Jillian
Undergraduate
Social Studies Education |
Jillian
Undergraduate
Social Studies Education |
For spring break, I decided to head to Rome for a few days then from Rome I flew into Dublin for a 6-day trip of all of Ireland. On my first day in Rome, I visited the Vatican museums and the Sistine chapel. I would’ve liked to visit St. Peters Basilica, but it was Good Friday, and it was closed for mass. On my first night in Rome I visited the Trevi Fountain, and it was spectacular in the dark with the spotlights on it! The next morning I walked around for quite a while just taking in the sights. I walked to the Colosseum and the Parthenon they were both beautiful buildings I did not go inside of either one because the lines were outrageous and I failed to purchase tickets online in advance for them. On my last day in Rome, I wandered into a church called Santa Maria degli Angeli and sat for Easter celebration mass. I did not understand a single word that was spoken because it was obviously done all in Italian, but it was a cool experience. My Italian has not improved significantly since being here sadly but that is ok. After attending mass, I went to the National Roman Museum which is right next to this church, it was built on the ruins of Diocletian's bath house, and that was probably one of the best places I saw while in Rome. I was fascinated by the artifacts and information that was there, everything was so old! Another building that I went to that I found to be quite spectacular was the Alter of the Fatherland, a building commissioned by Benito Mussolini. This building is featured in the slide show below, it's the one with the Italian flags on it. This was one of the sights that I wanted to see most because my class had been discussing it prior to my trip. As I mentioned it was built by Mussolini in an ancient style of architecture in attempt to restore the powerful Roman Empire under his fascist regime. After my short time in Rome, I headed to the Ciampino Airport to catch my flight to Dublin. I departed from Rome on Sunday evening and my tour was set to start Monday morning. On the first day of my tour, we left Dublin and headed towards Belfast where I would stay for the next two nights. While I was in Dublin, I took a tour of the city in a Black Cab where the driver told me all about the Irish Struggles which was very interesting because I did not know much about the conflicts there prior to my visit. Basically the Irish struggles are the conflict between the Orange Order, those who support remaining a part of Great Britain, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) who seek independence from Great Britain. This conflict is very complicated and has been know to be very violent but since a peace agreement in 1998 it has deescalated slightly. There are still issues today and now slightly heightened because of Brexit. I learned that people still send their children to religiously segregated schools, either Catholic or Protestant and this still can impact people’s political beliefs as well. Each color on the flag of Ireland represents a political entity, the orange represents the Orange Order, the white is neutral, and the green represents the IRA. Northern Ireland is the part of the country that is considered part of Great Britain, they even use the British pound as currency while the rest of the country uses the European Euro. I did not know really anything about the politics of Ireland and I found all of the historical information provided on the tour to be quite fascinating. I included a map below so you can see the boarder, there are no longer hard boarders there are just signs that say you are now in Northern Ireland when you enter that section of the country. Besides learning about Irelands political history I took in a lot of majestic sights as well. I did manage to kiss the Blarney Stone at Blarney Castle and that was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, I did include a picture of it in the slide show below. While I was in Ireland, I drank a lot of Guinness made some new friends and saw a lot of beautiful sights. Some of the sights that I took in were the cliffs of Moher, Giants Causeway, and the Blarney Castle were the main highlights of the trip. The trip didn’t seem quite long enough, and I am already loosely planning a return trip! There are a lot of beautiful places that I have visited in Italy so far but I don't think any of them can compare to what I was able to see in Ireland, I really did love it there so much! School UpdateThe week leading up to break was exciting because everyone was ready to let loose and do something fun. Most of the teachers were either planning to travel or had people coming here to visit them. I have been teaching mostly grade 8 because the grade 9 kids were working on a cross curricular summative assessment with their science teacher. This was interesting to be a part of because they had to explain natural disasters scientifically and then explain how they have affected groups of people historically. It was cool to see the two subjects coming together in such a way. I have been working on a unit about exploration with grade 8 and we have been studying inventions that pushed exploration not only in the traditional sense of exploration but for entertainment and pleasure purposes as well. I assigned the students partners, and they were then given an invention to research to create a poster. For this poster assignment I instructed them that they were to research their assigned invention and include background information, and how the invention helped to further exploration. The I let them use the exemplary inventions from our text book, and also gave them the option to choose an alternative invention. I was very pleased with most of the work that they produced. I said I would prefer if they did the posters by hand just to allow them to be more creative with colors and what not. I did have one group create a word document for their poster which I allowed because of that particular groups language skills. I was very happy with the creative results of the project. I gave them a couple of classes to research and finalize their posters. When they were finished, we had a gallery walk instead of a formal presentation. I found this useful because there are some students that do not do well with presentations because they are English language learners and the combination of struggling with the English language and being nervous to present in front of peers can be disastrous. To keep this interactive I put post-it notes on the tables where the