Week 1, Year 3

We just had the first full week of school for the 2009 school year, and I'm beginning my third year of teaching here.  I'm trying to look forward as much as I look back these days, breaking the habit I was taught in college.  In my first year I was always reflecting back on the efficacy of individual lessons or units or conversations, making mental notes for how to change those individual situations in the future.  In my second year, I was looking back to my first year for lessons on how to make the current year more effective.  That period of time when "it gets easier" remained nebulous and, to be honest, I didn't have much time to think about what it would look like when it came around.

Well, it's here.  These first days were busy, productive, enjoyable, exhausting, and noticeably less nerve wracking.  The night before I met my classes I slept the sleep of the dead, and woke up to a cup of coffee and the paper the next morning.  No thoughts about potential problem students, no fears about making the same mistakes as last year, no butterflies in the stomach, and certainly no rush to get to school for that extra 20 minutes of prep time in the morning.  I simply enjoyed a cuppa joe, looked at the clock, got dressed, and hopped on the bus.

That being said, I know that the easy-breezy feel of today will turn into a tropical storm tomorrow.  But I can actually say that now because I know where the busy times of the year happen around here.  I predict that I will hit the first wall of homework grading in about 4 school days, which will be followed in about three weeks by the first round of essays from my older students.  

For all of the little snaggles that happen in the teaching profession, at least I can say that I'm keeping my eye open for when they happen instead of looking back to how to avoid them completely.  There are thing I can't control, such as the sinking feeling you get when you have that first pile of grading after summer break.  It's the same for everyone who has ever had to go back to work after vacation.  One thing I've learned is that the snaggles for educators come in waves, and they boil down to one problem that is out of my control for the most part here: time.  

My current department assigns each course to one or two teachers, who plan out the major units and objectives for the course and then pass that schedule on to the classroom teachers.  I have been told that the first two weeks of classes should encompass getting-to-know-you style activities that also introduce reading comprehension skills and introduce basic language study and analysis vocabulary.  Then I have to start either a short text unit unit or an extended text unit, depending on the course.  I've been given freedom to choose my texts and method for teaching them, but I still have to limit myself at this point to poetry, short stories, and novels.  No film, media, creative writing or anything else.  Reading comprehension should be woven in because there will be a common test for all classes in week 6.

Here lies the snaggle.  Looking at all 5 of my classes, this first unit will end for all of my classes within a few weeks of one another.  Ending a unit means summative assessment to see what the kids have learned.  Since our department's focus is essay skills (the core of the standardized testing in New Zealand), that means 150 essays to grade within a few weeks time.  That's a big time sink, and since I don't get to design my own courses I can't stagger that work load.  Time, in this case, is not on my side.

My one bit of reflection that I'm allowing myself at this point is to notice large trends: what can I control and shape, and what can I not control.  I can control how I make the writing process easier and more skills-based for my students, teaching baby steps up to the complex writing they'll have to produce at end of year.  I can't control how many final drafts of essays pass across my desk at the end of these units.  I've decided this year to optimise my grading for first drafts of essays, grading only a few paragraphs and then passing them on to the students to finish grading.  This actually worked last year.  It saved me time, halved my grading load, actually, but it also modelled self-assessment skills for the kids.  They can see that I commented on their topic sentences in the first two paragraphs, so they can check their topic sentences for the rest of the essay.

Alas, I still have to use essays as my main form of summative assessment.  Since I can't control this, I'm not going to worry about it.  I'll try to write a little less on student work by making up a shorthand glossary for the kids to have in their notebooks, and using symbols instead of words to mark up their writing.  But I'm not going to loose sleep over taking that extra day to get work back to them.  There's only so many hours in the day, after all, and that's another thing I can't control.

Maybe the "it gets easier" lesson really boils down to self-determination.  Once you stay in a profession long enough you better get at understanding what your job actually entails.  In education, this doesn't always jive with the ideals built up in teacher training programs.  Last year this dissonance caused some headaches for me.  This year, I've had to compare the two (job requirements vs social expectation) and determine what goals I can practically achieve. 

A bike ride in Auckland...

