Earlier this week I visited a school where the teacher was reviewing the cultural iceberg model (an analogy comparing culture to an iceberg, with visible elements and invisible elements). The students had just finished reading a story about a Maori woman who moves to Wellington from a rural area up north, marries a Pakeha man, and then ends up having some cultural miscommunication with her husband, because her family shows up to their house unannounced. The teacher was trying to get students to name the visible parts of Maori and Pakeha culture (i.e. just show up vs. announce your visits) and the invisible parts. The students, in year 9, really struggled to name possible underlying values of each group.
I was sitting with a small group and asked them how their own families operated-- would it be weird if I showed up at their house, unannounced? They all said "no" (notably, all were Pasifika and all were sitting in the back row together, but that's another story). I tried to ask them questions leading them to possible answers, but they just didn't understand what their teacher and me were asking. Finally, I just said, do you think maybe in the story each person had a different idea of what is private? Or a different idea of "family?" That, they immediately understood and wrote "whanau" on their worksheet. (Whanau is a Te Reo word for extended family that is used pretty commonly with English here.) I tried to ask a few more questions, to get them to elaborate a little more, but then the teacher pulled the class back together, ending our little conversation.
Watching this class, I couldn't help but notice I was learning about culture so literally, while experiencing culture so viscerally. And the iceberg model fit perfectly. On the surface, NZ and US secondary classrooms are similar. Here we were, in 4th period, discussing a story in small groups, struggling to write down answers while the teacher circulated around the room. There was a projection screen, desks placed in groups, students whining about being hot and cold and the sun being in their eyes. Their teacher was joking that she was going to "quiz" them, but just ended up doing it verbally. In many ways, we could have been anywhere in the US, except for one big thing: the pacing of the class. I've found this to be true in every classroom I visit-- the pacing feels SO SLOW. I've done my best to be non-judgemental about it, hoping that at some point it would become clear to me what I was missing. On this particular day, I realized there is no grand answer, just the reality of the cultural iceberg. I think what I see as slow pacing comes from underlying values on relationships and mellowness. Notably, there is a distinct lack of emphasis on efficiency and control.
You wouldn't believe how many times I have heard myself telling students here to pick up the pace in taking out their notebooks, finding their seat, etc. I say it with a smile and kids seem to think it's funny that I'm in a hurry. Nobody else is in a hurry-- not the students and not the teachers. The start of class is usually a very squishy 5-10 minute window, the idea of "bell to bell instruction" does not exist here.
After class, when the teacher (of the cultural iceberg model) asked me what I was noticing about NZ schools in general, I told her it was pacing and the lack of urgency that felt so different. I explained that we're taught that "good teaching" looks like: starting class at the bell, students have their materials out, objectives and a starting activity are posted on the board. And that if students aren't in class and in their seat when the bell rings, they are late and we mark them tardy in our gradebooks. She laughed and said "But that's not about learning!) On one hand, I get her point-- we spend a lot of time enforcing rules that are not directly related to learning. But on the other hand, if I don't start class at the bell, I feel like I'm giving kids permission to be late, because my cultural context says we start at the beginning and how can I ask you to be here on time if we're not going to start on time? And I have it ingrained in me that there is urgency because we have so much to do, so little time, and students deserve every second of their day to be put to good use. They need that, deserve it, and anything less is seen as an affront to equity in education.
This easy-going-ness isn't just about the start of class, I see it everywhere-- students have their phones out, teachers are talking while students have side conversations and "independent work time" is about 50% work, 50% chatting and Instagramming. And the biggest thing, for me, is that there are virtually no seating charts. For me this is heresy. I want to create heterogenous groups and I want students to get to know people other than their friends. I'm trying to create a classroom community and I think a seating chart is a huge part of accomplishing that. I change it about once a month so that they get to work with everyone in the class. Here groups are almost always segregated by gender and ethnicity-- like the classroom mentioned above. I get that there might be good reason for this, but as a teacher I want to be intentional about it, rather than letting it happen all year long just because.
