SARAH
Elementary Education
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SARAH
Elementary Education
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Oops. It’s been far too long since I’ve sat down to write a blog post. How has it been three weeks already? What!? Living here really feels like living in a sort of time warp - and not just because I’m surrounded by a medieval city. Some days fly by and are over before I’ve even noticed they’ve started, while others seem to drag on, the challenges of living in a new country piling on heavy. No point in sugar coating it, not every day is easy! I haven’t really had too many of these days, nor have I been very homesick since coming to Siena. Each day has been too full of novelty and learning that I haven’t had time to miss home. This weekend, however, I’m missing home a lot. When you’ve settled into a routine the sparkle of a new place begins to fade, and the monotony and loneliness can set in. Having spent an entire week with my family touring around Italy, getting back into a routine has been difficult for me. During spring break, I enjoyed being on my own schedule, choosing my own food, going wherever I please without having to explain myself or be home on time for dinner, and enjoying time with the people in the world I feel most comfortable with. It’s just been a bit of an adjustment getting back into a routine with my hosts and back to a normal schedule for myself. That being said, sliding back into a school routine was much easier than expected. The personal difficulties I’ve felt this past week are more than bearable when I reflect on the joy of learning with and from this incredible group of students and teachers. Having experienced post-vacation Mondays at home, I expected the kids to be all out of sorts in school on our first day back. This was so far from the reality! I was very impressed. The kids just picked right up where we left off before break! They were happy to see each other and excited to get back to our water unit. One girl came back on Tuesday because her family spent an extra day to go to Milan for a Mumford and Sons concert, she was mad because she wanted to be in school instead. Not making it up - this school is every teacher’s fantasy. In my previous blog post, I wrote about a water filtration project that our students were working on. They created their own water filters out of various materials to see which group’s filter could get muddy, sandy water the cleanest. This week, our class got to go to the MYP’s swanky science labs to conduct a similar experiment with the students from grade 9. They were given a mixture of sand and granulated salt, and had to separate the sand and the salt. They mixed the granules with water, sent the mixture through a filter to get the sand out, and then we set the salty water in our classroom to evaporate, leaving behind the salt crystals. It was amazing to watch the grade 9 students mentor the younger students. Our grade 2 kids were SO engaged. They listened to those older kids like every word coming out of their mouths was gold. This coming week, we’ll be wrapping up our unit on water and preparing to share our learning in a class assembly. The assemblies are entirely student-directed. The students chose which parts of their learning they feel is important to share with their parents and classmates. They decide their own roles, how they want to present the information, and, as a group, create their own program. We’ve covered so much this unit: from the water cycle to filtration, water usage around the world, and the lack of availability of clean water to millions around the globe. We’ve talked about lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan, Ryan’s Well, the water we use in our daily lives, at school, and how to use less of it. It is easy to see that the issue of water conservation has become a personal one to this particular group of students. I can’t wait to see how they tie it all together for the assembly. I’ll be sure to take pictures of the planning process and, of course, of the assembly itself.
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Another week has passed in Siena, and I can’t believe how the time is flying.