Is like an intense game of frogger: it's ultimately fun but you really have to look out for cars.  This week alone (two days into it) I've had two close calls.  That being said last week was uneventful.  I think this means my riding has been raised to a new level, to continue with the video game analogy, but I could be wrong.  There just be more congestion due to all of those drivers back into the swing of things after the holiday break.  Who knows.  The only thing I do know is that it feels good to be able to stop at a red light right next to a car that passed me about a kilometre back, and to think that I didn't have to burn any gas while the other guy did.

We're experiencing a resurgence in bike ridership in our home lately.  With the longer hours of daylight and drier weather Peter's been biking in to work nearly daily and I've recently bought a bike to toodle around the neighbourhood on.  I have to say that it feels darn good to be back on the bike, now that the obligatory and awkward "getting to know you" phase is over.  Two years of relatively low physical activity and a shiny new case of asthma have left me a bit out of shape, you could say.  The rolling hills of Auckland didn't make the process easy but after a few weeks of short near-daily rides I'm doing better.  I can now make it 14 kms without stopping (I actually feel pretty good afterward) and I only need the inhaler sometimes after I ride now.  All in all Peter and I are feeling healthier these days thanks to this long-forgotten mode of transportation.

Our readers may recall previous posts in which Peter explained the perils of cycling in Auckland.  The roads are narrow; shoulders and bike lanes (where they exist) tend to be filled with gravel, broken bottles and the odd dead hedgehog; storm drains are not always designed well and grates can sometimes run parallel to the curb.  And always the aggressive traffic.  None of these things make cycling as a commuter mode of transportation an easy choice, and those around here who choose to take the plunge trend toward the hardcore.*  I'm trying my best to fit into this category, as I'm lucky enough to live along a commuter corridor that has bike paths for most of its length.  My employer also has showers and lockers in the women's bathroom, which means that I can have a quick rinse once I get to work.  Not everyone has access to this sort of thing here, so I should probably take advantage of it.

At its heart, this change is simply the latest step in our efforts to become a bit more earth friendly.  We never drove the car all that much to begin with, but I'd say that 95% of its use was for my daily commute.  At first I didn't feel bad because I could justify it: my weekly petrol bill was half the cost of bus fare for the equivalent distance, and driving cut my commute time in half.  What's not to love?  We'll, I hate sitting in traffic at the end of the day, getting wheezy 10 minutes into a friendly ultimate frisbee game at work, that extra roll on my stomach that now pops out when I sit down, and generally being a part of the twice-daily single occupant vehicle exodus.

So we're trimming back.  My goal is to be able to bike to work come the end of the month without being too red faced and sweaty.  Peter's biking to work daily, and we're cutting back on our meat consumption.  It's all a part of our attempt to keep healthy and cut down on our carbon footprint.

I'll be taking the camera along some of my rides later this week so you can see what we're up to in our daily routine.

*A special note for Moms Jan and Char: don't worry.  We wear helmets, ride only when it's safe and get off the bike or ride on the foot path when it's not.  You've taught us well.

The drawbacks of summer break

This is what summer has made of me: a paranoid dreamer.

Part of what I love about the job is the vacation time.  Sure, it's inflexible and probably reduces my overall salary, but I love it nonetheless.  I have extended time to work on pet projects, truly relax and explore books that I may or may not use in the classroom.  I ride my bike and catch up with friends.  I'm learning scales and modes on my guitar.  My legs are now tan and sand fly-bitten because I go to the beach; life is good to us.

But at the end of the day the clock strikes 9 and I find that I'm not all that tired.  I wait as long as possible to crawl into bed and still fall asleep quickly, as is the habit I've fallen into.  It's here that I've been experiencing many a deep remorse, as Mark Twain once put it, in my dreams.  Let me explain.

Because education and kids are two of the things our culture tells us we should feel an obligation to foster, teaching carries a certain amount of moral baggage.  I've been told all of the good teachers keep their eyes out for 'teachable material' in their spare time, take papers home to grade, give up weekend and evening time to tutor or coach or cheer on the kiddies. And so on.  So in that first week of my well earned (yet obligatory) vacation, I spent my time scrounging through second-hand book shops and libraries.  I took down ideas and names and addresses in small notebooks.  Granted, I treated myself to lunches out and some new summer clothes at the skads of sales I saw in every shop window.  This blending of personal and professional time was expected, as it usually takes me a bit to wind down from the frenetic pace of work.  

