School Awesomeness!!

I know that this has been a few days in coming but things have been so very busy this week! So I'll do my best to catch up on everything. So Tuesday after the powhiri we were dropped off at our school- Pomaria! It's super nice because it's only a short walk from our house instead of Ranui, which would have been much much longer. The headmaster/principle met up with us and spent the next hour going over school logistics. He runs quite a tight ship at this school but I am so excited to be a part of it! The school is amazing!

So some info about the school: it is based on four corner stones- Turangawaewae (two-rang-a-wi-wi) meaning standing place (where you are from), Matauranga (ma-ta-ow-rang-a) meaning knowledge, Manaakitanga (man-a-key-tang-a) meaning community, and Whanaungatanga (fa-now-ga-tang-a) meaning family. These also represent the four houses (yes just like in Harry Potter) that the classes can be a part of (each class is assigned a house verses each student). There are roughly about 400 students in the school ranging from year 1 (kindergarten) to year 6 (5th grade). Although the principal is strict there are some pretty awesome advantages to being a student at his school. For instance he lets the students climb the trees and shoes are optional in the classroom (even the teachers can teach barefoot during the day- this comes from the islander custom of removing shoes before entering a building). The students wear uniforms (or unis) from primary on through college (or high school) except for the occasional school that you hear about that allows students to dress in whatever they want. The school also has its own garden, radio station that covers a 7 kilometer radius (about 14 miles) where the students can broadcast their work via radio waves, and an impressive emphasis on technology. The principal does not believe in smartboards but instead the school has their own set of ipads, ipods, and laptops. It is incredible to see how many education apps and programs there are. The teachers use them every day and before school starts the students have free access to these learning tools to play educational games.

The bell rings for school to start at 8:55am and class goes until 10:30 when there is a 20 minute morning tea break. All of the students receive a piece of fruit from the school and they can eat any of their food from their lunch box. Then they have playtime (recess) until the bell rings at 10:50. The teachers all congregate to the staff room for their morning tea/coffee/milo break. This is a cultural experience that I have no trouble adjusting too. All of the teachers think that we Americans are crazy to keep working through the morning with maybe a short recess break for the students. Haha anyway, after morning tea it's back to learning until 12:30. Lunch follows from 12:30 until 1:15. The students eat in the classroom for 10 minutes and then go out to play for the rest of the time. The teachers again head back to the staff room until the bell rings. The final bell rings at 2:45 and the students are dismissed. The staff is required  to stay until 4.

The schools throughout NZ are rated on a decimal system according to the socioeconomic status of the community in which the school resides with 10 being the highest and 1 being the lowest. My school is a level 3 on this scale. Most of the students are islanders with a few pakeha (white) children scattered in there. Many students come from English as a second language background with many different island dialects being spoken in the home. The biggest struggle is that some of the students come to school without breakfast or lunch. A local church offers breakfast to the students a few times a week free of charge and a student can pick up a free sandwich from the office if they don't have their lunch. But these funds come from the school so they have to be very careful how they manage the food and the students. It makes our program of breakfast/free and reduced lunches in the states seem very effective since that funding does come from the government. They are working to have the food problem solved but it's a tricky one. We've been told not to share our lunch or give money to anyone because they kids will start swarming us and never leave us alone if we do. I just have to block the hunger factor from my mind and remind myself that they will be taken care of, not that I've seen many cases but it is still hard.

So the principal assigned me to be in a year 6 (5th grade) class. My teacher has been at the school for 7 years. She is incredible! Her management combined with her ability to work with the students, to ask thought provoking questions, and to encourage her students to become life long learners is amazing. I feel really blessed to be in her class. On Tuesday she was in a meeting for the whole day because she is one of the mentor teachers- meaning that she is in charge of assisting other teachers in her house and supporting them with their classes (kind of the like the head professor for one of the school houses). So I tagged along with Sara for a bit in her year 6 class and then I observed a year 1 class just to see what it is like.

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I spent in my real classroom. I have 23 students with 6 ELL (English Language Learners- one of them being a young black boy from Uganda/the Congo who arrived last year as a refugee with no English background) and 1 cute white girl. On Wednesday I got to start out the day by introducing myself. The students had a million questions from what do they eat in America to do you know (insert whatever famous basketball player or wrestler you know) or who is your favorite rugby team- to which I responded I have never seen a game of rugby- they couldn't believe it! The rest of the day the students (or as the principal likes to call them "learners") kept coming up to me saying "Miss Hyde! Miss Hyde!" and ask another question. My biggest struggle of day 1 was figuring out their names. Some of them are names I am familiar with like Marie, Isabella, Mark, Luke, but others like Ananiyah or Wirameu or Sateki are harder to pronounce let alone remember! Plus they all have exactly the same uniform on, with darker skin, brown eyes, and brown hair. Haha... it's an adventure but I'm loving it!

These past few days have mostly been observation. The routines and procedures are similar but different enough that I'm just trying to understand the flow of the class. We were warned before coming that the management that we see in the classrooms would be different from what we were used to. My teacher isn't that much different but some of the other girls have told me about their teachers yelling at the students in ways that we Americans wouldn't approve of. They say things that we deem harsh and extreme but that is what they do. A lot is expected of the students. There are no hall passes or permission slips. If the teacher asks the students to deliver something they are expected to do so quickly, quietly, and then come straight back. It's an interesting combination of structure and non-structure.

It's going to be an awesome experience these next few weeks. I've had brief opportunities to teach mini lessons, take roll, line the kids up, play sport with them (PE), and work one on one with some of the students. It's the best feeling when you feel at home in the classroom. I already love the kids SO much! I'm just excited to see how this experience will help me become the teacher that I want to become.