Last few Weeks

My terrible apologies for not creating a post in about two weeks! These last two weeks have been so incredibly busy I have completely lost track of time!
We have had the Christmas Concert, End of the Year Field Trip, End of the Year Parties, Koromiko Athletics, Team and Staff Meetings and Parties, and lots and lots of goodbyes! Its been so crazy that I have not even realized that tomorrow is my last day at Swanson School! Tears are starting to form as I realize I will no longer be teaching with this amazing staff or working with the kids that I have come to love. I packed up my room last night and am getting ready for my trip down to the South Island for my last five days here in New Zealand. It hasn't set in yet that I'll be leaving here soon...I guess I'll just have to come back!
Oh this is a great little story: Yesterday I was chatting with two students about who their teachers will be next year. We were having a lovely chat about what they thought about moving on to Year 7 and the Totara team, when one of them asked me "Miss Scheibe, who do you have in your class next year?" I told them I won't be having a class because I'll be going home. Then the other chimed in "Well yes, you live with Miss Bishop." I said, "Yes, right now I live with Miss Bishop, but I have to go back home to my home in America." They looked at me blankly for a minute and then the first boy simply said "Why? Aren't you going to stay here with us?"
It was sooo sweet and made me smile! I really don't want to leave!
My smile grows bigger knowing that Bruce (the principal here at Swanson) has personally complimented me on my teaching here and has told me that if I ever return to New Zealand I will have a job at Swanson!
It's been tough saying goodbye as well because Rebecca is leaving too. She is heading off for her OE (Overseas Experience - a common trip New Zealanders take to the UK for about 5 years). So everyone has been saying goodbye to both of us. I am hopeful and excited though that Rebecca and I will meet up again, maybe in New York one year for Christmas!
I have so much to say and so many thoughts going through my head, but it is 10:00pm here and I have just arrived home from Rebecca, Fiona, and my goodbye party so I am tired and need sleep before my last day with the kids tomorrow. I promise I will have a better blog entry, a good long one, soon. Probably a great reflecting entry on the 26th of December after I have arrived safely back home in Wisconsin.
The lasting thought right now is that I am loving it here in New Zealand. I don't want to leave Swanson School and I will miss my friends, colleagues, and students that I have met while working here in NZ. I am excited though to bring my talents and new experiences back to Wisconsin!

Athletics Day and Rainbow's End

The past two days have been awesome experiences for me where I was able to learn as well as reminisce. Yesterday, I was asked to go along on the Koromiko Athletics (Track and Field) Day at the Trusts Stadium. Here, the Track Meet was held during the school day starting at 9:00am and ending at 2:30pm rather than after school or on the weekend. I think this was so that every student is able to participate in the events regardless of whether or not their parents could transport them there and back. So 39 students, 3 teachers, and a few parent helpers all took off to the event. We had a very skilled team going with the expectations to win a lot of events and have fun!

The events the students participated in were:
800m
400m
60m
100m

High Jump
Long Jump
Discus
Shot Put

They separated the events by age, 8-11 year olds, and by gender. The 800m and 400m races were ran first because we wanted to get them done with early in the day before it got too hot out. Our kids did wonderful! Some of them were put into the race just to have the chance to compete and see what it is like to race against others. A few of our students though are amazing runners; in our ten year old boys 800m run one of our students took 1st place and another took 3rd place after smoking about 7 people in the last 200m! I was very impressed!! In the sprints, one of our girls took 1st place in the 100m dash. She was the big surprise of the day because we expected her to do well, but she really stepped up to the plate and performed!
The only disappointment of the day was that by the end of the day the events were running late and we were unable to stay long enough to finish off the events. In the end we had to leave before the 10 and 11 year old boys were able to run their 4x100 relay and before any of the girls were able to run their 4x100 relay. It was a shame because many of the students were looking forward to the event, but we had to get back to school because our bus needed to do its school route.
Being at the Athletics Day brought back memories of when I was in Middle School at our track meets. I remember being their age and competing in the events. It was fun to watch them cheering on their friends, chatting with other schools, and succeeding/struggling in their events. I can remember myself being in their shoes and experiencing the same feelings they had. It made me laugh though and look around for Mr. Borden and made me miss Amanda Rodman and our triple jump experiences!!

