Dalkey and back to Bath

After two straight days in cities, we were definitely ready for someplace a little quieter. After grabbing a quick breakfast at the hostel, we packed our things and checked out. About half the group rented a locker to store bigger luggage while we were away from the morning. We walked across the river to the train station, where we purchased tickets to Dalkey, a small town about 30 minutes outside the city. As soon as we stepped off the train, we started to walk towards the coast. However, because we didn't have a map, our only indication of the coast's location was the general direction we could determine from our train ride.

We set off, keeping to one path so that we would have fewer roads to remember. As we came around a bend, we saw the sea out on the horizon. We continued on our journey, finally reaching the town's small marina, where we stopped to take pictures and explore. Our fun was short-lived as it began to rain, so we gathered our bags and started to make our way back to the center of town, where we had walked past a number of cafes and restaurants. We checked the prices on a few displayed menus before deciding on a small american diner, where we grabbed a quick bite before it was time to head back to Dublin.

As soon as we returned to Dublin, we split into two groups to grab remaining luggage and the last few souvenirs. We met back up at the bus stop just in time to watch it pull in, and soon we were off to the airport for our third flight of the weekend!

We passed through security quickly and said goodbye to Cae, who would be going back to her program London while the rest of us returned to Bath via Bristol. However, just as we dropped her off, we ran into Chelsea, who had spent the weekend in Ireland visiting her older brother. As it turned out, she would be taking the same flight as us, so she joined us in waiting to board the plane.

When we landed in Bristol, we grabbed something to drink at the airport cafe while we waited for the bus that would bring us back to Bath. Unfortunately, the sign was a bit confusing, so we thought we had missed the 5:00 bus, but it was actually a 5:30 bus. When we went outside just before 6, we learned that the next bus would leave at 6:30. Already tired, we were certainly not happy. Luckily, when we finally got on the bus, our journey took just under an hour, and by 7:30, we were safely back in Bath!

St. Andrew's Visit 4: Equal Opportunities

Focus: Equal Opportunities

This Tuesday was Year 4's assembly day, which changed the whole day around. Instead of their usual academic work, the class spent their time preparing their assembly, the point of which is to present what they had been working on to the rest of the school. In Year 4's case, that meant presenting their work surrounding the Take One Picture.

One of the most interesting parts of the process was seeing the extent to which the Picture had been integrated into their other subject learning. In literacy, they read about knights and castles. History featured the evolution of weapons. Microwriting (three sentences based on a picture) images  featured the same material. Even PE had become part of the process, where they had been working on play swordfighting all week. 

I gathered 9 students who had decided that this was something they wanted to present, and together we transformed their PE into a creative movement-style dance. I let them take the lead as they moved through a battle in slow motion, separating into two "armies" and deciding who would win. A, one of the smallest boys in the class, decided that since his team was going to be the "losing" side, he wanted to be the one who died. His swordfighting partner RJ happily agreed to stand above him with her sword held high in victory. This served as the jumping off point for the other students to create their ending pose, which included two boys still locked in battle. As they rehearsed, I talked about different ways they could incorporate levels as well as guiding them through the musical cues for the ending pose. 

In the middle of the morning, a photographer arrived to take a school photograph for the local paper. The paper plans to run a story on the school's latest Ofsted report, which moved them from "satisfactory" to "good" in all categories and has been a source of school pride in recent weeks. This improvement becomes more remarkable when considering the backgrounds from which these students come. The percentage of students at the school who have Special Education Needs, who receive Free Lunch provisions, or who are English Language Learners is higher than the national average, and the school has committed to increasing the one-to-one attention each of these students receives. The Free Lunch provisions have been one of the most interesting policies for me to learn about. Instead of the US system in which a child from a poor home life or disadvantaged background receives a free meal at school, schools in the UK receive additional funding for these students in order to provide resources that the student may need in order to succeed. Although this policy, based on the idea that a child with a less-than-ideal home life requires additional support in order to thrive at school, seems intuitive, it doesn't exist in the US and seeing it here makes me wish that it would.

