I found during both my long practicum and now during my CFE, that students cannot write. They have poor grammar and sentence structure, and often, I find myself rereading a sentence multiple times, unable to decipher the meaning behind the string of words. And let’s not forget that their papers in general lack direction – what are they trying to say, to prove, to argue? Why are kids unable to form cohesive sentences nowadays?

I was working with a Science-1 class here at AIS on their lab reports. They conducted an experiment looking at the various factors that affect the rate of falling of an object. Some experimented with surface area, with mass, with distance, but they all had submit a formal lab report. They were given class time to write their lab reports and while they worked on a google doc, their teacher and I would be also online, reading their reports while they were writing them to give feedback and suggestions. We noticed that none of the groups were writing proper hypotheses, so we had a quick discussion with the class about what is needed for a good hypotheses. However, even with our explanation, we ended up with hypotheses that had the structure of “If….. then…..”. When we told them to write their hypotheses without using this structure, the students were unable to rewrite their hypotheses. Most students were accustomed to this structure, and were incapable of deviating from it. I found that they couldn’t manipulate the language to form varying sentence structures. In fact, some students were actually struggling to form complete sentences in the first place!

I can’t help but wonder about this lack of writing ability in students. I might have argued that it was because these are international students at AIS, and for many of them, English is not their first language. However, I found that even my students at my practicum school in Vancouver were struggling to form grammatically correct and cohesive sentences. I wonder whether this is due to children reading less and less nowadays. When I was younger, any free time I had was spent hunched over a book, exploring the realms of another world. I can’t help but notice that the only thing that I see a child hunched over these days, is a phone. Or an ipad. Or a computer. They are playing games, they are chatting with friends, they are facebooking or instagramming or snapchatting, but they are not reading. I can’t help but think that this has affected future generations and their ability to write well. How can I help my students write better? In the future, I think I would start early in the year and get them to keep practicing writing and writing, and give them plenty of feedback so that they can improve every time. As a science teacher, I don’t want to limit myself to lab reports, but I would want to think of creative and engaging writing assignment (such as one I made during my practicum about writing the story of a sperm cell and its race to reach the egg). I cannot make my students read, but I CAN help them develop their writing skills!

It’s been 2 weeks since I’ve came to the American International School of Hong Kong – and I haven’t died from heat stroke yet! Yay! While it has been hard trying to adjust to the hot and humid weather of Hong Kong, I was glad to find that it wasn’t as hard to adjust to teaching at AIS.

This week, I have started to teach! I focused on teaching Science-2 (Heat, temperature and thermal energy) and Chemistry Honours (Organic Chemistry), while helping out with the Science-1 class. My S.A. here was nice enough to give me multiple blocks of the same course so that I could practice and improve my lessons with each block. On Monday, I was very nervous about starting to teach, since I didn’t know a single student’s name, and I wasn’t familiar with the classroom style or the amount of technology that was available to me. However, I found that once I got up to stand at the front of the room, I forgot about all my insecurities and nervousness and just began to teach. I have to thank my F.A. during my long practicum for helping with that, as he would come in unannounced during my practicum to observe my lessons – it was nerve wracking, but it helped me learn how to deal with my “stage fright”. After this week of teaching at AIS, I am now certain that I can stand in front of a class and deliver a lesson, no matter how insecure I feel.

The technology available at AIS is different from the technology that was available to me at my long practicum at Magee Secondary. At Magee, I had access to a computer, a projector, a document reader, as well as the standard whiteboard. At AIS, however, I don’t have a log-on for the computer, nor a document reader. At Magee, I relied heavily on the document reader to write notes with my students, as that way, I can pace how quickly I go through information, as I would be writing down notes along with my students. Here at AIS, though, I found myself struggling to remember to slow down so that my students have sufficient time to write down notes. I also found myself struggling to adjust to the smaller classroom environment, which of course meant that the whiteboard space was also very limited. Despite it leading to my nervousness when I started to teach, I am grateful for this opportunity to work in a different environment, as it allowed me to think about how I can adjust my teaching. I shouldn’t be tied down to a certain classroom arrangement and technology, so I am glad that I can work on my flexibility as an educator so that I can succeed in different environments.