This week in grade 2 we continued our water unit. On Monday, we made water filters! We briefly explained the large scale water filtration system to the students once again, supplied them with bottles and materials, and then set them loose! I gathered some muddy water from a nearby construction site, and started to pour it through their filters. One group, was able to get their water almost completely clear again! *See images below.* We had a big discussion about what they used, why they chose the materials they did, and what they would change were they to try and build a filter again. One of the biggest differences I've noticed between this school and schools where I've worked back home is the lack of traditional forms of assessment. Students are not taking weekly language or math tests. They aren't completing a worksheet for every single new idea they learn. Instead, their thinking about a topic is recorded, the process of their learning documented, and they usually do some sort of hands on project - like the water filters or the models of the filtration systems I wrote about last week. The IB places a much larger emphasis on action as assessment, rather than on traditional forms of testing. The idea being that if students are truly engaged in their learning, they will want to apply it in real life situations. Throughout the water unit, we have been encouraging the students to take note of the water-related problems they’re learning about and think about how they can be responsible and take action to solve these problems. Over the past few weeks in math, we’ve been working on calculating the amount of water we use to wash our hands. The tap in the bathroom is one of those automatic ones that you can’t stop - you just press the button and it runs until it’s done. First, we calculated how many plastic cups come out with one press of the button (it was 12 cups - not a cup as in the unit of measurement, just one of the little plastic cups the kids drink out of at lunch, a non-standard form of measurement). Then, we measured how many milliliters are in just one plastic cup. Finally, we figured out how many milliliters there were all together in the 12 plastic cups. It was tricky math for six and seven year olds, but the students were very motivated to find out the answer! At the end of the day on Friday, we had a big discussion about the findings of our math investigation. The students had discovered that we use approximately 4 liters of water with every push of the bathroom tap. We talked about how that made them feel and what they wanted to do about it. They were shocked by the amount, as was I! Some of the students wanted to talk to the principal about how to decrease their water usage. A group went to her office and asked if she had time to talk. She was very happy to listen to them and told them that she would find out if the amount of water that comes out or the length of time for which the water runs are things that can be changed. Other students came up with the idea to catch the water under the tap in a container so that multiple students can use the same water. They decided that they wanted to tell other students about this waste of water, and came up with multiple ideas as to how they might spread the word. This discussion was just the beginning of their steps toward taking action, and it will be exciting to see where it all goes, but it was truly amazing to watch their learning come to life. A Day In The Life
My days here in Siena have been packed to the brim with good stuff. I've got a nice routine going by now. When living abroad, I've found that settling into a routine you like is the best way to mitigate negative effects of culture shock and missing home. I start each morning around 7AM with a hot espresso (definitely going to need an espresso maker when I come home - so good!), some yogurt, and sometimes toast provided by my host. My morning routine is shorter here than it is at home, given that I don’t have to take my dog out for a walk - though I do spend a lot of time missing her - I don’t have to make my own breakfast, or wait for a whole pot of coffee to brew. I’m usually up and out the door in about 30 minutes from the time I wake up. The bus gets us to school about half an hour before we need to get there. Because of this, Molly and I have been spending our mornings on the “thinking bench” near a dog park by our school. We have second breakfast, talk about our day, and watch the various dogs playing the park. I really enjoy this part of the day. The kids start to arrive between 8:30 and 9:00, and we begin our day with a morning circle. We greet each other and talk about the day ahead. Unlike schools where I’ve worked in the U.S., the schedule in our classroom is far more fluid. This allows teachers to plan their day in a way that makes sense for their students. For example, on Monday, we were learning about water filtration systems (how water gets from its source to the tap). We watched a video and talked about the different parts of the process. Then, the students were asked to represent their understanding of how water gets to the tap using whatever methods or resources they felt were appropriate. They were SO into it. Because of their high level of engagement and enthusiasm, this activity, which began mid-morning, ran all the way until lunch time, and continued into the afternoon. The flexibility of the daily schedule allowed us to take our time, and for the students to create work that they were truly proud of. At lunch all teachers eat together with the students. Everyone eats the same lunch - nobody can bring their own. This is a rule that I’m not sure I quite understand. Something to do with allergies, religion, and the like. School lunch is pretty good though! It’s usually pasta or soup with a vegetable and a meat or other protein. They have all the options available for students and teachers alike: vegan, gluten-free, halal, kosher, etc. On Wednesday, we had a break in normal routine and went on a field trip to the water museum. We got to go underground and see some of Siena’s aqueducts and fountains. I definitely would have learned more if I knew Italian. All of the indoor displays and videos were in Italian. I can understand/read enough and see enough to get this gist of things, but I would have loved to learn about the history of Siena’s waterways in more detail. According to the teachers who speak Italian, the guide was far too technical for the students to understand, even the Italian native speakers. They loved it anyway, especially the underground part! After school, I walk home. It’s about a 40 minute walk along twisty, narrow streets: a view of the city of Siena on one side, the countryside on the other. When I get home, most days I go for a run in the countryside. It’s gorgeous, but exhaustingly hilly! I think I’m getting used to the hills, though, as my runs have been getting a little faster this week! We don’t eat dinner until 8 or 8:30PM. I usually get a run in and all my school work prepped for the next day before dinner. As much as I love our hosts and the amazing food they make, having next to no control over what or when I eat has been a bit of an adjustment for me! Especially as an active person, I love to cook and eat healthy meals whenever I want. This is far from a complaint, however, as one of the hosts learned to cook from her mother who was, apparently, the cook to a Belgian ambassador! Needless to say, we’re eating well! For the next post, maybe I'll try and take some pictures of our meals. Uh-oh. I haven’t blogged all week! It’s been a week of settling into routines, reflecting on each day, and planning for the days to come. Today’s post will be a quick re-cap of my first full week of school here in Siena.