Today we went to Rainbow's End which is an adventure park similar to Six Flags Great America. Rainbow's end is a much smaller park consisting of about 10 bigger rides and a number of small carnival rides. They have one roller coaster, a log flume, a "giant drop" (Fear Fall is the name of this one), some other themed rides, and go-carts.
The students we took on this trip were the community helpers at our school. They are the peer mediators, road patrol, library and P.E. monitors, classroom councilors, and other various helpers around the school. This was their reward for doing such marvelous work around the school throughout the year.
We had 95 students, 5 teachers, Craig Holt-our deputy principal, and various parent helpers going on the trip. We organized the students by having a set check-in point where we kept everyone's backpacks. The students were allowed to go around the park as they pleased with their friends to enjoy the various rides. They had to check in with us at 12:00 and then be back to be ready to go on the bus at 1:45. These were strict rules with the students! If someone did not check in with us at 12:00 they would have to stay with us the rest of the day. Well done to all the students though, because we did not have one issue all day long. Everyone behaved, everyone checked-in, and we only had to issue on band-aid. It was a fabulous day! As for us teachers we roamed around the park checking in with kids as we saw them and of course enjoying some of the rides ourselves. We would have two people staying at the check-in point in case there was an issue, but otherwise we took turns going around and riding the rides with the children. It was great fun! At the end of the day 5 students came back early, so Rebecca and I took them to the roller coaster for one last ride. We ran all the way across the park with them and hopped on. It worked out nicely because many schools were also leaving at this time so the queues were short. We road the roller coaster with them and then headed back to hop on the bus.
This trip also brought back memories for me, because only 5 years ago did I do this same trip to Great America, but I was the student. I now was seeing the trip from the eyes of Dr. No (Mr. Nowakowski) my physics teacher.
Its strange and cool now seeing and doing the same activities with my students as I did when I was their age. Only now I'm the teacher and I'm supervising rather than participating. I'm not sure whether it makes me feel young or old...
There are only two weeks left as of today! Tomorrow will bring practice for our Christmas concert which is on Tuesday and Friday is Jandal Day. Jandal Day is a Push/Play Beach themed day where the kids are invited to wear their jandals (flip flops) to school and beach themed attire. The day will be filled with everyone participating in various activities outside, such as relays, obstacle courses, and other fun activities. We are doing this as a fundraiser for the Surf Life Saving Team. We ask the kids to bring in a gold coin donation ($1 or $2 - both are gold coins) to earn donation money to the people who volunteer for surf life saving. These are the life guards down at the beaches all summer long volunteering their time to watch the public.
I'm looking forward to a fabulous end of the year, and this weekend David and I are off to the Coromandel for a weekend of camping, beaches, and tramps (hikes)!

Only a few weeks left....

I have just realized that I only have 3 weeks left here in NZ! I am getting terribly sad. Not that I don't miss everyone from home, but I don't want to leave here. I am loving it so much! I am enjoying teaching my students so much and they're all getting so fun now. With the end of the year coming a lot of times behavior goes out the window and everyone starts acting up. So we've had a big talk with the students and have laid out the rest of the year with them. We had this past week which is their last real tough week of working. They had to finish their Inquiry Learning Reports and are presenting them to the class tomorrow, they had to prepare the Koromiko assembly, which is an assembly held with just the Koromiko (year 5-6) classes. We also started a new and final topic in Maths. So it was a crazy busy week for them.

