So the past two days I have been placed in a British fifth year classroom at Widey Court Primary School in Plymouth. I found out that Plymouth has 62 primary schools and even more secondary schools. All children are required to wear uniforms to school whether it is private or public. The school systems here are very different and all little more complicated than in the U.S. BUT students never get held back or skip ahead grades (or years as they say), they always stay with their own age group. While I was there on my first day, I had something strange happen in my classroom. Well, it was strange to me but quite normal for the U.K. The children were getting ready to go to their P.E. class and are required to wear proper gym attire in order to participate in the P.E. activities. So the teacher I was observing, Mr. Bower, dismissed the children to get changed. To my surprise all the children grabbed the gym clothes, brought them back into the classroom, and began to undress and change all together in the classroom. Now, imagine me an American visitor, feeling awkward with nine and ten-year-old's down to their underwear with myself and the male teacher in the room. I was absolutely stunned that these kids were able to change in front of each other and with us teachers present as well. This would never happen in the U.S. with such an old classroom. But, in England and other European countries, this is actually quite normal. One the children move on to secondary school in their 6th year, then they separate for changing and P.E. class as well.
The next thing that struck me odd was the curriculum for the children's sex education course. The class is finishing up their unit on sex education in their science classes right now. I remember going through a similar class when I was in fifth grade, but what surprised me, was how much further the students learning goes past the basics we are teaching to fifth grade students in the United States. On my first day in the classroom Mr. Bower told me that in the afternoon the students would be watching a video of a live birth! I was astonished!! I thought that was something I might not of seen until high school, and here these nine and ten-year-old's are watching a video of a baby coming out of a woman. I guarantee such a video would never be shown in any American elementary classroom. When I went back to the same class today, I was able to talk to a few students about what they thought of the video. Most of them thought it was incredibly gross, and made a noises to show me their disgust. One girl told me, "As soon as I saw the woman with her legs open I had to close my eyes!"
I went to this particular school with two other girls in my program, and we were invited by the school liaison, to give a presentation to the school in their daily assembly. We agreed and put together a short power point slide show to introduce ourselves to the school. The schools normally have daily assembly's where the school gets together to sing a song, give out various, awards, and have a prayer. Then we were kind of thrown into that mix as well. The school liaison introduced us and then we were given the chance to talk about ourselves, and where we come from. Then, the students were given the chance to ask us questions they had about us or America. Some of them had pretty cute questions for us. Many of the kids have the misconception that if you are from the U.S. then you know lots of celebrities, I think some were disappointed to find out that none of us had ever met or seen Hannah Montana. We were also asked why our food is so salty, if we like to watch the Simpsons, if our American students have to wear uniforms to school, what type of teachers we would like to be, how hot does it get in Michigan, if our portion sizes are really big, and so on. A lot of students have dreams of being able to visit America one day. They asked me if I have seen Shamu and been to Disney World too.
I almost forgot to add about my gift. We brought our host teachers small gifts from Michigan State as a token of our appreciation for having us come visit. I gave my teacher Mr. Bower a Michigan State tee-shirt and an MSU pen. He was so excited and grateful for what I had given him he scooped me up in a great big hug and kissed me on the cheek! :) I thought it was very nice and it made me feel good to make him so happy!
