I can't say I was delighted to go back to university last Monday, that's for sure. I thought I was going to feel down for some time, but it was actually great; before our first lesson was over, I was feeling extremely happy and optimistic. And I have felt like that all week, despite an awful cold I caught in the middle. I am determined not to let anything wipe out the smile on my face until we finish (oh, wait until the computer crashes again and refuses to connect to the Internet, or the Cisco VPN application which gives access to the library's databases refuses to work after the next Windows update...).
Our teacher prepared a soft landing for us on Monday morning, so we had a few videos and songs to cheer up. They showed children happy to go to school, if not on the first day, at least on the second. They were very nice, and useful for the future; they could make a nice start after the Christmas break. They got me thinking, though. We tend to put pressure on children (and on ourselves), in the sense that we show them that everybody, at all times, should be happy to go to school; that is the "desired state". During the school placement children from the first to the fourth grade in Primary did the same starting routine every English lesson, where the helper had to answer to four questions, one of them being "how are you today?", and they were only praised if they said that they were happy. And what about those who are not happy? Is there no room for them in school? What about models which can actually show children how to cope with those unhappy moments at school?
There was one day during the school placement when one girl in the 4-year-old class didn't want to say goodbye to her mum, and entered the class crying. Two of her friends came to her: one gave her a hug, and the other gave her a drawing she had in her hands. All children experience sadness at times in school (some feel miserable for long periods), and they act very empathically, because they know so well what their friend is going through. Maybe these cartoons about going to school could show situations like that, where children actually feel sad, but sad in an environment which embraces them even when they feel like that, and not in an environment which expects them to turn into a happy smiling kid before they are taken into account.
During the week we have also continued with our warmers and activities. I enjoyed very much the mad discussion; it was great to see how our classmates came out with very ingenious arguments to promote their "word". It was also interesting to notice that while some concentrated on putting forward arguments for their word, others spent most of their time trying to undermine the arguments of the other classmate. Some were so witty that they managed to integrate their opponent's word into their own argument, using it in their favour. This game reveals a lot on the strategy we follow when we are placed in a competitive environment: some concentrate on themselves without interfering with the others; others concentrate on the attributes of the opponent, forgetting about their own strengths; and others can look at themselves, the others and laugh about the whole situation at the same time. What is apparently an innocent game can give the teacher a lot of information on the way their students interact among each other.
A funny thing happened when we got our diaries back: in my mind, the previous term had been so long and busy, and we had worked so hard, that when I picked up my diary it seemed so thin that I thought a part of it got mixed with somebody else's. Reality didn't match the impression I had in my head somehow.
We also received feedback on the exam we took before going to our school placement. It turns out it was a good thing we went on our school placement right after it, because otherwise our teacher might not have been as lenient as she has finally been. Receiving her first impression on the results would have been much harder. It is a good thing to use diverse means to assess your students, because that will give you a much more accurate measure of where they stand. She clearly felt that many of us underperformed in that exam, and it is very nice to know that she has been using other tools to assess us during the academic year, which actually allowed her to detect that the outcomes didn't match her expectations, based on other evidence of our work.
It reminded me of this joke, which uses humour to point out the unfairness of bad assessment:
iruzkinik ez:
Argitaratu iruzkina