Despite differences in the physical classrooms, I find that students are the same no matter where I am. Students still like to chat in class, they like to goof around, and unfortunately, they want to learn… but only what is going to be on the test. The dreaded “Is that going to be on the test?” question was raised in class, but it didn’t matter how much I emphasized that learning should be about the learning and not about the test – the students were adamant that I answer their question. I start wondering about when did school become a letter-grade game as opposed to learning… In Canada, this probably starts in high school, when students start thinking about post-secondary education. However, in Hong Kong, students are ranked since elementary school. They are interviewed and selected after applying for elementary school, for high school. I always wondered at what kind of questions can they ask a 3 year old child to determine who is more “capable” to succeed in preschool. I suppose that when I was in high school myself, grades were important to me, as my parents put a heavy emphasis on the importance of education. In fact, ever since I was 10 or so, my mom has told me to do well in school, because if I didn’t get that acceptance into university and that scholarship, I would be, and I quote her, “flipping burgers for the rest of my life”. 10-year-old me knew that wasn’t what I wanted… so I made sure I got the grades to attend university. But even now, thinking back at my own education, I don’t think I ever thought that learning was only for the test, for the exam. Now, I just have to figure out a way to tell my students that…

It’s been a few days since I’ve started my CFE at the American International School in Hong Kong. Although I was born in Hong Kong, I moved to Canada when I was very young, so I’ve never had the chance to experience first-hand the education system in Hong Kong. Not that this community field experience would allow me to fully experience it….

AIS is an international school that doesn’t follow the Hong Kong curriculum, but the American curriculum. I am lucky to be able to be placed in the high school division of AIS, with students from grade 9 to 12. However, even though we would have expected AIS to follow a similar curriculum to the one in Canada, I find the American curriculum very different. For one thing, students take a total of 7 courses, and there are 5 blocks each day, yielding a rotational schedule of 6 days (A-F). This confused me very much during my first few days here… and to tell you the truth, it’s still confusing. I have to look at my schedule every day in order to see what class I’m going to next!

Another interesting fact is the way the courses are structured. In Canada, for sciences, we have general sciences courses for junior sciences (Science 8, 9 and 10), and for senior sciences, we have more focused courses (Chemistry 11, 12; Biology 11,12; Physics 11, 12 etc.). Honours classes are offered for each grade level (if logistics work out), and AP courses are only for the grade 12 sciences. However, here at AIS, there are 3 junior science level courses (Science 1, 2 and 3), and for senior courses, there are Chemistry Honours and AP, Biology Honours and AP, Physics Honours and AP, as well as Environmental Sciences. In order to graduate, students need to complete at least 4 science courses. This was all understandable and straightforward to me, if not for the fact that grade 9s did not have to take Science 1. Grades 10s did not have to take Science 2. They could take the 4 mandatory courses any time they wish! In a honours or AP class, you may find students ranging from grade 10 to grade 12! This was mind-boggling to me, since I find that grade 10 students are very different from grade 12 students in terms of mental capabilities…

This week, I have mainly been observing classes, and how the different science teachers teach. Sometimes, I really wonder how they teach in such a tiny environment! The physical size of the classrooms here are less than half the size of the classrooms in Vancouver! Although class size does vary between 10 to 25 students… Yes… class size varies a lot from class to class. The smaller classes here are very intimate. I feel that it would be amazing to only have a dozen of students in a class and be able to get to work with them individually a lot more! However, fitting 25 students in a tiny classroom on the other hand… I can’t imagine what it would be like to run a Chemistry lab in there! I guess I will see in the weeks to follow!

On a side note, something amusing: although this is the “American International School of Hong Kong”… Of the dozens of teachers I have met here, only a couple are American. Everyone else is mostly Canadian (YAY!), English or Australian!