These next two weeks should be a blast for the kids though, we have two field trips, the Christmas concert, a Push/Play National Jandal Day (jandal = flip flops), and then the last two days of school are just cleanup and goodbyes. So this should be a blast for them. We are starting to practice for our Christmas concert tomorrow. A buddy class has chosen a song and dance routine we are going to work on. It should be very fun! Our first field trip is this Wednesday to Rainbow's End which is an adventure park similar to Great America but on a much smaller scale than Great America. Our next field trip is on December 13th to Kelly Tarlton's Aquarium. Right before I arrived the class was studying global warming and the polar bears. They began to really look into the Antarctic and how global warming is effecting the south pole. Kelly Tarlton's has an Extreme Antarctica exhibit that will be great for the kids to explore. Its an interactive museum and aquarium. Rebecca, Amanda, and I went two weeks ago to do a prep for the field trip. We found loads of information and tried out some of the activities that the kids will be doing. It is a very fun place. Here are a few photos that I took while us three were there:

I have realized that I only have 4 more days of actual in the classroom teaching left. Its weird to think that my student teaching is coming to an end. I have these few days left here then three weeks back at home at Aldo and I'm done. Crazy!
On Tuesday, Rebecca and I have Classroom Release which means that we get to be out of the classroom and have a reliever (substitute teacher) come in. A teacher has 2 CR Days per term (quarter) These are meant to allow the teacher to have a full day of planning or testing away from the kids. This coming Tuesday, since its the end of the year and report cards have been done for our class we are going to go to other schools for me to observe. Rebecca has set it up with some of her friends that we can go see their classrooms so I am very excited for this opportunity!
I am getting sad that I only have three weeks left. This weekend is the Staff Christmas Party and then David, his friends, and I are planning on going up north to the Bay of Islands. Then I have next weekend which we have a few ideas for but no solid plans since we have to wait to see what the weather will be like. And then the following weekend David and I are off to the South Island! Its all going so fast!
This Saturday I am hoping to see one of my students at her dance show. She found my email and she and her mom emailed me inviting me to come and see her! I told her of course I would!
Well off to do my last bit of lesson planning!

Thanksgiving in New Zealand

Thursday was Thanksgiving!

I had a blast with the students doing different Thanksgiving. We started off the morning discussing America and traditions we have for the holiday. The students were very interested in finding out about the different foods we ate as well as about the weather that we have. It is so very different for them because their Christmas holiday is summer, whereas for us Thanksgiving is the big mark off for winter and snow to begin! We discussed being thankful for everything in our lives and why we should stop and give thanks. I did not get into the whole discussion of the history of Thanksgiving. I figured the students would get lost and confused with the discrepancies of our Pilgrim and Indian Feast facts and fictions. So we skipped the history lesson and discussed the values of Thanksgiving instead.

The students then each made "Thankful Turkey's"! These were adorable turkeys with five items or people they were thankful for written on the feathers. I absolutely loved some of their items: Their families, their friends, money, Miss May and Miss Scheibe, and games were some of the popular answers. However my personal favorite was the student who included: hot chips (french fries) on his list of items he was most thankful for! haha!

We took a great picture of our class with their turkeys and then headed outside for a game of Capture the Flag. (I figured this was close enough to the American tradition of playing football on turkey day!)

That afternoon I shared with the students a lot of pictures I had from home. The ones they were most interested in were my photos of winter in Wisconsin. Most of these students have seen snow, but not to the extent that we get each year in WI. They have seen maybe only light snows which melt the next day. So when they saw pictures of 3 feet of snow, sledding, and all the snow suit gear we have they were astounded! It was fun sharing all these stories and chatting with the children.

My thanksgiving dinner here was not quite up to par with traditional turkey dinners. We had had a rotisserie chicken, salads, asparagus, and potatoes. A little different from the usual turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, and cranberry dinner but to my benefit I could still wear my pants comfortably at the end of the day! haha

I baked two pumpkin pies as well! They turned out so perfectly! I made the pie crust from scratch and then found a great recipe for the pie filling. They were delicious. David wanted to make decorations on the top of the pie with the extra crust dough. So one of our pies has a little man walking down the beach with a sun in the background. The man is complete with the New Zealand Movember Mustache ("Movember" is mustache November, a promotional event for raising money for prostate cancer. The men all grow mustaches and get sponsored by their family and friends, then the money goes to the prostate cancer foundation). The pie tasted amazing if I do say so myself!

