Inquiry project - part 3

Inquiry Project Part 3 – Documented Pedagogical Travel Log

Figure 1 - Mr. Denard with the students

 I’m spending my last few days in Tokyo packing, cleaning, and writing this final travel log about my Teaching Across Borders placement. The three months here have really gone by quickly, but I feel I could write a great deal about the different suggested topics for this last assignment. I feel that this placement was really a lucky one for me. As I’ve mentioned in prior assignments, Columbia International School follows an Canadian (Ontario) curriculum, and employs almost entirely Ontario-certified teachers. The primary language of the school, its students, and the classes is English, so I had no difficulties at all understanding the aims and objectives of any of the teachers. Instead, I spent much of time in the school having fantastic conversations with several teachers about their individual practice, their different yet similar pedagogies, and the larger goals of the school. The principal, Mr. Barrie McCliggott, has been particularly great in that he’s met directly with me several times to talk about the objectives of my TAB placement, and done his best to support my goals while here at Columbia. In the same way, my partner teacher Mr. Denard has been very open about his classroom and his teaching practice, which made much of my coursework and inquiry into education a seamless transition from theory to practice. Mr. Denard was supportive to each and every time I wanted to involve myself in teaching, and helped me connect with other teachers in the school. I ended up spending some time teaching music for other teachers, perhaps opening up the possibility of music teaching in the future.

Figure 2- My small apartment in Saitama

            One of the highlights to my volunteer placement at Columbia actually came yesterday, the first day of the new school year. Purely by accident, I have booked my stay in Japan to include the last semester of the school year, a short break, and the beginning of the new elementary term. All of my students from grade six have now moved on to the Columbia International Junior High School, which is about 5 meters from the elementary school! Yesterday, I was extremely lucky to see Mr. Denard’s new grade six class, who were previously taught by Mr. Lucier. I was already familiar with the students, since I had been spending time in Mr. Lucier’s class as a sort of education assistant for one student with a learning disability. What was really interesting for me was to see just how the very 1^st day of class looks. In my two student teaching placements in Calgary, we were invited into our placement schools a few weeks into the school year, when the students already had some understanding of the classroom routines and were a little bit accustomed to their teacher. Seeing Mr. Denard’s practice gave me a number of ideas of how I might setup my own classroom one day, and the pedagogical reasoning behind it. Also, I visited three other classrooms yesterday, and was able to speak with each teacher about the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of their first day routines, classroom rules, and other initial pragmatics of their classroom’s first day.

            In truth, much of this preparation happened in the prior months, when these four teachers – who teach the upper elementary classes – had been in regular contact with one another about their students. Because Columbia is quite small, and the teachers know one another well, each teacher already knew quite a bit about the students entering their classroom yesterday. These types of conversations, behind the scenes in an elementary school, were invaluable to me, and no doubt influenced how each teacher setup their seating plans and class rules yesterday. Knowing the personalities and the strengths and the weaknesses of the students is something I have been practicing while here at Columbia, and which the teachers I have worked with here in Columbia have mastered. I have been invited into many professional conversations about the parental influence upon many of Mr. Denard’s students, as well as the extra-curricular experiences of the children. Many students from Columbia end up traveling abroad to study in Canada or the USA, and these influences all play a large part in how the students end up succeeding or struggling in their class work. All of these considerations are then weighed and balanced by Mr. Denard and other teachers to best challenge students when they arrive for school.

Figure 3 - Mr. Denard's board on the first day of the new term

            So, what did I see on the first day? All of the textbooks that were going to be reused from the previous year had been cleaned up, and gone through to make sure that they were useable. New workbooks and textbooks had been ordered during the previous term, and were setup ready for dispersal on the first or second days of school as well. Each student had a new name card made, which was already attached to his or her desk, and the same name tag had been made for each student’s cubby in the hallway. Both systems are what Columbia uses school-wide to help keep students organized. By continuing this system, students knew of Mr. Denard’s first day exactly where to go and what to do when they got to class in the morning.

            Regarding classroom management and discipline, Mr. Lucier is implementing a system this new school year that uses a three star system. Rather than expend energy and time to try and ‘correct’ bad behavior, his goal is to have the class somewhat self-regulate. On the first day, he has explained that the class itself will play a part in determining a set of classroom rules. This process may take up to a week to complete, but will allow the input and consideration of his students to decide how the class should best be run. Once these expectations are agreed upon, students will start the year with two stars. This enables each student with certain privileges, such as access to outdoor recess, full time snack breaks, etc. Only when a student breaks the expectation of classroom rules, will she or he lose a star, and the coinciding privileges. Students with only one star may lose the chance to go outdoors for recess, or may be confined to their desks during break times. Likewise, demonstration of particularly strong leadership or community behavior can earn a student a third star. A three-star student is entitled to access the library/washroom/computers without asking permission, and can leave for lunch without being dismissed. (Usually, students must be dismissed en masse for lunch.) Getting the chance to see Mr. Lucier explain this expectation in detail was really interesting, and will likely influence how I am going to setup my own classroom in the future.

