Lewis - 4. The Well-Travelled Student

Students on the Isle of Lewis may be isolated in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, but they are probably amongst the best-travelled students in the World. And perhaps due to this remote location, they are use to travelling.

The first week the teachers were there, students were coming and going from trips to Majorca, France, and Southern England. Parents commented that during their time in school, students had had access to World trips every year – countries across the European Union (EU); Africa, Russia, and New York City in the United States seemed to be popular and frequent destinations for the students at the secondary school. The school was constantly raising money in conjunction with their local council (board of education) to send whole years, or grades, on school trips. But because many EU countries are fairly close, this was not as expensive as it might be seem to “the Canadians” (as they became known). In Canada, there is only one other country in travelling distance (under 3,000 miles), and that is not usually a unique experience because the language and most of the media of that country is the same.

Lewis - 3. Don't interrupt me; I'm working!

Cultural comparisons are most acute during first meetings or the first days of a visit. By the third day of their placement, the reflections of the Canadian teachers did not contain the same detailed comparisons as they did the first day, or upon initial impressions.

A higher level of sustained work focus did stand out. In Ontario, it was not uncommon for the teachers to switch activities every 10-15 minutes once their students began to lose focus and interest. Calls from the office, announcements, students coming in and out of the classroom were frequent interruptions. You might even argue that from the time children enter school, the school system is training children to disconnect after a short ten minutes; that the frequent disruptions to the class during the school day prevents students from concentrating on anything at all for a sustained period of time.

In Scotland, these announcements and office inquiries were limited to the morning’s ‘registration’, or homeroom attendance, by a different teacher. The office handles students arriving late or leaving early without disrupting the class. The only genuine emergency, or cause to disrupt the class, would be a fire.

Eliminating classroom interruptions does make a difference. One of the new teachers said, “it’s amazing how long the students are able to concentrate on their work…the class is constantly at work during independent work.”

Any writer, student of English, artist, creator, or scientist, knows that you cannot begin and finish a piece of work in ten minutes. Single art pieces may take one to three years in the making, for example. We would all learn something from this work model – “leave me alone; I’m working!”

Lewis - 2. Advanced English for All

For the first couple of days at work, the new teachers spent their time adjusting to the vocabulary and re-organization of their school environment.

Secondary students in Lewis are grouped alphabetically into ‘houses’ (much like Harry Potter for those in Canada), except those students in Gáidhlig medium education (or immersion) who are all in the same house, Addison. Their entire house, all years/grades, report for ‘registration’ each morning. This puzzled the new teachers; for them, students report to ‘homeroom’ each morning for ‘attendance’.

The teachers were also surprised at how relaxed the work day and assignments were. “Okay, hand it in when you feel you’re finished,” they would hear, “we’ll sort that later.”

“Everyone is so nice,” the teachers said, “and the teachers seem to have genuine mutual respect for their students,” or pupils. With national exams approaching in two weeks, many teachers were preparing for those standard questions or types of writing on the examinations. Lewis teachers were negotiating their lesson needs, assessment for learning, with the students.

“What would you like to work on over the next couple of weeks to prepare?” they asked their classes.

Students would reply: “Poetry!” “Essay!” “Words!” or “Folio!” And the Lewis teachers would begin crafting lessons to address these areas the students themselves had requested and felt deficit in. The visiting teachers were very impressed by this because although it seemed a bit disorganized, it was also immediately responsive to the students’ relevant needs.

All of the visiting teachers were English teachers, and spent the first couple of days trying to visualize the curriculum and selection of courses available to secondary students in Lewis. In Scotland, the students were streamed into subject areas they loved or had a gift in early on in Secondary 1 and 2 (S1 and S2, or grade 7 and 8), so many of the students in the secondary (S3 and above) English classes had already chosen English, and had some ability in that subject area. For this reason, or perhaps because of the accent, the visiting teachers commented, “their vocabulary is so much more superior than students at home!”