Skip ahead a few weeks.  I now lay in bed, awake, and the sky is the iridescent grey-blue that appears just before the birds begin to clamor.  The alarm hasn't gone off, but I am awake.  I was wakened by those things that teachers normally dream of during the school year: loosing student assignments, forgetting class on the first day, walking into a classroom to find that your students are not the age group you expected and worrying that "I wasn't trained for this."  Schedules were ruined, I had gum in my mouth when I shouldn't have, I was dressed for embarrassment, yaddah yaddah yaddah.  But it's summer, and I'm not at work.  Why the dreams?

My suspected reason: I'm spending my summer vacation researching the job shift from Auckland to any one of 5 locations in North America.  Most of the family knows by now that my lovely husband is shifting careers, and is applying for graduate schools.  This means that I'm making plans for job change come the middle of 2009.  This doesn't worry me too much because we're, for the most part, moving back to familiar territory.  I know the ropes of applying for work in the US, I've done an international move before and I know people in nearly all of the cities we're interested in moving to.  But a move means that I'll be having two first days of an academic year, and for some reason that is picking on my sub-conscience.  

So now that I have all of this time on my hands, I have time to worry about the future.  My nightmares (they wake me up from sleep, so that's what they technically have become) almost always deal with first-sight sort of worries: first day of classes, first time meeting a department head, first time dealing with conflict in a new school.  I think most teachers have had a few classes that never quite get off on the right foot, and after having a few of those in 2007 I'm extremely paranoid about having to dodge this bullet twice in 2009.  

I guess I'll find out how long this dream pattern lasts.  It may go away once we pin down where we'll be.  It may ride right up to day one of classes in September.   Either way, I'd much rather be having nightmares about flesh-eating shrimps jumping off the barby than dreaming about gum gluing my mouth shut at a job interview that won't come for another 5 months.

I almost wish I had the eye twitch back. 

Highlights of the 2008 school year

12.  Having a 20 year veteran teacher with Specialist distinction come to me for advice.  On pedagogy, even.  Gosh.

11.  Finally getting it through to my Thai student, whom I taught last year as well, how to make subjects and verbs agree.  In only took a year and half to crack that nut.

10.  During a pre-exam fun quiz one student group named themselves Obama '08! after my bumper sticker.  They later confessed to seeking favour from the judge; they lost miserably.  I gave extra candies on their way out of class, though, for their gumption.

9.  - "Whoa, Miss, nice shoes!" (Indeed, I was wearing new shoes.)

     - "Thank you very much...who are you?"

     - "_____, Miss."

     - "Nice to meet you, _____."

8.  Tape a Co-worker's Personal Effects to the Ceiling Day.  There is still a Chupa Chup stuck to the ceiling 4 months on.

7.  After weeks of hearing, "Shut up, R!" shouted when I turned my back to the class (when in fact neither R. nor any other student was talking at all), I snapped.  

-T.: "Shut up, R.!"  

-Me, without taking my eyes off of what I was doing: "Shut up, T."  

-T.: "Touche, Miss."  

Satisfying, indeed.

6.  A very Catholic, golly-goshing Media Studies teacher sat in our shared office, along with me and a host of atheists, hard-out chain smokers and a flamboyantly gay teacher with a penchant for sparkly cuff links.  One day her "bring in a magazine" lesson during a print media unit yielded a skin mag thinly disguised as a car mag.  Not knowing what to do, she had taken it off of the student and brought it up to the office wondering if she should call the boy's mother or just throw it away.  The smoker, Mr. Cuff Links, and I raced over to her desk and had a hoot over the tawdry and airbrushed stuff.  Let's just say that jokes and comments were made, which were loud enough to be heard by the Head of Department one office over, and said HOD had to come in, take the magazine away and tell us to get back to work.  He never does this sort of thing, which leads us to believe that he still has the magazine.

5.  A young Russian-born man who struggled with syntax all year, waving from the doorway on the last day of class, shouting over the din, "Thanks for the class, Miss!"

4.  This same young man striding into my office the next week, only three days before the big exam, with four essays in hand.  He thrusts the essays at me with panic in his face.  "Will you give me some feedback on these?"  They were all awesome.

3.  After yet another discussion about why John Keats, and all Romantic poets for that matter, are fixated on booze, sex and the like, I heard a brief silence followed by about four kids simultaneously crying, "Aaaaahhhhh."  The dirty euphemisms had just gained substantial meaning and they realised that sex is more than a physical thing; it's often just a conduit for other more important ideas or relationships.  Therefore, all sniggering and fun was no longer allowed in class because it would make them look immature and stupid in the eyes of their peers.  I was witness to the death of innocence in some small part.