This week in Grade 2 we started our unit on water. The “central idea” of this unit is: “Humans have a responsibility toward fresh water as availability is limited.” Everything that we study for the next 6 weeks will revolve around this topic. For the first few days this week, we really focused on figuring out what the class already knows about water, and where we need to go with the unit based on their prior knowledge. As opposed to most public schools in the U.S., the curriculum is not set. Each week, the IB coordinator meets with teachers to discuss what they will be covering during the unit, ideas they have, needs the students have, and how best to meet those needs. As a result, every bit of learning that goes on is tailored to the specific needs and prior knowledge of this particular class. For our first water activity, each table was given a cup of dirty water, clear water, and yellow soapy water. The students were asked which one they would drink and why. We recorded all of their thoughts verbatim. Some students wrote their own thoughts on the paper, while we scribed for others who may have fantastic ideas, but struggle to put them down on paper. We also asked them why water was important, again, writing down everything they said. My favorite response: “If you don’t have enough water, you don’t have enough blood because blood is made of water, so if you don’t drink enough water your blood goes away. If you have no blood you become vampire.” This kid was deadly serious. During gym, the IB director/gym teacher did an activity to try and get the students thinking about carrying water, its weight, the problems that carrying water can present, etc. The students were given a case of 6 large bottles of water. Their task was to see how many times they could bring the water from one end of the garden to the other within a ten minute stretch of time. Some of the bigger kids could carry the entire case of water, but after a bit, most students realized that it made more sense to separate the six large bottles and work as a group to get them from one end of the garden to the other. There was a lot of fighting, whose water is whose, did you really go to the end and back, but so much practice in communication and collaboration. The teacher was totally hands-off, letting the kids work out the problems for themselves. We saw a myriad of different ways that the kids were carrying the bottles (including using one’s head to roll the bottle along the ground). It was quite chaotic, but highly effective. We had a debrief afterwards, and the students were able to make connections between the activity in gym and the central idea. The highlight of the week was the creation of a giant mural/painting/poster on our classroom window to represent the water cycle. After learning about the different parts of the water cycle (evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection (or “collectation,” as some of the student have been referring to it), the students were tasked with organizing themselves into groups and creating their part of the diagram. Some students made the sun, others worked on depicting condensation, and others on creating precipitation. It turned out beautifully. It was amazing to see six and seven year olds take ownership of a large art project like this (with guidance, but kids can do wayyy more than we give them credit for) and create something so meaningful. I’ll have to take some pictures next week of the completed project. All in all, this week absolutely flew by! School, planning, reflecting, exploring Siena, and life with my host family fill up every second of the day. This Sunday I made the decision to stay home all day and re-charge my batteries. It’s been lovely, and I’m feeling rested and ready for the new week! After sleeping late again today, I ventured out for a run. I’m from the Finger Lakes region of New York, and the landscape around here really reminds me quite a bit of home. The rolling hills and wineries stretch for miles both here, and at home. Hills here feel steeper, but maybe I’m just out of practice, and there are no lakes. It’s much drier here. As I ran, a police car pulled up behind me. Behind the police car was a motorbike - both moving rather slowly. I realized soon enough that I was running with the leader of a little road race that was going on! We ran together for 2k or so, but then I turned off on a different road, as it was a bit awkward to be winning a race I didn’t even mean to be running! It was lovely to see other runners, though, and it made me feel like I was running in a safe place where the residents are used to seeing people running. The Via Francigena (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_Francigena) runs right through Siena, so I’ve been following its brown signs on my runs, trying to see how far I can follow it. I lost it today a few miles in, so this will be an ongoing exploration for me.
