Week 3: My Mentor Teacher and Instruction

My mentor, Ms. Tina, is a Slovene local. She travels from Bled every day to Ljubljana (only about a 45 minute drive). Ms. Tina has a background in primary / intermediate education and has been teaching for 12 years. She also has quite a bit of experience in educational administration. I wonder if she plans to become a headmaster of a school one day. I will ask!

Tina is a great mentor to have because she has both experience and relevance. Anyone who knows a bit about teaching will know what I mean by this. For those of you who do not, well TOO BAD!! Ha. Just kidding. What I am refering to is this general lack of accessbility to new teachers when the mentor is a bit older. Different styles of teaching are taught to budding teachers depending on when it was that they completed their teacher education. These ideas evolve and even resurface after a given amount of time. I like to call teachers who are too old to know anything about PowerPoint (or even the internet for that matter) "old school" teachers. Tina is not "old school!"
Tina handles content and stress like a seasoned pro. She is well versed in the IB 5th grade curriculum and she knows exactly how to facilitate learning to accomplish academic goals (standards). The IB program works quite differently than public education in Maryland. Teachers in IB schools have strict guidlines to ensure that students are learning through exploration and dicovery. The means by which this happens and even the specific content are open for much improvisation. The major six transdisciplinary themese include: Who we are, Where we are in place and time, How we express ourselves, How the world works, How we organize ourselves, and Sharing the planet.
This is where the job of the PYP coordinator comes in (refer to previous post for more information on PYP and other acronyms). This coordinator organizes content that teachers are interested in teaching into a grid that is followed for the entire year. This is very much similar to the Maryland State Curriculum (MSC). For obvious reasons, however, this method of creating a curriculum that students are interested in and that teachers can make engaging is much more effective than the MSC. Teachers have much more freedom in their pedagogy.

This is, though, a double-edged sword. While there is no high-stakes test at the end of the school year, there is an exhibition (student project presentation). In addition to the exhibition, Tina is responsible for collecting evidence of student learning. This process is tedious to a degree becasue it requires an extensive paper trail and pictures of students in action. Many files are kept to chronicle student progress in this way.

As far as classroom management strategies are concerned, it is hard to say how Tina routinized her procedures. Because I am here so late in the school year, the students are very used to the way that the classrom runs. Tina operates her class without a hitch--students are never left guessing what to expect. In conjunction with this routinized classroom operation is a relaxed learning environment. Tina keeps things very mellow. I find that the students are much more at ease and comofrtable in this environnmet. I am realizing that quick routinization of procedures in the beginning of the year fueled or allowed for this now relaxed learning environment, but I wish I was around to see how this happenned exactly. It is really quite impressive. I hope to create a classroom energy similar to this!

I have a few responsibilities in Tinaś classroom. I am the walking English dictionary, for one. Students ask me how to spell and phrase things in English constantly. Also, I teach a bit of math each week. The third subject that is stressed in the classroom currently is called "Unit of Inquiry." This class is dedicated to the PYP exhibition--the 5th grade project that requires that students find ways to better the local commmunity (here is the link for more information on the exhibition: http://occ.ibo.org/ibis/occ/tsm/pyp_exhibition_2005/index.cfm?language=ENGLISH.) I am not exactly sure what inquiry entailed in the beginning of the year, but I really like that there is a class dedicated solely to student investigation. I need to ask Tina more about this!