and often better than they do to their own teachers. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m new, Canadian, young – teachers at this school are almost all mid forties or older, or because I am trying to implement a teaching style that is new to them.

It is hard as a Canadian teacher who teaches through inquiry and relevant practice to compare my experiences here with those I’ve had at home. While I feel this travel log comes across as negative, and it has been very challenging not to judge the school system at this particular school due to the standards I’m accustomed to, at the end of the day I cannot help but give well deserved credit to the students in the first and second year Baxillerat. As stated before, for those who make it to what we would know as grade 11 and 12, the fluency of the English language at this age is far superior then my experiences of students studying second languages at a comparable age level in Canada.  Some of these students have been participating in European Parliament competitions competing in English. These are competitions comparable to the Model UN debates held in Canadian high schools, only here, they do it in a second language.  An accomplishment no doubt.

The experiences I’m having here are clearly incredibly different from those I’ve had at home. However, being here is incredibly eye opening and I wouldn’t trade the lessons I’m learning for the world. The teachers I’m working with, while having different instructional methods, are happy to have me and eager to trade war wounds.  I feel incredibly blessed to have been given this diverse learning opportunity, and know that my teaching, and myself as an individual, are both growing in ways no other experience could have provided me.