The next day (Friday) I brought in the second pie for the class. A lot of the students had never had pumpkin pie. In fact most of them were confused by how my pie looked. To them a pie is a meat pie (mince meat cooked inside a pastery -similar to a chicken pot pie without the veggies). So when I brought in my Pumpkin Pie I had to explain that it is a dessert and would taste sweet. We cut the pie up into 28 little slices and everyone had a taste. Afterwards we took a vote on who liked it and who didn't. A lot of them loved it and the ones who didn't said they liked it at the start but then felt sick from eating it too quickly, so I guess that's still a compliment to my baking skills! Only three weeks of school left!

Wellington - My Future Home!!

My wonderful weekend in Wellington!

Saturday morning Rachel and I packed up our suitcases and headed off to the airport for our weekend getaway to Wellington. Wellington is New Zealand's capital city. It is at the southernmost point of the North Island. A fun fact I learned from Rach is that when at the southernmost point at the North Island you are actually further south than the Northernmost point of the South Island. The top of the South Island is actually further North than the bottom of the North Island!

My first wow of the trip was actually our time spent in the airport. A grand total of 20 minutes before boarding the plane. We arrived, got our tickets and checked our bags: 5 minutes. Went to the bookstore there so I could buy postcards and Rach could get a book for George (her older son): 10 minutes. Went through security and boarded the plane: 5 minutes. Yes we arrived at our gate and got through security in just 5 minutes, something that could never happen nowadays in America! Their security checkpoint is just a metal detector and an X-ray machine. You place your bag on the conveyor belt (no need for a Ziploc with 3oz. containers all inside) and walk through the metal detector - with your shoes on! I am not a very seasoned traveler, only flying about 3 times in my life, all during college years, before hopping on the jet plane over here to NZ, so high security airports are all I've known.

We got to our seats and a very kind man gave me his window seat. I was very happy because it was such a beautiful day so I was able to take pictures of us flying over the rest of New Zealand as well as us flying into Wellington. Now, Wellington's airport is mildly terrifying! The runway is a strip of land that sticks out like a little peninsula. So as you fly in you get lower and lower while still over water. It looks like you will crash into the water when suddenly you realize there's a little strip of land that's come out from underneath you. Also, Wellington is the windy city! It blows Chicago out of the water. The winds here are coming directly from Antarctica with nothing in the way to slow them down. So there's also heaps of turbulence as you're coming in for the landing. For those of you I have flown with, you can imagine I didn't handle this part very well!

We got into the Wellington and met Rach's eldest son, George, and his girlfriend, Sasha. They are wonderful people! George has a great sense of humor and is also rather cynical about many things so we had a lot of laughs. Sasha is a very sweet girl with a laid back nature. She's welcoming and easy to talk to. I enjoyed their company very much. We headed out for lunch on the beach, and then took the bus up to Upper Hutt to meet the rest of Rachel's family. Her niece was having her 21st birthday party, so all of the family was going to be there, with a big BBQ and party. Unlike in America where many 21st birthdays are not remembered by the celebrants due to our legal drinking age, 21st birthdays here are typically a family event, celebrating the persons coming of age.I met many of Rach's siblings and other relatives. They are a very nice family. They all keep in touch and get together pretty often. It was great fun hanging out with them and celebrating Poppy's 21st. Poppy is a very talented writer. She has won many awards for her poetry and playwrights.

