Inquiry Project - Part 2

Inquiry Project Part 2 – Documented Pedagogical Travel Log

 Coming to the Columbia International School has really helped me develop my overall sense of becoming a teacher. In my first semester at the University of Calgary, Professor David Jardine spoke a lot about the work of teaching. He really tried to help students like me question the how and why of teaching, and often asked us to think about the historical reasoning behind current education practices. “Why do we make students line up?” or “Why do we use a teaching system that imitates mass-production?” or “Why are we teaching in the same way that we ourselves were taught?” were common questions and recurring ideas in his lecture series, and these questions are still very much alive with me as I explore teaching here in Japan. In this way, much of this travel log will be talking about how I have seen teaching here at Columbia and practiced teaching here at Columbia in a way that is very different than Canada. What links my teaching and learning here in Japan to my experiences at the University of Calgary is my ongoing search for what makes teaching successful in either environment. There are likely many different factors which likely contribute to these different teaching practices here in Tokyo, and I will try to explain what I understand as the more influential or relevant factors. Finally, not everything I have experienced here in Tokyo is different, and I will write a few paragraphs describing the similarities between my students here at Columbia and previous students I have taught in Canada.

One of the major challenges that I first saw in Columbia was the fact that the student body is largely made up of Japanese children. While some of the international schools in Tokyo cater more specifically to the ex-pat community, Columbia primarily recruits children born and raised in Japan. The reasoning behind is partly due to the school’s owner, and his own personal history. Without getting into too much personal detail, it certainly is true to say that the goal of Columbia is to offer Japanese children the opportunity – ultimately – to pursue post-secondary educations overseas. The challenge is therefore to support these ESL learners in an all-English environment at school, while knowing that they are immersed in a Japanese speaking community outside of school. There of course is the odd exception, but many students come from families where neither parent can speak English at all. To support students in adopting and succeeding English from an early age, Columbia has made many adjustments and changes to its structure to really allow the focus of the school to be on building student comfort in English. In the morning, announcements are always made by students, ranging across the different grades and ability levels. These announcements always include a weekly idiom that students are encouraged to try out, “in writing, or with a friend.” I’ve kept a sample announcement for my own records to remind myself of how this simple routine makes a practice of allowing students one more avenue for school community participation, as well as public speaking. Buddy classes are also very popular here at Columbia, and include partnerships with both the junior high and high school. In my classroom of grade six students, many girls from this year’s graduating class meet weekly with older students to learn about the upcoming academic and social challenges. Since all students are required to speak only English while at school, these types of mentorships also serve to reinforce – in a positive way – the linguistic expectations from the students. At the same time, teachers have a hand in the planning of these buddy programs to make sure that students are learning from good exemplars of speaking and writing.

Finally, the elementary school invests a lot of instructional time to literacy. During my time here over only the past two months, Columbia held a spelling bee, hosted two separate book exchanges, and participated in a school-wide reading challenge. Events such as the spelling bee were part of a city-wide competition, meaning that some students were able to travel and compete in different parts of Tokyo and compete against some of the best elementary English spellers in a city of over 30 million people. Consequently, the event was taken very seriously by students, as they were aware of the prestige and, in some cases, the prize money associated with winning. Here’s a picture of the entire elementary school watching the spelling be unfold. As I supervised, I could hear and see many students trying to spell the words individually. The mood was very serious, and almost every student was giving his or her full concentration to their classmates’ efforts. The school-wide reading challenge had a similar affect on the school atmosphere. Over a two week period, all grades and all students focused on their class’ goal of reading a certain number of books. For each book or reading excerpt, students also had to write a brief summary or re-telling to demonstrate a minimum amount of comprehension. Like the spelling bee, most students took this challenge very seriously and dedicated time in-class and at home to achieving their individual and classroom-wide goals. As a casual observer of Japanese culture, I can say that reading appears to be a major pastime and hobby for many people here. Even my own students spend their free time reading during lunch

Reading Challenge in the gymnasium!

or at snack break. However, I’ve seen in Columbia that these same students will often be reading a Japanese novel or manga rather than a book in English. When I asked a few of the elementary teachers about this, I was told that nearly none of the students read English books at home, so programs like the reading challenge became a necessary part of ensuring that students get enough practice developing English proficiency. Here is a photo of one of our school’s group reading activities. All classes were invited down to the gym for a morning of reading and writing. We had a few of these events. In another instance, teachers took a morning to read a variety of stories to interested students; We each read from a variety of types of books, while students were given a quick synopsis of each book before choosing which groups they would join to listen in on.

