at the international academy

the international academy is perhaps the ideal school that any student teacher can only dream of teaching at. in most of our placements, we teach classes that are upwards to forty students in size. the largest class i observed was thirty students, although they make about as much noise as a class of five (if one existed) at belleville.

it is interesting to note that they do not consider themselves very technologically advanced as a school. all of the students have access to just a single computer lab that contains roughly forty computers. in my opinion, this is more than enough for a school of six hundred students who happen to also all have access to computer and broadband internet at home.

each classroom i visited contained a ceiling-mounted digital projector. most of rooms also contained a tablet monitor for teachers to write directly onto the touch screen and notes would be displayed through the projector.

in the only room i saw without a tablet monitor, the teacher found a creative way to use the dry-erase board in combination with the projector with great effects. the notes and sample questions were displayed via projector and the teacher would write straight on the board between the lines of displayed text.

perhaps the most interesting point from today is to learn that the international academy uses internet software like zangle and blackboard. i made note of this because belleville uses the exact same resources, but with vastly different results. parents at the IA can check their student's grades at any time, and online grades are rigorously maintained. if they chose to, they could even receive a daily update to their child's progress. with blackboard, the students are able to access course materials online. it's kind of like a much more user friendly version of c-tools for high school. the students seem to do well with it.

at belleville, parents constantly call about student grades because they check one day and their students have six missing assignments that cause their grades to be well below the failing mark. irate and concerned, they call three days later. my mentor teacher then must patiently explain to them in many cases that their students have turned in the respective assignments since they last checked and that grades are in fact updated online. blackboard is also available at belleville, but to a much lesser effectiveness. this is probably due to a combination of factors that involve availability of internet access from home, internet literacy, and motivation. one senior in my honors english twelve class came up to me last week complaining that the resources for their anglo-saxon unit didn't have any information in it. "there's just a whole bunch of links." i asked her if she had clicked those links. she had not. this basic internet using skill that i have taken so much for granted may not be so common in all of my students.

as a concluding remark for today's observations; technology is good, but it is rather difficult to exceed community and social standards. highly motivated students will make due with the same kind of technology. this is not the cornucopia of wealth and technology like i had thought it was. it was not like the el durado of all things good and great. it is just another school that makes due with what it has. it's a converted kindergarten building and the classrooms are of a fitting size for only really little people. it makes me reconsider the definition of "resources" and how people and community resources all combine and meld together in this abstract and turbulent space we have come to call "school."