That night we took the train back from Upper Hutt to Island Bay where George and Sasha have a flat. (We experienced a lot of public transportation because Sasha's car has just broken down). The next morning we got up and had breakfast in the backyard before taking a walk down to the beach. George, Sasha, and a bunch of their friends get together every Sunday to play Ultimate Frisbee. They invited me to play with them as well that weekend. So we headed off to the park. At the park, we were greeted by two Ultimate Frisbee Club Teams practicing! We all joked about being a little amateur and embarrassed but quickly cheered up when Adam yelled out "dang and we forgot the beer this time!" So we ran around and played for fun for a while and tried hard not to watch the "pros" next to us!

After that we hopped the bus into town and started exploring. George and Sasha took us all over downtown. Wellington sort of reminds me of San Fransisco. It has similar architecture and the same steep hills with narrow streets. We went down Cuba Street where we saw the Bucket Fountain. This fountain is hilarious, it is supposed to be a series of buckets that begin to fill up with water at the top and then pour into the buckets below until finally reaching the lowest and biggest bucket which fills and then pours back into the base of the fountain. However, when it was constructed there were a few errors. Instead of the water pouring nicely into the lower buckets, it misses and splashes all over including splashing the people walking past it. They were going to fix the Bucket Fountain but everyone loved it so much that they decided to leave it. We stopped and got lunch at a cafe and took it down to the waterfront. We ate lunch relaxing on some grass and people watching, then headed into Te Papa Museum. Te Papa is a big museum that's a little overwhelming to walk through. They have so much and no clear layout of how to walk through it that you can get lost for days and still come out with needing to see more exhibits. Its free and has loads of exhibits though. We went through the Maori exhibit and also through an exhibit about everything that's made in New Zealand. It was very interesting and fun.
Our next plan was to get ice creams at coffees at Cafe Ice just down the wharf, but when we got there we saw there was about a half hour wait! Much to George's disappointment we just grabbed coffees from a different little cafe. George had been raving about Cafe Ice since the moment we'd arrived. Next we headed to the Cable Car. We rode up to the top and oh what a view! Wellington is beautiful! I have some wonderful pictures from the top there. We then walked through the little Cable Car Museum and then off into the botanical gardens. It was getting late and we were all getting tired so we didn't go far. Just sort of strolled around for a bit.
Finally it was time for us to head back down the Cable Car and hop a bus to the airport. We said goodbye to George and Sasha and headed off to catch our flight. (only another 20minutes in the airport till we were on our way.) We lucked out again, getting me a window seat. I took some beautiful pictures of the sun setting over the South Island Sounds. Its gorgeous!
Unfortunately, I can't post many pictures on here right now because the Internet at our house has cut out. I am posting all of these from our school computer lab. Hopefully soon I'll be able to load the pictures up so that all of you can enjoy seeing what I've just talked about.

My First Week in Full Control

Monday, November 12th: My first day in full control over the classroom! I am so excited and have had such a wonderful week! I took control on Monday and I am feeling very confident and happy!
Monday started off with a bang. I had the students right away to myself in the morning; it was a little hectic simply because this was the first day that I was in the room and Rebecca was not. The kids were a little crazy about not having Miss May in the room, but I kept them under control and was able to answer all of their questions and control the behavior as well. It went very well. We had Weekend News, Library, Fitness, and Writing all in the morning. During the middle block, Miss May came in and worked with our two lowest students in Maths. She took those two out of the room to work, and I was in control of the rest of the class. Maths time is difficult because there is a lot of work to be done, but the class is also separated into three different groups. Therefore I have one group on the mat with me being taught and the other two groups are responsible for getting their work done independently. The difference with having various reading groups and various maths groups is that during reading the students are all able to read silently, whereas during maths a lot of times they have questions. I have put the rule “3 Before Me” into place; the students are to ask 3 other students from their group before they come ask me. This has helped alleviate me being interrupted when trying to teach the group on the mat, but it inevitably creates more noise around the room. Monday afternoon was by far the most exciting! Our tires and soil arrived for our Veggie Garden! We split the class into various jobs, some rolling tires, some shoveling dirt, others manning the buckets, some being photographers, etc. All of us went out and worked together to move the tires to be right outside our classroom door as well as move the dirt to fill into each tire. Everyone worked very hard and we all worked so well together. We have heaps of pictures to be put into a photo story and there were a lot of red faces from working so hard moving everything around. I am very pleased with my students!
Tuesday we began our vegetable inquiry learning. I split the class into seven groups of four students each. We also rearranged the classroom to have seven groups of four desks, and each group came up with their own group name. The groups will each be responsible for a different topic of study dealing with plants. The groups then work together to research and present their information to the class.

