PYP Schools... First impression.

Today on 24th, May 2019 and yesterday, I had a chance to visit two PYP Schools out of twelve located in Poland, the first school was in Poznan and the second one in Bydgoszcz. I do not want to make a comparison between them, the purpose of this blog is to write some facts about one school, reflect on what I have found interested and fascinated.

We had a chance to meet the coordinator of the International School of Bydgoszcz at room consular, who gave us general information about the school. The school celebrated the tenth anniversary this year, it ran by the University of Bydgoszcz, They started with grade zero for PYP with students who are five years old and finished on grade five with the exhibition. They have one class zero, 1 grade 1,1 grade 2, 1 grade 3, 2 grade 4, 4 grade 5. The class teachers are international, most of them are polish. The class teachers are responsible for PYP subjects, which are math, science, social studies and art conducted in English. The school provides mother tongue support for the biggest nation in the school (polish) besides German, Spanish and French respectively, the mother tongue support given to the students four extra hours a week.

IB classes Start at 8:30 Am and finish around 2:00 pm, the class time for IB is 90 minutes long, which is better to enquire to have students focus during the class and go deepen into the subject. Internet sources were used instead of the coursebook. What I can say about the school demographic background; This school established in 2005 when NATO soldiers built a base in the city and there was a need to have a school for their children. At the beginning, the school was run informally by the foundation and excluded Polish students, but after negotiation the contract with the Ministry of Higher Education, the school accepted Polish students and that is how the school started to grow. When the school has students on the waiting list, the priority is given to the NATO students. There were around 50 students when the school was established, nowadays the school have roughly 220 students.

The first thing amazed me today when 4th grade students evaluated other students' book review presentations, some statements and comments were mature.  That class reminds me of our class with Mr Josh Skjold at the University when he taught us how to reflect on our projects and evaluate each other's work.  Here I was wondered what level of education those students might reach if they were able to perform like the way University students do. This point made me start thinking further, what if this kind of education was not restricted to a particular group of students or some schools. I do believe that every student deserves to obtain the best knowledge, we need to have the same quality of the best education available in our days for every single student, I think this may be difficult to implement because of the huge efforts needed from the teachers, with this current wages teachers have, it might be difficult. Other Amazing things I saw today that students used the Portfolios, which consists of students' work during a whole year, where they can look back at their achievements and reflection with written feedback from a classroom teacher.

 I liked also the workshop we had today when we learned the way teachers created a unit plan for 2 grade students. It was nice to learn how we gathered to discuss all aspects of the unit and aims of the whole objectives. The hardest part for me was when we had to think about how to make an assessment for the whole unit, what kind of activities or assessments needed to check student's comprehension understanding of a unit as it was the most important part,  if teachers were not able to make the assessment correctly, the unit became useless. 

In one of my observation, I liked the way of a classroom teacher, when she discussed renewable and unrenewable sources with the kids. The teacher divided them into two groups, the first group supported renewable sources and the second one supported unrenewable sources in order to let them come to their own conclusion, besides comparing which sources of these were better.

 I think I have enough typing about the international school of Bydgoszcz :). 

Moving back to our first day visit, the things I found interesting in the International School of Poznan were the big playground, big rooms, very nice classroom environment, a higher level of English students have.

  
I had a chance to observe literature class; students read the second chapter of "PiPPi Longstocking" if the student did not know the meaning of one word, other students were allowed to explain to him/her in English, or he/she can use a dictionary to find the meaning, polish language not allowed in the classroom. The other classroom I observed 4th grade were worked on the capacity of polish power plants and combine heating power energy; they had to extract information from the diagram and do some math calculation.

The other thing I liked was helping students to develop their learning strategies by giving them many choices starts from early ages. 

 I have a little sad short story I would like to share with you; it was touchy and broke my heart. During my observation for classes, I was concentrated on Smart students in their classrooms and I had informed that one student writes and read English fluently without any mistakes; she is one of the best students in her classroom.  Teachers did not see her smile since she had learned about her parents’ divorce; she was able to do all her homework, participated in all the activities teachers required her to do with sad face all the time. If I were a teacher of that class, I don't know how to help in such a situation, should I discuss the issue with the child, to be more open, and try to help her get over it or not, however, I hope that she can get over her toughest situation soon, its life, never fair enough. What hurts me the most is I know how divorce can leave a very bad impact on adults, but I think it might leave the worst impacts in the kids' life. 

To sum up, I just wanted to say that it was a great experience for me to learn how PYP schools work, and to know how teachers play an important role in developing the learning process in PYP. Besides, made me realized how learning nowadays not concentrating on traditional ways of acquiring the language where the teacher just deliver the knowledge to the students and the students are just the receptive part, learning nowadays focuses on creativity and intelligibility. Thus, those kinds of schools would defiantly change the concept of learning and developed autonomous learning for the students.

Thank you for reading my blog. J