working at IST has included many changes that i had not anticipated.
first of all, and the most major, is working in a school with students beginning at Kinder 2 - 2 year-olds - and going all the way through Grade 13 - 19 year-olds. so we have babies (with "nappies") and we have 19 year olds. who are bigger than me. and make out with their girlfriends in the parking lot. and then there are my 5th graders, just right in the middle.
during the day, we're pretty isolated in our elementary school wing (read: hallway), but the big kids are seen when they're at lunch and out for recess (yes, high school has recess) and of course at the end of the day. often, when i'm on break and upstairs in the staff room, i am walking around while they're changing classes and i feel myself hurrying and darting my eyes around so as not to make eye contact with any of the kids. for small portions of a minute i feel like i'm the new kid in school and everyone is looking at me with judging eyes. but then i remember that no, i'm a teacher and really, i could yell at them if they did something wrong....(probably won't ever happen)
another major difference here in italy and at IST are the components of classroom and behavior management. many of the things that i learned and would typically work during a curry placement, won't work here. you may know that during my student teaching in cambridge, i had a less-than-ideal behavior management situation (read: the students didn't exactly listen to me very often, it was chatoic), so behavior and general classroom management are two areas that i really want to focus on this year. well, thankfully (sort of) for me, my lead teacher, lisa, and i are both new to the school and to teaching in italy so we are sorting out this process together.
the standard/typical/most effective process for keeping a classroom under control here is greatly different from keeping a US classroom under control for many reasons. these kids are (i would imagine) like your (somewhat) stereotypically spoiled and babied private/international/elitist school kids. they're all doted on by mom and dad -- dad is probably some sort of insane scientist, the family owns the fanciest hotel in piazza unita, or has the last name illy (yes, like the coffee. the most delicious italian coffee, that is made here in trieste). the kids are not quite used to hearing "no." and as backwards as it may sound, threats of interrogation have been known to be a more powerful behavior management tool than any sort of creative reward-system chart or class-wide points system for good behavior.
you see, in italian school systems, the grading is done based on a student's performance during their "interrogations." an interrogation (yes, this is the literal translation of the italian word) is completed by the classroom teacher (these are done at all grade-levels) and is essentially an oral exam where the teacher asks the student a series of questions and grades them based on their responses. for the most part, they aren't given anything specific to study other than "what we've learned so far." as you can probably imagine, having an interrogation waiting for you at the end of the unit/semester/year is motivation to keep up with your work.
now, because this is an international school and we don't follow the italian curriculum, we do not have to assess using interrogations. i think that maybe they do in some of the high school classes, but we're not going to use this method in the 5th grade. many of the students, however, have older siblings or have been in the italian system before and are quite familiar with this style of assessment. i believe that they also are tested this way in their italian classes.
so as lisa and i sort out the finer logistics of our classroom systems, i will keep you updated!
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