A Busy Week for Mr Jeff

Week 7 – Professional Development – 10^th April 2011

This week for me has been overall, quite hectic. Fortunately after being here over a month a have finally made it into a school. Here in Poland I have been placed in the International School of Poznań and like I said last week it is an IB school, and therefore does not follow the usual polish curriculum. Also all classes are taught in English. I am going into the school all day Mondays and Tuesdays, and then on Wednesday afternoons. As their school begins at eight in the morning I have had to get up at half past six, which I am really not used to. I have really enjoyed working in the school and have already been given responsibility of reading lessons and teaching English as a foreign language as I am a native speaker and plan to take more lessons this week.

Throughout my first week in the school I have made some interesting observations. In the class that I am working, which would be the equivalent of Primary 3 back at home, the children are extremely intelligent. The first lesson that I observed with the class was about which blood vessels and veins carry oxygenated blood, and which carry deoxygenated blood. Obviously this was being taught to their level, but I was really impressed with the complexity of the words that the children were aware of, especially as this was not the childrens’ first language. On top of this some of the children have been given complicated spellings including ‘embarrassment’ or ‘ashamed’ which the children seemed to have little difficulty with. Even the childrens’ ability to cut and stick seems to be more advanced than children of an equivalent age at home in Northern Ireland.

I am not sure if these observations are due to the fact that the school is private and therefore parents have very high expectations from the teachers or if this has something to do with the curriculum taught in IB school. I feel that it is a combination of both. I have been looking into the IB curriculum and I feel it has very interesting values.  There is such a strong emphasis on quality education (valuing their reputation for high standards), participation and international mindedness and you can see these values in action within both the primary school and within the curriculum. (Strategic plan of the IBO). Within the school and curriculum there is also a big focus on children striving to achieve ‘the learner profile’. This profile encourages children to become inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk takers, balanced and reflective. These attributes are on show in every classroom within the school, and are referred to in many class activities which emphasises to me the importance of ‘the learner profile’ in this IBO school. (IB learner profile booklet)

 Also at the school teachers are called by their first name, so I am being referred to as Mr Jeff, a name that I quite like as I feel it is a lot more personal than Mr Scott, which in a primary school I feel is no bad thing!

Until next time,

Mr Jeff!

Strategic plan of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) – 2004
http://www.ibo.org/mission/strategy/documents/sp2004.pdf

IB learner Profile Booklet
http://www.ibo.org/programmes/profile/documents/Learnerprofileguide.pdf