Aside from the PSHE lesson I observed on my first day on discrimination, the subject hasn't been discussed in the classroom. Nor, I've discovered, has it needed to. Perhaps because it is both small and diverse, St. Andrews has thus far been void of any discrimination or even bullying aside from the typical drama of pre-pubescent boys and girls. 

In the few cases of bullying I have witnessed, the nearest teacher has stepped in and proposed a solution that focused on identifying the emotions felt on both sides of the disagreement. All the staff members emphasize the respect that the students should have for each other, their teachers and faculty members, and the school. For example, when a few of the boys in the class decided to hold a side conversation while one of the girls rehearsed her piece of the assembly in front of the class, Mr. Barry pointed out that they were being disrespectful to himself, the student presenting, and the rest of the class. Suitably chastised, they apologized both to Mr. Barry and the student presenting. 

At the end of the day, Year 4's assembly went off without a hitch. They presented beautifully, proudly displaying all their hard work to the rest of the school community. Mr. Barry and I watched delightedly from the sidelines, and he was quick to express his praise when they returned to the classroom at the end of the day. We reviewed the day briefly after the students had been dismissed, collecting the peaks and troughs of behavior and noting that R, the student who has autism, had done remarkably well considering that his normal routine had been disrupted. 

Dublin

On Saturday morning, we were glad to have turned in early when our alarms went off starting at 5. We quickly rolled out of our beds, dressed, and packed our things. Within 30 minutes, all seven of us jogged down the stairs to drop off our keys and walked back to the bus stop where we had been dropped off. We had to wait just a few minutes for our bus to pull up and take us to the airport, where we arrived at 6.

The airport, which had bustled on our arrival two days prior, was quiet at this early hour. We breezed through our passport checks and walked quickly through security. As we waited, we picked up breakfast at a cafe and sat patiently, watching the departure for the gate number of our 8 AM flight. Just after 7, we watched it pop up on the board. We said goodbye to Katie, whose flight back to Bath would leave a few minutes later, and walked down to our gate.

Our flight was smooth, and it wasn't long before we had landed in Dublin, where my passport was stamped for the first time since my arrival in the UK. We picked up bus tickets so that we could get to Isaac's hostel, which we found with almost no difficulty (the smartphone certainly helped). We weren't able to check in yet, but the hostel allowed us to drop our bags if we so desired.

To kill some time, we decided to get a jump start on our site-seeing and made our way to Trinity College. The beautiful old buildings starkly contrasted the modern city around, as if time on the campus had stopped while the city went on. We walked around for a bit until we decided it was time for lunch, at which point we began to walk down Grafton Street. Street performers lined the road on both sides, entertaining us until we discovered a small cafe at which we ate.

After lunch, we continued our journey down the street. We stopped into a small jewelry shop so that Cae, Hadley, and Megan could buy clada rings before we walked into the beautiful park at the end of the block: Saint Stephen's Garden. A small lake featured in the center, surrounded by statues hidden among the vegetation. We wandered around for a bit, taking a bit of a break from the bustling city we had entered, before we walked back to Isaac's hostel along the same route we had come.

Back at the hostel, we collected our keys and found our 6-bed room. We were glad to not need to share the space for the night, glad that we could lock our belongings away without risking theft. We took a short break, resting after our early travels, before we walked back out, this time with a further destination in mind: the Guinness Storehouses.

Even though I don't drink, walking through the storehouses was pretty cool. We explored the history of the company and watched its process. Their exhibit on advertising featured some of their greatest commercials from various decades, and the bar on the top floor was surrounded by a 360-degree view of the city. After we stopped in the gift shop, we walked back toward the center of the city for dinner at the Porterhouse, which had been recommended to us by a friend of Allison. Dinner felt very Irish, especially as a live band played, so I ordered an Irish stew, which turned out to be a wonderful decision. After dinner, we spent a little time wandering around and weaving through the Temple Bar area on the long route back to the hostel. Once we arrived, we began to plan for the last stage of our adventure: a morning in Dalkey.

"When I get scared, I don't scream, I have a stroke"

Megan and I had barely gotten a taste of adventuring our next trip began. The Thursday after our day in London, we flew from Bristol, UK to Edinburgh, Scotland. Megan and I caught a mid-afternoon flight before the others, since we were finished with class earlier in the day. Once we landed in Edinburgh, we hopped on a bus, which dropped us off around the corner from the hostel. We checked in and decided to walk around a bit to find dinner before the other girls arrived. We happened upon a small cafe down the block called Ryan's, where the food was excellent.

