Growing up in the western suburbs of Chicago, I was aware that other places had different cultures, sights, smells, and tastes however my experience with student teaching really opened my eyes as to how shocking those differences could be. I was fairly lucky in that my parents moved to a good neighborhood when I started middle school. I spent most of my student life in a town that I never felt scared about walking down the street and the school was pretty good. Granted, there were down sides; I spent most of high school working an after school job because my parents didn't make a lot of money and I often felt that I didn't measure up to some of the other kids that had everything bought for them, going off on trips during the summer while I watched over the neighborhood snack shop. However, I learned later on that it gave me a sense of responsibility and reality as opposed to those that couldn't function once away from home. Anyways, that's getting off on a tangent...so going back to the topic; I graduated from high school and went off to college to pursue a teaching degree.
Three and a half years later, I found myself with a decision to make for student teaching. There were not enough available spots in the local community for teaching candidates so we were told to look for opportunities outside of the area. Considering I didn't have a lot of money, this basically meant living at home back in Illinois or finding some other opportunity. The international studies department at the university had a couple of options for international studies for teaching candidates so I started looking into what was available. There were three options: England, Ecuador, and New Zealand. I always thought it would be interesting to see Australia...and New Zealand is roughly in the same part of the world so why not? For those interested in going to another country to student teach, the process is not terribly complex. A bunch of forms have to be filled out, a passport applied for, and meetings to get all the arrangements taken care of, usually the process takes about 2 months or so. After that, it is just a matter of getting on the plane.
Let me say first off, that +24 hours of flying is not easy to do, especially when you’re not able to sleep sitting up. Getting off the plane in Auckland, I felt like the living dead. The lady from JCL (www.jcl.co.nz) met me at the airport and we proceeded to drive through Auckland toward the eastern suburb of Howick. I was set to stay with a host family in an area called Bucklands Beach. By the time we got there all I wanted to do was get some sleep. However, with only two months of time available, I wanted to see the country as much as possible while I had the time. The same weekend I took a 48 hour weekend trip to Wellington before starting at Macleans College (http://www.macleans.school.nz) that Monday.
Going up to Macleans College was amazing. The school itself is on land that was originally used for farming (by the Macleans brothers, thus the name) and then was donated for the use of building a school for the area. The site is amazing by any standards, on any given day I could look out my office window and see the ocean. The whole school sat on a hill set back from the beach. Anyone could walk from the school to the beach in about 5-10 minutes. There is also a regulation in Howick that buildings cannot be above a certain height so that other buildings and houses do not have an obstructed view. That means that the campus buildings are all one or two stories (basement). The school has a nice spread out feeling with expansive outdoor spaces that are used throughout the day.
Macleans College also has the honor of being the first whanau (pronounced Var-now) house school in New Zealand. If you have ever seen the Harry Potter movies or read the books, then you already have the basic idea of the house system. Students are broken into houses so that smaller communities are formed with a core of teachers. During my time there I found that the house system is really nice as teachers really only have to know 300 students instead of 2200, as was the enrollment at Macleans when I was there. The Macleans College website has more explanation of the house system for those interested in reading more about it.
However, as this is an article about student teaching, I feel that I should do a bit more in describing what kinds of responsibilities I had while there. The New Zealand system operates a bit different from the US system in terms of student teaching because there it is a longer process than the one semester experience that US candidates face. So while I was there, I had two sets of requirements…one for NZ and one for US. JCL helps to even out this issue by providing a supervisor that comes several times while student teaching so as to evaluate any progress made. All in all, it is a wonderful program.
My other experience was vastly different and in many ways I learned some hard lessons about some of the places in education that exist to this day.
I was placed in a high school in the south side of Chicago. The day before I was supposed to start teaching, I drove to the site to see how long it would take me and to meet some of the staff. Driving through the neighborhood was something in itself and the narrow streets were a maze that took me a while to find the faculty parking lot. The excessive use of chain-link fencing really struck me as odd. Sure, I had seen baseball fields and side lots fenced off before, but at this school, it seemed like fencing was everywhere; completely surrounding the school. As I walked up to the building I noticed that there was some graffiti on the walls (nothing excessive, but noticeable). It wasn’t very clear which door I was supposed to go in, so I wandered around a bit until I found an unlocked door. At that point, I was in one of the side hallways and at the end I saw a guard station (another thing that surprised me). I asked where I could find the office and explained that I was a student teacher…I got a curt answer and a point in the direction I needed to go. The school has an amazing architecture (an old building from the early part of the 20th century) and it was sad to see how run down a lot of the façade came to be. The offices were cramped with multiple people in an office among filing cabinets and printers. Everyone seemed in such a hurry and the secretary at the front didn’t seem to be one for chatting any. I was able to meet the principal and the teacher I would be working with that day. The conversation in the office seemed to be an interesting one, the principal was a very educated man that cared deeply about the conditions the school was facing. He was quite straightforward with how bad the situation could be and that he was contacted by Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to run the school and hopefully make a change. Up to this point I wasn’t too worried…it seemed like it would be a lot of work but things were trying to be turned around.
My first week was a blur of documents and observations…honestly, I look back on it and I still cannot recall what happened that week. However, I started to get involved with lessons and working my way into taking over the classroom. It was staggering to see the amount of issues that had to be dealt with: There was a paper shortage (so limit copies), there was little to no technology available, there were typically 30+ students on the roster (some classes had 50% attendance), any homework given out had a 10% chance of being returned to me, and well, the list goes on. The classrooms were crowded with two teacher’s desks and little space in-between student desks to even get around the classroom. I had to move to three different classrooms throughout the day, while all the classroom doors were locked, they wouldn’t give a student teacher a key! I couldn’t believe it; to this day I still wonder how anything got done there.
In terms of student behavior I saw the whole spectrum of attitudes but a majority of it tended to be on the angry, mean, and emotionally charged that doesn’t really help a classroom. I would get students that would openly swear or lie to me on a consistent basis. A few times I even had to call security to break up fights or pull students from class. Sadly, not as many students as I would have liked were pulled from class and I admit it was because I did not have the time to fill out all of the disciplinary forms to make any difference. I could go on, but to make it short, the environment at the school was degrading.
That isn’t to say there weren’t some amazing kids there; I met a few that I fully wished they could have been at a better school because they had the talent to succeed, if only they were given the opportunity. We went to a political rally at the Thompson Center and our school was put right up front, I was amazed at how lively and active the kids became. They were vocal and tried to make a point that their schools are falling apart. I only hoped that they would see the same thing while in class! Most of the time, we tried to discuss that issue, but the students never got behind the idea and saw that what was happening around them is wrong…no one wanted to step up and change things; only complain about what was impossible to change. I left almost every single day completely defeated and with a splitting headache from yelling all day. The next day I would drag myself the 45 minute drive to do it again. Even with talking to a few of the exceptional teachers there, I wasn’t able to find a methodology that would work with the kids…had I failed?
This was the situation I found myself in at the end of my student teaching.