The teachers I'm observing are considered good teachers and they definitely take their job seriously and care about the kids. There's just an entirely different sense of time, of following directions, and so much emphasis placed on student freedom and self-regulation of behavior. Compared to teachers here, I feel like a drill sargent. Seeing things here reminds me of my first year in Utah in that the pace of life and of teaching is just SO different it makes you question everything you thought you knew. Ultimately, that pace of life was a huge part of what I loved about Utah. But how does one create that at the classroom level if the school and surrounding culture (i.e. in Minneapolis) don't support it?
I was sitting with a small group and asked them how their own families operated-- would it be weird if I showed up at their house, unannounced? They all said "no" (notably, all were Pasifika and all were sitting in the back row together, but that's another story). I tried to ask them questions leading them to possible answers, but they just didn't understand what their teacher and me were asking. Finally, I just said, do you think maybe in the story each person had a different idea of what is private? Or a different idea of "family?" That, they immediately understood and wrote "whanau" on their worksheet. (Whanau is a Te Reo word for extended family that is used pretty commonly with English here.) I tried to ask a few more questions, to get them to elaborate a little more, but then the teacher pulled the class back together, ending our little conversation.
Watching this class, I couldn't help but notice I was learning about culture so literally, while experiencing culture so viscerally. And the iceberg model fit perfectly. On the surface, NZ and US secondary classrooms are similar. Here we were, in 4th period, discussing a story in small groups, struggling to write down answers while the teacher circulated around the room. There was a projection screen, desks placed in groups, students whining about being hot and cold and the sun being in their eyes. Their teacher was joking that she was going to "quiz" them, but just ended up doing it verbally. In many ways, we could have been anywhere in the US, except for one big thing: the pacing of the class. I've found this to be true in every classroom I visit-- the pacing feels SO SLOW. I've done my best to be non-judgemental about it, hoping that at some point it would become clear to me what I was missing. On this particular day, I realized there is no grand answer, just the reality of the cultural iceberg. I think what I see as slow pacing comes from underlying values on relationships and mellowness. Notably, there is a distinct lack of emphasis on efficiency and control.
You wouldn't believe how many times I have heard myself telling students here to pick up the pace in taking out their notebooks, finding their seat, etc. I say it with a smile and kids seem to think it's funny that I'm in a hurry. Nobody else is in a hurry-- not the students and not the teachers. The start of class is usually a very squishy 5-10 minute window, the idea of "bell to bell instruction" does not exist here.
After class, when the teacher (of the cultural iceberg model) asked me what I was noticing about NZ schools in general, I told her it was pacing and the lack of urgency that felt so different. I explained that we're taught that "good teaching" looks like: starting class at the bell, students have their materials out, objectives and a starting activity are posted on the board. And that if students aren't in class and in their seat when the bell rings, they are late and we mark them tardy in our gradebooks. She laughed and said "But that's not about learning!) On one hand, I get her point-- we spend a lot of time enforcing rules that are not directly related to learning. But on the other hand, if I don't start class at the bell, I feel like I'm giving kids permission to be late, because my cultural context says we start at the beginning and how can I ask you to be here on time if we're not going to start on time? And I have it ingrained in me that there is urgency because we have so much to do, so little time, and students deserve every second of their day to be put to good use. They need that, deserve it, and anything less is seen as an affront to equity in education.
This easy-going-ness isn't just about the start of class, I see it everywhere-- students have their phones out, teachers are talking while students have side conversations and "independent work time" is about 50% work, 50% chatting and Instagramming. And the biggest thing, for me, is that there are virtually no seating charts. For me this is heresy. I want to create heterogenous groups and I want students to get to know people other than their friends. I'm trying to create a classroom community and I think a seating chart is a huge part of accomplishing that. I change it about once a month so that they get to work with everyone in the class. Here groups are almost always segregated by gender and ethnicity-- like the classroom mentioned above. I get that there might be good reason for this, but as a teacher I want to be intentional about it, rather than letting it happen all year long just because.
The teachers I'm observing are considered good teachers and they definitely take their job seriously and care about the kids. There's just an entirely different sense of time, of following directions, and so much emphasis placed on student freedom and self-regulation of behavior. Compared to teachers here, I feel like a drill sargent. Seeing things here reminds me of my first year in Utah in that the pace of life and of teaching is just SO different it makes you question everything you thought you knew. Ultimately, that pace of life was a huge part of what I loved about Utah. But how does one create that at the classroom level if the school and surrounding culture (i.e. in Minneapolis) don't support it?