After dinner, we went back to the hostel to try and get some work done while we waited for the rest of the group to arrive. They called just before 10 to let us know they had landed, at which point we relayed the directions to the hostel. Allison, Amanda, Hadley and Katie (who live in the flat below us) arrived half an hour later, and Cae (a friend of Amanda's) came in minutes after. We settled in for the night, happy that everyone had arrived safely.

Friday morning, we woke up bright and early to grab the continental breakfast at the hostel before we set out for the day. By 9 that morning, we were ready to start moving, and we set out for the Edinburgh castle, which was about a 25 minute walk from the hostel. We spent the morning touring the castle and its grounds. My personal favorite was getting to see the crown jewels and the Stone of Destiny. For those who don't know its dubious history, the Stone of Destiny sits under the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, from where it was stolen. It now resides in Edinburgh after an agreement was reached with the royal family that it will be transported back to London for future coronations.

After a few hours at the castle, we were ready for lunch, so we walked partway down the Royal Mile and turned onto a side street to reach the famous Elephant House. Many authors have discovered the cafe over the years and sat in its back room to write. The most famous of these has been J K Rowling, who penned much of her first Harry Potter novel while sitting near a window overlooking the Edinburgh castle. Her view explains the striking physical similarities between the hill on which the castle sits and the similar position of Hogwarts. We reveled over the cafe's past while we munched on our lunches and took a break from all the walking we had been doing before we got back up on our feet.

Our afternoon started with a trek back up the Royal Mile (in the direction of the castle) to the small Writer's Museum. After we explored the museum, we decided to walk back down the full length of the Royal Mile to the Holyrood Palace, which sits at the other end across the street from the Scottish Parliament building. The Palace serves as home to the royal family if they visit Edinburgh. Having seen the palace, we started to walk back up the mile to take a short break at the hostel. Along the way, we stopped at the Mercat Cross to pick up tickets for our ghost tour that evening. To anyone wondering, the title of this post came was pulled from our discussion of the ghost tour as we walked back to the hostel.

Back at the hostel, half the group decided to shower and take a nap. The rest of us spent some time looking for a good pub or restaurant at which we could eat dinner. Our criteria were fairly specific - we wanted to eat Scottish food, but we also wanted to find somewhere between the hostel and the ghost tour, as well as stay in our budgets. We managed to find "Ghillie Dhu," the one pub that fit all of our criteria, so just before 5, we set off again. The food was delicious, but the service was a little slow for our deadline. We ended up having to sprint up to the Mercat Cross, which wouldn't have been too bad except that most of the journey took us up a huge hill. Even so, we managed to arrive minutes before the tour started at 7.

The ghost tour started with tales of gore from hundreds of years ago in Edinburgh, which slowly became stories of ghosts and hauntings. Although we spent the first 25 minutes above ground, we then moved into vaults hidden under the city's streets. There, our tour guides treated us to your typical ghost stories, successfully frightening all of us to some degree. We joined the tour guides for drinks afterwards, during which they continued the evening's storytelling. At one point, they discussed witch trials, at which point they called up Katie to stand trial! The rest of us pulled out our cameras instantly to catch a shot as Katie faced the "Inquisitor's" questions. At the end, they began to turn down the lights for the last story, which ended in complete darkness. Our whole group reached out for each other, officially terrified. We laughed when the lights came back up, but we had to admit that they had done what they had intended, and we stayed close as we walked back to the hostel for the night. We decided to turn in because we had to be up early for the next leg of our trip: Dublin!

St. Andrew's Visit 3: Classroom Management

You know those days when you can't seem to focus on anything and you don't want to be doing whatever it is you're supposed to? All of Year 4 had one of those days on my most recent visit.