My host’s 18 year old daughter visited today and we had a barbecue outside in the 70 degree weather. Yes, be jealous if you’re from Buffalo! It was lovely. I slept in until almost 9:30 today. I haven’t done that in ages. It’s a whirlwind here, and though I’m absolutely thrilled to be here and enjoying every minute, I’m pretty exhausted, too!
Today we spent the afternoon at San Gimingano, a very beautiful, very touristy, walled city on a hill about an hour and a half north of Siena. The bus ride there, through the beautiful, rolling Tuscan hills, in fact made me very sick. Other than that, it was a gorgeous day to be outside, take photos, and eat gelato from a gelataria that claims to have the best in the world. The most fun part of the day, though, was after all the touristy hustle and bustle had died down and Molly and I were walking home from the bus stop. We were a little hungry, even after all the gelato, and decided to stop at the bar/little store about 5 minute walk from our house. There were a couple of girls in there who told us that there was the best pizza here! We stopped and had some pizza and beer and made conversation with the store owner. I’m sure we’ll be repeat customers here. Today was our first full day of school. The sun was shining and everyone seemed happy. The first thing the students had was technology time. Their task was to use their iPads to create presentations about the unit they had just finished up. They had been studying different types of houses and materials. The students used iPads to take screenshots of a type of home they wanted to talk about. Then, they used an app to put their pictures together, added pictures of themselves in the houses, and used a voice over tool to talk about the houses, the materials used to build them, where people lived in this type of houses, and why this type of house was appropriate for that place’s particular climate. It was very impressive. They were having fun, everyone was engaged, and they were practicing their research and technology skills. After about 45 minutes of technology time, they went outside for 30 minutes or so. We took about a 5 minute spelling test, did math and then went to lunch. After lunch, we played outside again and then went to gym.
Gym was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in the few years that I’ve been interested in education. The I.B. director is also the gym teacher, so he knows exactly what he’s doing each time he conducts an activity. He explained to me how he’s transitioning from activities that the students can do on their own within a team (relay races, etc.) to activities where they have to communicate and work together in order to succeed (soccer, volleyball, etc.). He knows that this class has some difficulty communicating and working together, so he’s using specific games to help them improve on these skills. The games are hardly different from any games I played myself as a kid: ships and sailors, zombie tag, keep the balloon in the air for as long as you can. The difference, though, is that after each game, he brings the kids back together, does some self-regulation exercises (breathing, yoga), and specifically talks with the kids about the skills they need to succeed at a certain game. So much can be gained through sports and movement, and the emphasis on physical, social, and emotional skills here is fantastic. After gym, we went outside again! At the end of the day, we passed out homework, and then had indoor “golden time” (more purposeful, open-ended play) with legos and paint. After school we joined some of the other teachers from the school for gelato, drinks, and homemade chips (potato wedges, to us Americans) and buttered leeks. We had a blast comparing our American English to their various U.K dialects. Nerdy, but so much fun! Today we spent the day around Siena, starting with the Buffalo State office for the Siena Program. It was pretty amazing to see the walls of the city rising high above our heads. Molly and I were in awe. We made our way through a crowd of people protesting something or other toward the Piazza del Campo. On a pair of ornate wooden doors was a doorbell with “SUNY Siena Program” written on it. Super cool to see “SUNY” written on a door in a medieval city. We walked up a few flights of stairs to the small classroom spaces to meet the other students. After some quick introductions and a tour of the school, we found some panini and sat eating in the piazza. We wandered the streets chatting about school until we came to the Duomo, Siena’s most famous cathedral. I was floored. I could have spent the whole day in that cathedral, examining the ornate details or simply sitting in silence.