“Students in S1 and S2 (grades 7 and 8) are doing close readings of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet!” another teacher said, “I would never see that in Canada!”

There was not as much discussion about a text or a topic, and very little group work. For the most part, students focused on building their expository writing skills and providing textual evidence for the answer they were giving. This is a criteria for the national exams, and so a great deal of the “success criteria” in the classes on Lewis was built around sharp writing.

Chinese students learning abroad will often comment on how much later Western students learn math concepts, five years difference in some cases! Here, the visiting teachers felt that Canadian students were also two or three years behind their Scottish peers in learning English.

Lewis - 1. Nesting

When you move to a new place to work, you spend a considerable amount of time nesting. You find a place to live; you move your bags in; you unpack and organize and place things where they work best for you. Every person has a spatial need unique to them. In this series, I travel to Stornoway, Scotland on the Isle of Lewis to settle eight student teachers into a short teaching experience at a local secondary school, and we compare living and teaching in Lewis to living and teaching in Canada, their home.

No one ever feels completely settled after a long journey unless they have found a clean, safe place to sleep; unpacked and had a hot meal; and that is exactly what the visiting teachers found upon their arrival in Lewis. Despite the various small issues with flight schedules, we arrived in Stornoway and were greeted by drivers who had smiles on their faces and seemed happy to see us. They took us to where we would stay the night. It was clean, airy. And we met two hours later for a walk around the corner to a hot meal at the Caberfeibh hotel. This allows your mind to rest and adjust to the local time.

One thing that always surprises me is how long nesting takes. But nesting, I believe, is a biological need: Find shelter. Find a food source. Connect to home, family. These are basic requirements that we still search for in each place we travel. The teachers with me found their accommodation. Then they unpacked. They connected (by wifi) to family at home. Then they needed to find a food source (a local grocery store in walking distance). Each step along the way to establishing the nest involved hurdles. Understand the local dialect. Figure out the codes for connecting to home. Know how grocery stores are organized here.

Eggs, usually found refrigerated in Canada, are on the shelf next to bread in Scotland. A small, but time-consuming discovery. Also, appliances work differently. There are different levels of currents, so women normally preparing themselves for the work day may not be able to use their straighteners or curlers from home. The shower power button, located outside of the washroom (WC) has to be turned on before it will go. The power switch for the oven needs to be flicked down, then the timer set on the oven before it will work. These are all small details, but taken for granted, can disrupt the flow of the day.

Once nested, it was time to discover the work place: How will we get there? How will it be different from school organization in Canada?

Callanish, Isle of Lewis

Lodging at Gearrannan, Carloway, Isle of Lewis

Toronto - The Big T-O

Weekly I am in Toronto (‘the big T-O’) for work and it never fails to amaze me how filled with celebrity life it is. Thousands of workers commute into TO by tram, bus, train, plane and car every day, dressed in black and grey, speaking with no one along their way. All right, I didn’t mean that to rhyme, but it’s appropriate since TO is probably the financial centre of the art industry in Canada.

Where I work, off Bloor and Bay, I have to walk by the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum), a historic stone structure that looks like it has recently given birth to a couple of glass and steel sugar cubes. In front of ROM, on Bloor, if there is not a company giving away free hair products, totes, chocolate, or pens, there is a film company shooting scenes out of NYPD or some other ‘big city scene’. Today, they are filming Nikita, and actors and fans alike can be seen in front of the School of Music with large stage lights, water, and whispers. Celebrities and film crews are around every corner on a daily basis, and this is something that never fails to surprise me.

We still think of ‘big industry’ as the factory and its widgets, but art is our new industry, and contemporary, steel-edged art of all forms is what TO has. Film, visual media pieces, animation, gaming, architecture, music, dance and drama theatres (far too many to list here) are all in TO. I think it is safe to say, if you are looking for something, anything, name it – TO has it.