Fourth Observation - Macleod College 7/6/10

The school that we sent to is a fifteen-minute drive near to Macleod station. Macleod College is a school, which does provide education from early years up to the end of secondary. The college is not the best nor is the worst in reputation but the college widely respected in the vast range of co-curricular activities and learning English as a secondary language from Primary to Secondary.

I will discuss mostly on the secondary section. The surprising thing from the school is that the classroom is an open class and the school had implemented the ‘breaking down the walls’ system. They also have teachers who have to teach from Primary to Secondary. It is a very unusual issue as most teachers usually take students by either level-wise or from the subject they are specializing in. It seems to me that the teacher also used the widening of space so that students will feel comfortable when they are in class. I also felt that the spacing of the learning space is a good thing as well as something new because it is impossible to see something like this back home and indeed, the teachers could merge the class; say for example, three classes in the same level could merge into one if the teacher co-operate on one particular material. This does shows the flexibility of the classes both from the teachers and from the students.

The surprising thing is that I do like the visibility of the classroom because the school provide every class and every staff room as visible as possible so that students and staffs could develop at a higher level. Teachers desks are also widen so that students could stand around the teachers’ desk. There are some drawbacks. With the breaking of the walls, classroom will become much noisier and there will be many children that will be looking around in every direction. That could mean that students' concentration could be be focused in every class. There is a possibility that teachers do not like the method of how the school operates with the breaking of the walls system implemented. Teachers are mostly part-time rather than full-time as teachers are going on shifts on a certain number of days. In order to satisfy that, timetable on lessons have to be carefully planned and this might dampen the students development with the teacher teaching only a number of days and a reserve teacher taking over. That could show the inconsistency.

To conclude, I think the school is very ambitious in many things in order to break the barrier between teachers and students but I believe that the school is looking on the long term basis rather than a short term results.

The connection of two classes into one big classroom

The visible staffroom

Third Observation - Sacre Coeur - 2/6/10

Sacre Coeur, which literally means 'Sacred heart' in French, has around 150 sister schools (feeder schools) in over 40 countries. The school is an independent catholic school and it is a all-girls school. The school can be comparable to Melbourne Grammar School. Unlike other school observations, this school was a short one and everything had to be done quickly and smoothly.

With no time to waste, we were introduced by the principal of the school and showed us the details of the school. It seems that the girls could have fun and learn at the same time as the school had given them the balance of study and play. There were, in some cases, that girls could go out and have an exchange at one of the the possible 150 feeder schools. This, in fact, could broaden their horizons.

The next part was touring around the school and the school's campus was a mixture of old and new buildings. The old ones were well preserved and interestingly speaking, the school management told us that the school is co-operating with the school next to them so that both students could go to each others' school and study. Courses or lessons that could be taught by either one of the schools were just surprising because in Hong Kong, this kind of co-schooling would never happen in Hong Kong. I was very impressed by how the two schools could compromise and let both students go to the schools and learn.

The following event was the class observation time. I, along with Vivian Lee and Crystal Leung, went to a Maths class in Year 9 and was introduced by the teacher. I can say that I do not like Maths since coming back to Hong Kong but as the class proceeds, I was sitting down and listening to the teacher about dependent and independent variants and the 'x and y theory'. The teacher was explaining how to work out the x and the y and even students do not know what they were, the teacher showed some supportive (alternative) questions to ask them. I like it as this could make the students understand better. As an idiot who knows nothing about Maths, I tend to get what the teacher had said and did some questions as the teacher asks the students to try out. there was a question that I did 'challenge' the teacher on one equation but it was a good experience.



At the end, I enjoyed the lesson so much that I was very reluctant to go because I can say that that teacher had made me learn something and I can bring that thing back home. The reason I am saying that is in Hong Kong, teachers usually give the equations to students and then asks them to solve it by themselves. There were no or limited explanations given and students were usually puzzled by the questions given. When the students asks the teacher how to do that specific question, the teacher would usually respond that we do not know how to do it and we were too reliant to the teachers. the teachers there would usually give more time for students to understand the theory and then carry on whereas in Hong Kong, the teacher just rush the chapters regardless the students prior knowledge. I do really hope that teachers should give more time for students to understand rather than rushing the chapter in order to tick the boxes.