The Carrots
Plant Defenses
The Fruit Salad
Why Plants are Green
The Dancing Bananas
What Plants Grow in Different Seasons
The Red Ripe Radishes
Edible and Non-edible Plants
The Gnomes
How Plants Grow and Biggest Plants
The Gherkins
How Animals Effect Plants
The Dancing, Jumping Peas
Plant Life Cycles

The students got together and began planning out and discussing their various topics. In fact these topics above were not all assigned by me, I laid out seven topics that I had thought of and assigned them to the class but also gave them the option that if they could agree upon a different topic they could propose it to me and switch. I believe three groups came up with and switched their topics to ones they wondered about themselves. I am very excited to see what the students are able to come up with and how they work together.
Wednesday was a quite fun day as well. We began writing poems about summer using onomatopoeia. The students in Room 28 are amazing poem writers! We brainstormed together various words to use for onomatopoeia and also came up with different topics about summer they could include in their poems. When they set off to work I was so impressed, if I had closed my eyes I would not even have known they were in the room! Each one of them set out and began working diligently on their poems, there was not a sound to be heard other than pencils against the paper. They have since edited and begun to create their final copies of their poems to put on posters with illustrations. I am loving their poetry work! During the middle block today, Mr. Holt, the deputy principal, came in to observe. Rebecca left the room and left me in charge. I was all set! That morning I had laid out everything I would need for Maths and Handwriting. We had all brand new Maths group books with all the information sheets set inside, everything was laid out properly, and I’d double checked to make sure we had enough supplies to get through our lessons. I safely put all these supplies and information under my chair in front of the room. It should have gone perfectly. Well of course, it didn’t. Rebecca had kindly decided to tidy up the room before leaving me to teach. She tidied up all the papers on the floor and organized everything in the room. She did a very good job; I couldn’t find a thing! So here I am with Mr. Holt observing and I’m running around trying to find everything I need for the lesson. I couldn’t find one thing! So finally I threw up my hands and laughed. I told the kids things were missing and we’d just have to wing it. So I organized the Maths groups and sent them off to work. Everything went pretty smoothly, until I got to handwriting. The poems I had printed off to have the students copy and illustrate had also been tidied up by Rebecca. The kids and I had a good laugh about it again and I said, well I guess we’ll just have to read a story instead. So we all gathered on the mat and I read aloud to the students instead. In the end everything really did go pretty well, but all I could think was why did this have to happen on the day when Mr. Holt was in the room! Haha
Thursday and Friday were tough days. They were both rainy days so the kids were inside for most of the day. Having a bunch of 10-11year olds inside all day long is hard. They all have loads of energy and we don’t have a gym for them to run around in. Behaviors were up and it was difficult to focus, but I was able to keep control of the room. I am happy that the students are realizing that I am here to teach and my rules will be the same as Rebecca’s have been. With only 5 weeks left in the Term I found there was no point in me trying to implement my own rules. Instead I just picked up the rules that Rebecca has been using and have kept them all the exact same. Its far easier for the students and for me.
I am very happy with the classroom and enjoying the class better now that I have learned strategies for keeping control over the behaviors. We are able to joke around and do lots of activities, especially with our Veggie Garden! The kids are taking a lot of interest in our garden so cross your fingers that all goes well!
Next week I will be in the room by myself for almost all of the day rather than just in blocks, so wish me luck! I’m loving it!