2.  Handing a student a battered copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest against his will, and then finding out through his speech project later that year that the book helped him better understand his relationship with religion.  He had realised not that he was an atheist, but why he was an atheist, and could articulate this for the first time.  I didn't expect this at all, seeing as Christian martyr imagery is so strong and (according to many) affirmative at the end of the book.  After his speech he thanked me for making him read the book.

1.  Hearing the guy who hired me tell me that he's awfully glad that he hired me.

How New Zealand high school works: the basic structure of schools

Introduction

One of the biggest challenges of taking up a new job, in your home country or abroad, is figuring out how you fit within a larger structure of the organization. As teachers, we have to take whole courses in our training programs about this topic. We study how the public education evolved, how schools are funded, various levels of governmental involvement, legal requirements at each level, etc. The US is unique in a lot of ways because of our highly stratified structure, from local up to federal levels and state-to-state variety. A lot of teachers choose to know the basics and then get down to the business of their work: giving content to students. These people have a knack for separating the wheat from the chaff and then getting on with their lives. They know how their jobs relate to politics, how their personal budgets depend on funding formulae and the rights that they and their students have within the system.  These basics are the issues that affect day to day operations in the class so most of us choose to know these and leave the rest to department heads and senior management.

And then there are people like me. We can't help but dig into details even if it means not doing anything meaningful or immediately necessary for hours on end. We're pickers of the worst kind: complete and unrelenting. We learn the basics and then can't help but learn the basics of other peoples' positions and responsibilities, as well. I've come to terms with this part of my psychology and have managed to get some use out of it. There are times, though, when I succeed in collecting nothing but mental junk that sits in my mind, the likes of which may or may not be usable in the future.

Before coming down to New Zealand I was working as a substitute teacher in my district's middle and high schools. If you or someone you know has been a substitute teacher you'll know that the work is sporadic and is prone to periods of unemployment not long enough to take on a second job. To fill in the time I decided to do a little background reading on New Zealand education. A little reading turned into a lot of reading, which turned into a full-blown quest for any and all information relating to NZ schools: I read the official information from the official sites and then dug into news article, school sites and newsletters, student projects I found on-line, and any articles on the web that included the terms "New Zealand" and "education".

One thing that I found during my search was that there really wasn't much out there for overseas trained teachers. The jargon was, honestly, pretty foreign despite the fact that New Zealand speaks English.  In addition to this, the education system had recently been revamped and included new vocabulary and names for those structures that remain the same throughout time (such as grade levels, subjects, certifications, exams, etc).  Older vocabulary was still commonly in use throughout most documents.  This meant that two different articles about the same topic could be using two different terms for the same thing. I was expecting a certain amount of new terminology but nothing to the extent at which I had just uncovered. Luckily I had the time to sift through it all and break it down. If I had been working full time I probably would have had to take the approach of the more prudent researcher and start looking for wheat amongst the chaff, and I can honestly say that that approach probably wouldn't have yielded much in the way of wheat.

This is the first in a series of posts titled "How NZ High School Works". My aim is to break down the structure of secondary education for those who grew up with the American education system. The information about New Zealand education that is published on the internet is confusing at best, indecipherable at worst, and there doesn't yet exist any information geared specifically toward an American audience. In this series I hope to explain some of the basics of the system and lay out what outsiders need to know to start their study of education in New Zealand.  The information presented here is simply what I've managed to glean from my forays into public documents and my few years of experience here.  Please forgive any misinformation that might slip into any article in the series.  I'll try to make sure that my information is as accurate as possible.

Part I: The Overall Structure

Students in New Zealand experience basically the same educational trajectory that American students experience. They go through a period of exploration and social growth at a very young age, then learn the basics of language and math with applications in social studies and science topics. They enter a period of enhanced freedom before high school where they are allowed to manage themeselves more independently while getting the support structures that they need from attentive teachers. In their final years they more or less take the reins of their own education and navigate a catalog of required and optional classes that will eventually lead them to a certification. With this certification they head off into whichever direction the magnatism of the Earth pulls them.