The students came in groggily, slumping into their seats. Although they were given assignments to start the day - either word problems or micro-writing - very few got started right away. Mr. Barry spent more time instructing the students to start than actually working with them at first. Once some of the students actually started, the ones who still didn't want to work struck up conversations with their neighbors, distracting them. Mr. Barry tried to reign in their attention through call-and-response clapping patterns, which worked well aside from the fact that it had to be repeated a few times over the course of the first 10 minutes of class. Eventually, Mr. Barry resorted to raising his voice, which silenced the class.

We moved into guided reading, during which my group remained distracted for the start. D refused to participate at all, but the others eventually settled down and answered the questions I presented. We finished just in time for the next lesson, which was a preparation for Thursday's assembly. In honor of Book Week, the students prepared to present the story of Rapunzel to parents accompanied by a series of gestures. A number of the boys were reluctant to participate at first, so Mr. Barry moved them to the back of the room. They stood there while the rest of the students sat together on the carpet. The moment any of them began to participate, Mr. Barry quickly welcomed them back into the circle, making it clear that (a) he expected their best and that (b) they could deliver it.

After they took their break, the students continued the Book Week theme by beginning to create their own book covers. The project engaged them more than the work they had done earlier in the day, and their work was focused until lunch as well as immediately after, when they returned to the assignment.

As we reached the middle of the afternoon, my first real challenge loomed. Mr. Barry and I had previously discussed the possibility of me teaching a movement lesson based on the Take One Picture, but he had wanted to wait and see in what direction the students took the image. When they latched onto knights and swordplay, a movement-based lesson seemed to fit perfectly, and I was asked that morning if I could run a lesson that afternoon. During lunch, I sat in the quiet classroom and pulled together a plan, grateful for the experiences and repertoire I had gained from my class on the Art of Teaching Dance as I recalled a myriad of activities I could include for the occasion.

When we first entered the space in which we would dance, the students recognized its usual purpose as their gymnasium and took a few minutes to settle down. Once I regained their attention, I set a few ground rules (for safety purposes) and we started with a warm-up to define their personal spaces. When three of the boys still refused to participate, Mr. Barry removed them from the group. I later learned that he had read them the riot act before instructing them to write apology letters to me. Meanwhile, the other students explored first the poses and then the movements of peasants, spies, kings/queens, and knights. After the three boys finished their letters, they were allowed to rejoin the class, and they ended up really enjoying the activities. Unfortunately, about halfway through the lesson, we had to stop because the Year 5 students needed the space to prepare for their assembly on space. Back in the classroom, they returned to their book covers until the daily assembly began.

At the end of the day, Mr. Barry and I talked about how my lesson had gone. We went over what I might do differently next time (trying to establish the rules and initial instructions before leaving the classroom while the students were still in academic mode) and where it would have gone next (partner work on responding to movement leading into fencing-type movement). 

St. Andrew's Visit 2: A Pupil's Pursuit

Focus: A Student Pursuit - "to focus on the range of learning experiences/activities which the school provides for one particular student on one particular day"

Year 4 Schedule:

9:00 - Micro-writing

9:30 - Literacy

10:00 - Numeracy

10:45 - Break

11:00 - Take One Picture

12:15 - Lunch

1:15 - Creative Time

For my main focus, I chose to keep an eye on D as she traveled through her day. During my visit, it was D's turn to have a "special day," which meant she was basically Mr. Barry's helper throughout the day. Everyday, the special day goes to the next student alphabetically, and that student lends a hand with supplies, handing in the roll call for the day, and more. Aside from that, the student participates in the day like normal.

D's day started with micro-writing. She sat with her classmates as they talked through a picture posted on the board and contributed to three sentences - one description, one action, and one speech - about the scene depicted. They then wrote their own sentences independently while Mr. Barry and I walked around, providing support as students needed. I spent a few minutes writing for Arthur, whose handwriting is so illegible that he has permission to use a computer or to dictate his writing to someone else. He had to remember to tell me where capital letters, full stops, and other punctuation marks needed to go.

