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!