After a while, we found a place for a glass of wine with views. People are just coming out of “winter” here, though it’s gotten into the seventies the past couple of days, so the outdoor area was nearly deserted. The views were breathtaking. It's still not real that I'm living in a place this gorgeous! From my previous travels, I know that us humans settle into a routine very quickly, and that soon, it will feel pretty normal to be walking through a medieval city with stone walls rising high above my head. So, for now, I'm just trying to really soak it all in and enjoy the feeling of being in a brand new place! Pre-dinner at my host’s home
After just about three days of travel, we made it to Siena around 4PM yesterday. My hosts are exceedingly warm and caring. I live with Cinzia (pronounced Chin-see-yah), a 50-something mom, and her own elderly mother, Gloria, a hilarious fireball of a woman who doesn’t speak a word of English, but has made it very clear that to be molto bellissima I really need to gain some weight. I think she is making this her personal mission. I can’t complain, the food has been heavenly. We’ve had pasta and cheese and wine and pastries…not a vegetable to be seen…hah! I did go for a run about the countryside this morning, though, and it was absolutely beautiful. We live about a 20 minute bus ride from the city center, so it feels quite rural here, especially running out away from the center. This morning was our first day of school. It was an “open day,” which meant that perspective parents come to tour the school and learn a bit about the International Baccalaureate programs. We visited the classrooms of the International School of Siena - a very small school, with fewer than 20 students per class, grades preK through 12 - and got to chat with the students. Everyone, teachers and students alike, seemed happy to be there, unstressed In the afternoon, I joined the classroom that I will be teaching in for the next two months. I’ll be in grade 2, which is about equivalent to U.S. grade 1. The students are all 6 or 7 years old. The students are a fantastic bunch - sweet, spunky, and excited about learning. There are nine different languages spoken among the 18 students in the class. Italian is the most common native tongue (9 students are native Italian speakers). English is the language of instruction, so nearly every student in the class speaks English to some extent, though their levels vary quite a bit. Other languages spoken include: German, French, Dutch, Finnish, Russian, Korean, and Chinese. Watching the children as they are playing together, aware of their language differences and adjusting accordingly depending on the languages of the children around them is a fantastic sight to see. “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” -Gustav Flaubert Waiting to board a flight from Washington D.C. to Frankfurt I saw this quote as I was sitting in the baggage claim with Molly (my fellow student teacher) and Patty (our supervisor) at 2AM this morning. Our flight had been delayed, and delayed again, and again, and eventually cancelled. Even then, when my mind was foggy, my eyes sagging, this quote struck me. Every time I travel, I find myself completely humbled, but also filled with a renewed sense of self-confidence. This time has been no different. I’m totally humbled by the sheer amount of people we come into contact with. I can’t help but imagine their stories. Where are they coming from? Where are they going? Each individual has a story. As I’m learning the stories of the two incredible women with whom I’m traveling, I realize how unique, but intertwined our human stories are. To quote the eloquent Tanvi Misra, staff writer for CityLab and author of the weekly newsletter, Navigator, “I love the anonymity and time-warping quality of the space (airports); but also enjoy observing human moments that appear particularly stark against the sterility.” We’ve been existing in this paradoxical airport environment for just about 28 hours now. Maybe I’m a bit abnormal, but I’m enjoying it so much. Airports are built to move people. They’re highly orchestrated productions of loading and unloading, moving, organizing, and categorizing of people, luggage, and goods. And yet, airports are filled with the most human emotions: anticipation of the trip to come, the sorrow of parting with a loved one and the excitement of a coming reunion, frustration when our plans go awry and relief when everything comes together at last. Like Tanvi, I can’t help but love the microcosm of human society we find on display at the airport. |
AuthorHello! Ciao! I'm originally from the rural Finger Lakes region of New York state, but I've lived in Michigan, Japan, South Korea, and now, Siena! I originally got into the field of education after teaching English in South Korea. I've continued to study education because kid-brains never cease to astound me. Apart from spending lots of classroom time with young children, I really love to run. I am excited to explore the gorgeous Tuscan hills on foot. Hopefully all the hiking will balance out the ridiculous amounts of pasta and cheese I am sure to consume. Thanks for following along! Archives
May 2019
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