Within this general trajectory are subtle differences that ultimately give a New Zealand child a much different experience than that of an American child.

Children in New Zealand begin school at the age of 5. This means that on their 5th birthday they get to go to school. This could be late in the academic year or early in the year, but it happens on their birthday. According to law the NZ education system is required to provide all children ages 5-16 with 180 days of school per year.  This is changing and will soon expand to cover students aged 5-18 years.  Legally all of these students must be supervised or involved in a structured program during his/her school's operating hours.  

Most children have access to early childhood education (ECE) centres.  These are called Kindergarten and are the American equivalent of pre-school.  Many of these centres get federal funding and thus the staff who run them must hold certifications in ECE.  From what I've learned these certifications are as thorough and involved as those held by other teachers.  

From the age of 5 students then move from Kindy (another short-hand version of Kindergarten) to Primary school (Elementary School).  They are placed in a full day programme in Year 1 of the curriculum.  

New Zealand refers to class levels as years, so Kindergarten in the US is the same thing as Year 1 in New Zealand.  First Grade is Year 2, Second Grade is Year 3 and so on up the line.  These students have a school day that begins around 9 am and goes until 3 pm.  They get a 20 minute break in the morning and a 30-40 minute lunch break at around 1 pm.  These students learn the basics of reading, writing and math within the context of larger units, much in the same manner of US students.  The vast majority of these schools are uniformed and nearly all are co-ed.  They learn all of their subjects from one teacher and stay in one classroom for the full day.  They get PE regularly and rotate through optional subjects like art as the school sees fit.  Very few of these primary schools offer music; there is no such thing as a Primary or General Music teacher.

Once students reach Years 7 and 8 they enter what is called Intermediate School.  Unlike American middle schools or junior high schools, these students do not adopt the traditional high school bell schedule.  Intermediate school looks, for the most part, just like primary school.  Students are still taught by one teacher all day and stay in one classroom within a co-ed context.  They go through math hour, then a regiment of punctuation and grammar and handwriting before morning tea (New Zealand's equivalent of recess) at 10:30.  Students then come back for practice with reading or some other sort of science-based activity.  At this level they begin to study Maori language and culture in more depth and are expected to work on larger projects that take days to complete.  This is where they begin to learn independence in academics.  They don't learn time management skills at the same level as American students, however; Kiwi intermediate students work in one classroom all day and don't have to plan out which books to prepare, when to be at a different location, etc.  The social structure of the groups looks very much like upper-elementary groupings, with most students opting to spend time with others of their same gender.  Little teasing between genders is seen in the classroom, but lots of mixed-gender project work is generated from seating arrangements (also controlled by the teacher and not the students).

In Year 9 students make the jump to secondary education model.  This jump involves adjusting to bells, class schedules and the levels of responsibility and accountability that most American students learn in middle school.  Most secondary schools are uniformed and nearly half of the New Zealand secondary schools are single sex.  Students can progress through Year 13 before leaving for University, although some leave in Year 12 to pursue apprenticeships or two-year degree programmes at trade schools.  

A note here on terminology is needed for clarity's sake.  The old secondary system, Bursary, referred to Years as Forms.  Beginning at the current Year 7 age, students were categorised as Form 1 (Year 7) up through Form 7 (Year 13).  Many schools still use the Form label when referring to a students level of academic study in secondary school.  I prefer to use the Year label as it seems to be the direction many schools and teachers are heading in their choice of lingo.  It also clears up my daily interactions with other teachers surrounding one period of the day called Form Period.  This is America's version of home room and is a short period of the day dedicated to reading out notices, passing out forms, homework checks and so on.

High school is divided into two phases: Junior school and Senior school.  Junior school comprises Years 9 and 10 and covers basic academic skills in English, math, science, social studies, PE, and a rotating elective line.  This is loosely termed "technology" and can include anything from drama to media to wood working to music to food technology.  The aim of this block is to give students a sound knowledge of the basics before allowing them to specialise in Senior school.  Senior school covers Years 11-13 and is the period in which students begin to explore their options for their lives after high school.  All students have to take English, maths and a science of some variety.  Depending on their post-secondary aspirations they pick and choose which courses will get them the proper certification.  

Senior school is also where students begin taking NCEA or Cambridge classes.  Not every school offers both, but all except one offers NCEA.  The school I teach in offers both, but restricts who may enter which pathway.  These are two different curricula that give students access to a secondary certification similar to a High School Diploma.  