Figure 4 - Students exploring Miraikan Technological and Aerospace museum in Odaiba, Tokyo

Figure 5 - Student field trip to the airplane park and museum, part of the air and aerodynamics unit in science in grade six, just as it is in Alberta

            Another common practice among the teachers of Columbia has been their significant and meaningful use of field trips. The more I read and study about education, the more I tend to agree with John Dewey that “Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.” When planned out logically by a teacher to coincide with in-class lessons, or to summarize material, or to introduce the connectivity between curriculum and real-world application, field trips do amazing things to students. In only three months, I have participated in several trips with Mr. Denard’s class, and heard of field trips taking place at least every month for every class in the school. In some cases, there have been trips every week. It doesn’t seem to matter too terribly much to the students where a field trip is, the reaction is pretty much the same each and every time. Excitement before and during each visit made remember just how much fun elementary school can be. The masterful way in which teachers integrated these field trips over the past three months at Columbia speaks to several key themes within teaching;

1.      Make the subject the center of student attention – Mr. Denard was able to focus his students on the different disciplines, rather than upon having them give him one ‘best’ answer. Instead of playing the game, “guess what’s in the teacher’s head?”, Mr. Denard constantly had work for students that took eyes off of him, and put his students’ minds to work on the math, or English, or whatever the subject(s) were.

2.      Offering the opportunity for differentiated learning – Rather than a boring and uniform classroom full of worksheets, field trips gave the classes the chance to explore the real world representations of whatever curricular content we were working with. Students had multiple entry points to jump into the material, and were often given open-ended questions to guide them through exhibits and information at museums. In this way, all students could be asked to find something which challenged him or her. Also, it was reasonable and expected that students be able to explain their learning, what they discovered, found surprising, or still struggled with, after visiting the different locations.

Figure 6 - Our class, right before going on stage for the Global Rock Challenge in Shinjuku, Tokyo

 

The relationships between students and the relationships between students and teachers at Columbia also stands out to me in that both sets of relationships place a high value on respect. There may be additional factors that go into why these relationships were so highly prized that don’t naturally occur in public education in Canada. Columbia is an extremely expensive private school, and the school is located in Japan. Japanese society values respect and the idea of ‘face’ very highly, and this may be even more intensified in an elite school like Columbia, where parents often enroll their children as a symbol of status and money. Now, I’m not saying that in a Canadian classroom, such respect isn’t expected or worked on, but I would say that in my observations over the past three months, the teachers at Columbia did spend a great deal of time fostering healthy social habits in the students of the school, while at the same time promoting each student’s identity and individuality. Individuality and uniqueness is generally frowned upon in mainstream public Japanese education, so to see a focus on supporting student talent and strength at Columbia actually surprised me.

Group photo outside the Mirakan museum, showing the
individual student personalities a little

Prior to my volunteer placement here, I wondered how foreign, aka Canadian teachers, would be able to find a middle ground between typical Japanese customs and more ‘western’ ideas of education. It turns out that the compromise isn’t a compromise at all, and the staff at Columbia simply teachers as close to the Ontario curriculum as possible. This means that student work is highly respected for showing individuality, creative elements, and displays of unique skill. Rather than hammering the nail which sticks out, (a famous Japanese warning against showing too much ability in school,) students are genuinely respected and rewarded for being what children really are; unique. Winners of competitions like the spelling bee, participants in the Global Rock Challenge, and members of sports teams are all groups of individuals that are championed throughout the school, whether in posters, public announcements, school assemblies, or with elaborate awards ceremonies.

Figure 8 - Some of our students on the train

In turn, I have noticed that this has had a clear affect on how the students themselves behave. Whenever we have traveled outside of the school as a class, I easily observed how ‘un-Japanese’ many of my students had become as a result of Columbia’s teaching style. We shared the train with other elementary-aged students, and only when they were literally standing side by side did I realize that the 15 students of Mr. Denard’s class were really interacting and communicating with one another and with Mr. Denard and myself in a very different manner than mainstream Japanese elementary school children. The easiest way to describe the difference would be to describe our students as much more confident, outgoing, possessing a stronger sense of identity or personality, in a way of communicating, more honest. Of course, many of these traits may be the result of parenting, socio-economic status, time spent living abroad, etc., but it seems reasonable to me that at least some of the difference has come from the different approach to education that the Columbia International School can offer these students.

All of my experiences and observations at the Columbia International School have arrived at demonstrating a convergent principle, which I read behind Mr. Denard’s desk one day soon after joining his class. Near his desk, there is a A4 paper with a great statement about what it means to be a teacher. It’s a quote from Goethe, if I’m correct, that is paraphrased to suite the life of a teacher, and which explains the impact of a teacher;

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”