students’ posters were displayed and had them write feedback for them. I thought this was a good idea, but next time I will use something larger than a post-it or make a chart with all the groups on it so I can better monitor what students wrote and reflected on. I have noticed that a lot of the inquiry based learning is more conceptual rather than content driven. I feel as though the students are learning more skills as a whole. With using project based learning they are being taught a skill and applying that skill to be able to dive into the specific content of their choosing which I think is interesting and very useful because it helps the kids to be more involved because they are learning what they want to. I do not think that this would be at all possible to implement on the scale that it operates here in New York state because of the massive amounts of content on the standardized Regents examinations. I do think that the concept of learning by inquiry can and should be introduced on smaller scales in the US. The Students Posters
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San Gimignano The adventures of Jill and Eve Eve and I decided to take a trip to San Gimignano for the day. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday we got to the train station at around 10:30 for our train that would depart at 10:41 am. We took the train to Poggibonsi and took a bus from there to our destination. We arrived in San Gimiginano at around 1230 and took a nice little walk around the streets. While walking around I saw some of the most spectacular views I have ever seen. After a bit of walking, we decided to find something to eat. We landed on pork sandwiches from a little truck. While eating our sandwiches we walked around some more and went to the fort and took a load of pictures and even met a nice couple from Austin, Texas! They took some pictures of both of us together. After walking around and enjoying the sights some more we went to the wine museum where we did some tasting. It was cool because we didn’t do a guided tasting, we paid for debit-like cards where there was money on them and then we could just go up to a machine, insert the card, and select which wines we wanted to sample. After relaxing on the patio for a while we decided it was time to try the world-famous gelato. We went to Gelateria Dondoli srl for their award-winning gelato, and it did NOT disappoint! We also managed to do a bit of shopping while we were there, and I bought a new purse! All in all, it was a really great day! On Sunday Eve and I went for a nice long walk down the Via Franchigenia where there were more spectacular views. I have come to learn that basically everywhere in Tuscany there are panoramic views.
My first week at school was an adjustment but it was fun, and I feel that I learned a lot! Seeing the IB model in full swing is fascinating, the students are so focused. I will be responsible for creating and teaching lessons for grades 8,9 and 10 and I will assist in grades 11,12 and 13. I took over a lesson for grade 8 first and we are working through the explorers. The students had to select an explorer that they wanted to know more about in pairs. The students then got 3 classes to create a PowerPoint on the explorer they selected. After explaining the purpose of the presentations to the students they got started right away, they were very excited to begin. While they worked with their partners I moved about the room and monitored their work asking what they were finding and if they needed help. It was fun to see the students to engaged in their own learning, it was almost like they were teaching themselves and I was just there to watch it happen, it is very different from all of the traditional learning models that I am familiar with. I like this model of learning because it allows the kids to learn more of what interests them, they can essentially decide what they want to learn and do it for themselves, SO INTERESTING! In the grade 11 class we were discussing if the students think there will eventually be a homogenized global culture and they had a lot of questions about American Culture which I tried to answer any and all questions that I could. The conversation that was happening was intelligent and very interesting. It turned to being taught culture in schools because of the mix of cultures that exist in this school which ended in me reciting the pledge of allegiance, and the kids thought that it was kind of peculiar that in America the students have to recite it each morning. To celebrate a successful first week, we went out to dinner and Dr. Renzoni advised me to order the cacio e pepe and honestly whatever else she tells me to order I am going to do it because that was probably my favorite thing I’ve eaten so far! After a delicious dinner I ate gelato for the first time ever and I will never be the same! Aside from school I am getting around town and seeing what there is to see. Having a background in history is difficult because I am temporarily living somewhere where basically everything is something to see, it seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day! Eve and I managed to climb all 400 stairs in the Tower of Siena . Next week I hope to visit the Duomo of Siena and maybe take a weekend trip somewhere as well. I am having a great time here so far and I am learning so much about IB and school cultures and how they differ from place to place!
Ciao for now! I am writing this first post from the place that will call home for the next several weeks. I arrived in Florence on Thursday and spent three nights there in religious housing that was close to a lot of the major attractions within the city. During my time in Florence, I was able to wander around the city and see and taste some amazing things. On the first night there I had pizza with burrata, which I had never had before, and it was life changing! Our first day was mainly settling in and walking around the city a bit, I was able to go to the Uffizi Gallery on Friday. I loved waking around the gallery and seeing how old the artwork there was, that was very interesting. Mid-way through my stroll though the gallery I stopped to have a snack which was Torte de Nona, like a custard cake, and a cappuccino, both were exceptional! On Saturday I was able to go to the Accademia to see Michelangelo’s famous David, the details of the sculpture are astonishing! The views in Florence are magic during both the day and night, I hope to make it back to Florence during my time in Italy, Ciao!
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