NCEA is a New Zealand developed system that is designed to work with local tertiary programs.  The Cambridge curriculum is based on the UK secondary curriculum and is targeted at those students wanting to study abroad after high school.  Both deliver the same basic skills, but Cambridge eventually narrows to just four core subjects (English, math, science, history) as a means of preparing students for highly academic tertiary programmes.  NCEA offers a wider range of courses including hard and soft materials, hospitality, health and physical education, business studies, economics, accounting, te reo Maori, and a host of others.  In both NCEA and Cambridge systems, students must pass certain classes in order to earn a certificate.  NCEA students earn credits and can earn a variety of certificates based on how many credits they earn at the three levels of NCEA study: Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3.  Cambridge is an all-or-nothing system like the US's: you must take a series of courses to the end of the line, and only then will you earn your degree.  In both systems, social promotion as an accepted practice and course content is catered to both the academic and social needs of the student group.  I will post other articles in the future further detailing the nuances of the NCEA and Cambridge systems.

The school day for secondary school is very similar to that of the younger Kiwi students.  High schools generally begin at 8:45 am and end at 3:10.  Many students come to school before classes or stay late to practice sports, music or other group activities.  For the most part sports teams do not train five days per week as in the US.  Top teams usually train 2-3 days per week and compete on weekends.  Very few competitions occur during the week, with most taking place on Saturday.

About half of New Zealand males leave school by the end of Year 12 to attend two-year programs in trade schools, or take up apprenticeships.  The other half have their eyes set on a four-year diploma through one of New Zealand's universities.  This is a well established trend that has been strengthened over the last few years by feedback from the business sector.  Most employers claim that they do not prefer employees with university degrees, but instead competent workers with a sound work ethic and some relevant experience, be it in the classroom or the workplace.  As opposed to US employers, who seem firmly acclimated to a workforce flush with degrees and diplomas in every subject under the sun, New Zealanders still very much see work and life experience as equally valuable as advanced education.  

There is one thing that Year 13 students have in common with the American high school senior; most view their last year of high school as a significant accomplishment and relish the last year of what they come to regard as their childhood.  While some here stay on just long enough to finish out their last Rugby season and then sign out, most attempt to enjoy their friends and school community as much as they can...before they have to leave.

The problem with being international

We've been having some very frank discussions about finances at our school lately.  This isn't unusual.  Every school has a financial crunch that forces tough choices on which services to keep and which to pitch.  As a wealthier school, however, most of our discussions historically revolve around how to make ends meet on the multi-million dollar mortgage we took out on a new auditorium a few years back.  That and how to get more money for an already wealthy rowing team.  I keep my face shut about the appalling lack of computer labs (we have 4, count 'em, 4 labs available for non-computing classes in our school of 2,100 students), or the fact that all of my classes are kicked into the library for a "reading period" as a way to free up classroom space for other classes.  ("But Silent Sustained Reading is a good thing for young kids.  Why not continue that practice into the upper reaches of high school?)

This year, however, we've learned that only 51% of our operating costs come from the government.  Yep, as a public school only half of our funding (outside of salary) comes from the government.  How are we making ends meet?  We bill the families of our students directly.

A number of our students come from overseas.  This phenomenon isn't new to the teachers at my school.  We've seen these students in our classrooms for years, and are all thoroughly acclimated to hearing Korean, Chinese, Thai and other Asian languages spoken around school grounds.  While most of these students have immigrated with their families intact and now have resident status, some students are sent to us by parents who continue to live and earn money in their mother countries.  This latter class of student students are charged an arm and a leg to attend our school.  International student fees this year are $12,000NZ but you won't find that price tag anywhere on the school website.  We're able to get away with this because, well, we have to.  If the Ministry of Education isn't going to pay for more classrooms to accommodate our bulging population, and the "suggested donation" of roughly $400 asked of families isn't cutting it, how else do we raise funds?  Pull out a loan?

