Pasco High School Visit

This week we went to Pasco.

The first day we went to visit the elementary school, they had a reception where they told us a little more about the school and the way it worked, we entered different classrooms to see how teaching looked like, the thing that i liked most was that children were taught in their first language so that when they are ready they can start having classes in English, we visited Russian and Spanish classrooms.

The second day we went to Pasco High School, there the director told us about the way the school works. Pasco High has many students, it is a huge school, we saw the computer and wood workshops that had all the necessary things to work there, they had like a theatre, a big gym open to the whole community and a music band. The majority of the students there are Spanish speakers (they had students from many countries), so most of the staff knew spanish so that they can communicate with the parents of the children. Students can take courses to obtain credits for university

I think it has many positive things, i liked the way they take care of the students, every teacher and other members of the staff are in charge of a group of students, so that they are responsible for checking their attendance, their grades and can help them. The director or principal of the school is very involve in the educational process, he observe the teachers and the staff nad seems very close to them and also the students.

That day we went to observe some real classes, the first hour I met the teacher, his name is John Kerr, there were also two other teachers, they talked about the school, the diversity of the students they had and the problem with gangs, they also talked about the educational system in the US and how the chilean system looked like. After that another classmate and I went with professor John Kerr to a science class taught in Spanish, there we had the opportunity of seeing and experiencing a real American class, there were about 29 students, they were learning how to mesure things using a ruler, the class was good and the Spanish of the teacher as well. He told us that since it was the 7th hour the students were a little tired and that that was the reason of the mess with the students but honestly, compared with many chilean classrooms the students in this science class behaved very well. I liked the way of the teacher to introduce a little bit of English, he was relating some of the spanish words with their equivalents on English and when the students were being too loud he started to speak just in English so that the students had to be silent and pay attention to understand, another thing is that to make students silent the teacher stood his hand and all the children had to do the same thing and I really worked. The teacher was really nice, with the students and also with us, it shows the he really loves his job.

The Third day we were with the same professor, in another two science class but now i English, in 9th grade, students were measuring volume of different shapes in groups. This was a really good experience because we were able to observe real classes, to talk with the students, to see a different reality and contrast with our reality in Chile and also to get some new ideas and perspectives. After the class we did like a kind of debriefing, there we discuss about similarities and differences between education in Chile and the US, because in Chile there are not a wide variety in terms of culture and many children do not see the purpose of learning English in a country were all speak Spanish nad we are surrounded by Spanish speaking countries. The teacher also told us about the Crystal Apple an award for teachers... I think in Chile we should also have something like that and give more importance to the education and the role of teachers. As a last point, all the security system really called my attention because there were cameras everywhere and all people had to have the identification card of the school, despite the principal said the school was very safe.

As a conclusion I have to say that this was a great experience, very different from the reality in Chile, but still we can take the good things. Apart from that I have to say they treated us very well and were very nice.