            All of these literacy activities seem to indicate the school’s goal for building a strong early literacy program at Columbia. From the different readings and research I have read about ESL learners during this semester, it makes sense that these students need the extra exposure and structure for learning English. Like I mentioned before, almost all of the students here speak Japanese outside of school, and are immersed in a Japanese community at home. To realistically achieve something close to a 50/50 balance between the languages, time in school must be heavily weighted to developing reading and speaking skills that otherwise would not get the practice necessary.

            Besides the literacy program, Mr. Denard and I have had to make change to the Ontario curriculum of the school, in order to properly suite the students. In social studies, the unit on European exploration and aboriginal communities in eastern Canada was changed to meet the needs of the students. As outlined in the Ontario curriculum for grade six, students are typically expected to study the impacts and interactions between the first explorers from Europe to visit Canadian aboriginal peoples, and to demonstrate an understanding of what these two separate cultural communities were like before and after meeting one another. Even though I went to school in Canada, studying about these different aboriginal groups seemed foreign to me, as I went to elementary school in Saskatchewan, and learned about different aboriginal communities and their interaction with European settlers.

            When Mr. Denard first mentioned these changes to me, I was really surprised to think that the curriculum for an international school could so easily and casually be adjusted. But at the same time, it made sense; Why would you teach Japanese school children about a country and people they will possibly never meet? Isn’t the real purpose behind the social studies curriculum in giving students practical and meaningful experiences and activities in their community? If the purpose of this unit was to identify the different types of heritage and culture that co-exist in a country, shouldn’t the curriculum for a Japanese social studies class focus on explorers from Asia and America (much more relevant and authentic parts of their history), and on aboriginal cultures like the Ainu? After a few days of planning, we had reworked our social studies unit into something which includes the same underlying skills and abilities that would be assessed in a Canadian school, but we used content that was directly connected to our students. The resulting project was pretty successful; Students worked in small groups to re-enact their particular explorer’s experience in meeting a new nation’s people. They were responsible for sourcing their own research materials in either Japanese or English, and came up with some interesting plays, skits and movies to demonstrate the various outcomes and interactions between these different peoples. In some cases, these outcomes were rather dramatic or violent, which led to some interesting acting on the part of our students. They were also individually responsible for creating a written document – such as a diary, letter or captain’s log – to represent their understanding of the explorer’s historical context.

One of the classes successful poster projects

Antiqued letters and diaries from famous explorers to and from Japan

            When it came to the students’ participation in the social studies group project, I was reminded of the similarities between students in Japan and Canada.  Rather than a quiet and bored class atmosphere, the opportunity to put themselves directly into a creative work gave my students at Columbia a boost of energy. Several students surprised me with the focus they put into the work, whether it was the acting portion or the individual writing. In both cases, many students went far beyond the standard expectations of what would earn a satisfactory grade, and again, it wasn’t always the student or students I had expected. At the University of Calgary, I remember learning as recently as last semester that the multiple intelligences famously characterized by Howard Gardner were scientifically debunked, and experiences like the one at Columbia serve as just one more reminder. By creating worthwhile work for my students that authentically invites them into new or uncertain areas of expertise, I am helping to build their overall confidence. When I introduced the unit to the class, one student asked if he could instead just “make a poster”, saying that this was something the class had done before. I had deliberately left this option off the table, having already seen plenty of evidence that the class was indeed very adept at representing their knowledge with posters. (When I arrived to Columbia in January, they had just finished two posters on sky science and social studies.) I responded to Takara that I would let them use a poster as part of their movie/ skit if he liked, but that we would be exploring a new style of presentation because I had already seen the classes posters, and understood that they were very successful. One of the assessments for the unit became how well the individual students worked collaboratively in their groups. In Japan, this skill is understood in a very different manner than Canada, which typically expects a uniform level of participation. Again, it made for a great practice environment in our social studies unit, and several groups were given the chance to overcome some pretty big hurdles regarding gender, skill and creative ability.

            What I understand from teaching at Columbia is that students here also like to work together, and to succeed socially in their learning. While they may not express it verbally – why would I expect that they would? – students here in Tokyo (and in Canada) want to challenge themselves in new skills and new modes of creativity, and they want to succeed. If I can support this type of risk-taking in the classroom, I think that everyone will develop and become stronger, myself included.