It certainly doesn't lessen the temptation to charge parents when the families of international students often times have the money to send their kids abroad.  Market forces are driving this little problem: foreign families want top-quality language instruction for their children to help them compete in a highly-competitive business field, while we scratch our heads and wonder how to pay the bills.  As a staff we've decided that this needs to stop.  We shouldn't be forced to look at students as merely a revenue stream.  At the moment, we, along with a number of other schools in our area, are pressuring the Ministry of Education to fix the situation.  These foreign families are already dealing the pressure of sacrificing their living arrangements for their childrens' education.  We're getting stonewalled by the ministry, of course, and are being told that according to funding formulae we are getting more than enough to keep things running.  So it goes.

This article in the New York Times sums up the trend of the Korean pre-brain drain very well. Essentially, South Koreans are becoming disillusioned with their high pressure education system, particularly access to English education that is perceived to be severely lacking.  Mothers are taking their children to New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the US in droves, leaving the fathers behind to work and pay for this on-sight English training.  The goal is to get the kids into top tier universities in South Korea and the US.  The side effect is, unfortunately, stressed parents and youngsters who are left trying to make sense of the value of this "trade-off."

It's hard to watch human-scale effect of this globally-scaled trend. We just finished with our first big round of parent-teacher interview nights. I have yet to meet an international student's father at one of these evenings. We have translators on staff to help us communicate with the mothers who frequently don't have the vocabulary to ask me questions.  Many of my students act as translators, and I tell most of them to tell their mothers that I say that they are doing a superb job.  The boys always get embarrassed and the moms always get a little misty eyed.  It's never easy assuring these lone mothers that their sons are doing one helluva job balancing the gift that their parents are giving them with the pressures of growing up, even if that isn't necessarily reflected in their exam scores.

Making Children Cry

This isn't something that most teachers brag about but today I feel rather proud of doing this to one of my students.

We are working on an important piece of creative writing that involves explaining memories in terms of symbols.  The students are asked to choose an object that can be said to represent a memory, and describe it in such a way that it becomes both a jumping off point for autobiography and also a symbol of who they are as a person.  It's a challenging task and one that they've been struggling to wrap their heads around for a few days now.  

Today we focussed on how to describe these objects in detail using sensory descriptions and specific, varied adjectives.  They warmed up with a paragraph detailing an object using their senses of smell, touch, taste, hearing, etc.  I asked them to pick an object that they plan on using for this particular creative writing assignment.  Most struggled to pin down their thoughts.  I heard a lot of comments like, "how would you describe..." and, "so I just write down the memory or event as it happened?"  Frustrated with the group-approach to something that is essentially an individual task (one person, one brain/memory, one pen, one piece of paper), I pulled out the big guns.

And made a young man shed tears.

I opened a jar of pickled jalapenos and a bag of after dinner mints.  Upon the recommendation of a fellow teacher these foods were chosen for their ability to dig strong reactions out of kids.  I told each student that they HAD to eat one of each; if they chickened out they would have to stay in at lunch and eat ALL of the leftover jalapenos.  Never ones to back down from a challenge the boys rushed forward and dug in.  After some coughing and groaning and one instance of choking (on jalapeno juice gone down the wrong pipe), they boys actually got down to writing how the foods affected their body.  While they wrote I congratulated the them on their bravery.  After all, not many people have the guts to each a plain chilli pepper.  Some of the boys then took the liberty to finger one student who didn't actually join the rush on the jalapeno jar.  He's a good student, and since he was steadily writing away I figured that he had wolfed down his sample and had just gotten on with the task.  After some ribbing from the other boys this kid decided that he was not only going to eat one, but two of the largest slices he could find.  

He came up to the front of the class, fished them out of the jar and then returned to his seat to the sound of applause.  After a few minutes we went on to compare their descriptions of their memory objects to their descriptions of the food.  A motion from one student distracted me from the discussion: out of the corner of my eye I notice this singularly brave student crying.  Big crocodile tears fell down his face as he sniffed and wiped at his cheeks with one hand, the other hand still writing quickly.  My pause caused the other students to take note of this crying boy.  A classmates tried to give him crap for crying but the others defended him, mentioning that the he ate more than anyone else in the class.

After sympathising that "those pack a punch", and his assurance that he loves spicy food, we got on with the task.  Wouldn't you know it, their descriptions of their food experience were much more detailed and vivid than their earlier attempts at descriptive writing.

The kids asked if they could have a few more peppers on their way out of class at the end of the period.  I consented and turned my back to gather my things.  Two minutes later I was alone in the room with two jalapeno slices bobbing in a jar of brine.  I think the lesson went over well.