Interview with Principal, Bruce McLachlan

Last week Thursday I held an interview with our principal at Swanson, Bruce McLachlan. We began our discussion talking about the new curriculum that has literally just been released two weeks ago by the Ministry of Education. The new curriculum is 50 pages long and encompasses all years of school from 1-13 (Kindergarten through senior year of high school). It’s actually quite amazing that their curriculum is only 50 pages; it’s able to be so short because it is a broad curriculum which leaves the majority of the standards up to the classroom teacher. There are only general standards or benchmarks which the teachers have to achieve; the rest is left up to the creativity of the teacher. “The New Zealand Curriculum’s principal function is to set the direction for student learning and to provide guidance for schools as they design and review their curriculum” (The New Zealand Curriculum).
Teachers here are known for their creativity and knack for teaching students life skills rather than knowledge facts. Because of the technological advances the world has made, teachers no longer teach one body of knowledge. It’s always been thought that knowledge is power. This is because in the past, people who had the knowledge or were able to quickly recall information were the ones in charge or actually held the power. Nowadays, that knowledge is accessible to all by way of the internet. If you can read, type, and access a search engine you are able to obtain knowledge. So we as teachers need to change the way we approach education. No longer are we teaching from a body of knowledge. Instead we are teaching students the strategies needed to ask the questions, access the resources, and utilize the knowledge. We are teaching them how to go out in the world, get their hands on information, and then helping them figure out what to do with that knowledge. New Zealand has recognized this and has adapted their curriculum to allow more of the inquiry learning to happen in the classroom as opposed to memorizing facts. I am very lucky to have met with Bruce at this time, because he actually was able to give me a copy of the New Zealand Curriculum straight out of the box. I will be bringing it home and of course anyone who is interested may have a look at it!
The next topic which came up was testing. Of course we all know that standardized testing is a big topic in America at the moment. New Zealand has standardized tests as well, but the difference with theirs is that they are not required by the government. Therefore, they are not high stakes testing but rather are assessment tools. They have the test ASTTLE (Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning). ASTTLE is a standardized test which educators can request for their students. They ring up the company and tell them what subjects and levels they’d like their tests to be at. Then the company creates them and evaluates the results. Just like our tests they produce a greate cohort for teachers and administration to view, but they also have another aspect that is invaluable to the teachers. There results which are printed out not only state what the students were successful with, but also clearly states what they struggled with as well. They layout what their needs and gaps are. Teachers are then able to use this information to plan their curriculum for the term around what the gaps of the students are. It is a very useful tool!
Next I asked Bruce about Special Education here in New Zealand. Similar to our systems in America, there are three types of schools in New Zealand: 1. Schools which cater only to special needs students (similar to Sybll Hopp in De Pere) 2. Mainstream Schools and 3. Mainstream schools with attached units for special needs resources. Swanson School is a Mainstream School. We have only a limited amount of money and resources which are given to the school to assist with students with special needs. There are programs such as Reading Recovery available, as well as teacher aides in classrooms which need the extra help with students. However, we do not have a great deal to offer in assisting students with special needs. Bruce is aware of our schools situation and will discuss it with parents if necessary. “I [Bruce] would never turn a child away from our school, but I am honest with the parents about the availability and quality of our resources, and suggest that they may have better education assistance at another school.”
Krissy Lukens, my advisory, prompted me to ask about technology issues here in New Zealand. She was curious about issues dealing with social software; if the students here are as interested in blogs such as My Space. I found out that Bebo is a bigger site here than My Space. It is used by a lot of the children and has come up as an issue with bullying. There were a few situations where the principal or deputy principals had to call in students and pulled up their Bebo page to discuss what had been written on there about another student or teacher. It hasn’t been a huge issue, especially since it is now taught that anything which is placed on a blog is actually accessible to anyone who has the internet. This has surprised the students who didn’t know that their page could be seen by others. Students have for the most part become more discreet or selective about what is placed on their blogs.
It is very interesting discovering the differences between the schools I have been in and the Swanson School here. I am excited to be taking over the class next week and most likely noticing many more differences once I am in control of the class.