Next, the class separated into their level-based reading groups. I took D's group, which was on the low end of the class, to the small school library across the hall, where they read a short story and together and answered questions about it. It was easy to see that even within this group, there was a difference in the abilities of different students. While some students had caught on quickly to the story, others needed to look back at the story and reread a few sentences to answer the questions,

When we finished our story, we rejoined the class for maths. Because they had had assessments during my first week, this was the first time I got to see how the numeracy strategy is implemented in England. The students sat back on the carpet to learn about multiplication and relate it back to addition. They followed the same process for division and subtraction. Mr. Barry presented an example and then assigned 4 numbers of increasing difficulty for the students to do in their workbooks. D got a bit distracted during this and spent about as much time socializing as doing her work, but she got back on track with a bit of guidance and finished the second of the four numbers just in time for the break. While the students went outside, Mr. Barry explained the marking system to me, and together we marked their workbooks.

After the break, the students worked in pairs with their neighbors. D and her partner had no trouble finding the image for "Take One Picture," which they discussed animatedly. She excitedly formed a trio with two friends for the plays they began to create outside on the playground. I discovered as I supervised that D and her friends are part of a large number of students in the school for whom English is a Second Language. In their case, Polish was the language of choice as they prepared their play until lunch time.

Lunch was followed by creative time, which D's group used to create costumes for their play. They remained inside for much of the afternoon, as did students creating puppets of the characters in the painting, while I took other students outside to practice their plays so they could present them to the class the next day. For a bit, I had M, J, and V, who are three of the highest achieving students in the class, working on their play outside. Other groups followed their lead and came out as well, staking their claim to sections of the blacktop to rehearse. However, it suddenly began hailing in the middle of the afternoon, so we sprinted back inside to avoid getting drenched. The students succeeded in this endeavor - I, however, got fairly wet trying to make sure that all of the students made it inside. Once it stopped, the sky cleared in just a few minutes and I took RR and M outside.

A few minutes after the girls had come out, R and his group joined us. They initially made a beeline for the same basketball hoop the girls were using. I tried to intervene and redirect the boys to a different area, which worked for R's partners, but R would not be swayed. He latched onto the hoop and lashed out when anyone tried to persuade him to release it, so another teacher came over to lend a hand while I ushered the girls away. They became understandably upset, having committed no offence. Unfortunately, even with the assistance of the other teacher, we were unable to convince R to release the hoop until the whole group went back into the classroom. While he returned, I stayed in the hallway with the two girls for a few minutes, allowing them to express their frustrations and explaining why I had made the choices I had. They took the time to collect themselves and calm down a bit before we joined the rest of the class for the end-of-the-day announcements.

After the day ended, Mr. Barry and I reviewed the sequence of events from the playground. He explained that R has autism, which was why he had struggled with not getting what he had anticipated. I then asked whether R had a behavioral plan (which a student like him would have in the US) or some kind of British equivalent. Mr. Barry was very forthcoming in explaining the usual plan of action with R, which focuses on social stories and emotion coaching. He also described the evolution of the plan, which I thought was interesting. Until recently, R's outbursts had been dismissed as poor behavior, for which he was sent out of the class. Although this was an easier way to work with him, it was also more frustrating, because his behavior never changed. The new plan, requiring much more energy from the teachers, has shown noticeable results. Outbursts such as the one I encountered have become less frequent, which has allowed him to spend more time in the classroom. 

London

After we spent all of Friday out and about, my roommate and I decided to go to London for the day on Saturday and hit a few of the sites. We boarded the 8:45 train to maximize our time in London, reaching Paddington station at 10:15. From there, we walked to the British Museum, somehow managing to not get exceptionally lost along the way!

In the Museum, we explored the many incredible artifacts. We got to check out the Rosetta Stone, among others, which was especially cool because the people around us were speaking at least a half dozen different languages, reminding us of the powerful impact the Rosetta Stone had on the way we look at other cultures. We also picked up lunch while we were there, perfectly comfortable with the slightly higher prices since admission had been free. After lunch, we hit the African exhibit and the Clocks and Watches display before catching an afternoon tour of Ancient Rome.

We left the museum around 4 so that we could do a bit of site-seeing before it got dark. From the British Museum, we walked to the London Eye, and then continued down the block to Big Ben. We turned the corner towards Parliament, but we noticed the light had started to wane, so we changed course and headed to Waterloo station, where we grabbed dinner before we caught a train first to Salisbury and then to Bath. Another successful trip in my opinion :)

Cheers!