Kiwi Kids are Lazy!

Kiwi Kids are Lazy

There are must be hundreds of kiwi parents who regularly lament how lazy their teenage kids are, well they may have a point.   Last year I traveled to Korea and met with a group Korean high school students.  I spent the day at their school and they showed me around with huge enthusiasm.  They talked about their studies and their aspirations for the future.   Youngil High school was alive with enthusiastic engaged learners and teachers.   The interesting thing was it a beautiful sunny day, 36 degrees outside and in the middle of the school holidays.  Of a school of approximately 2000 boys over 1500 of them were attending voluntary ‘catch up classes’ during the summer break.

They went on to describe, in perfect English, a typical school day.  The boys I was talking to got up around 6:30AM, had breakfast then left the apartment around 7:30AM to get to school for an 8:30AM start.  After a full day of instruction they spent another 2 hours at school taking extra classes. They arrived home around 6:30PM, some students had dinner and then had 2 hours with a private tutor, others spent time with the tutor first and then had dinner.  After that they spent 2 -3 hours doing their home work.  Most nights the boys I spoke to got to bed around mid night.  This pattern wasn’t just around exam time it was a typical day repeated 5 days a week for the whole school year.

I was fortunate to be invited back to one student’s home for dinner and his farther confirmed the story and if it had not been for my visit he would have had tuition that night.  Shin talked about the importance of education and getting into one of the top universities.  This would lead to better job prospects once he graduated.  It was extremely important to the family that their son do well and achieve the best he could, not only for him but because it reflected well on the family. 

I described the Korean students day to a couple of secondary school boys during the summer break back in New Zealand.  They scoffed and the word “nerd” was used more than once.  “When do they fit in sports or time with their mates?” they asked.  It didn’t even occur to me to ask that question when I met with the boys in Korea.   When I asked the Kiwi lads what other languages they were learning they sheepishly replied none, the boys back in Korea spoke Korean, fluent English and were learning at least one other language.

So are we selling our kids short by not emphasising the importance of education? There is plenty in the media about ‘knowledge economies’ and ‘life-long learners’ but as a nation do we really believe it?  The National Curriculum Standards have gone some way to refocusing primary schools on the importance of academic learning but is our holistic approach to learning really the best thing for our kids?

Assessment Pressures

Since the introduction of the Nation Curriculum Standards there has been real pressure put on teachers to make their OTJs defensible. Even though teachers have a licence to make a judgement based on anecdotal observations and notes and student voice the assessment or test still seems to be the dominant part of the equation and teachers aren't prepared to put a student at a level without administering some form of test.

The challenge is that many assessments are administered by the teacher one on one with the student and can be quite time consuming, for example JAM and Running Records. Adding to the challenge is many schools have had to change how they provide CRT and it may not always be available when the teachers most need it.

So what is the answer? The simple response is that perhaps teachers should trust their judgement more but there is still a requirement that a standardised assessment be part of the OTJ process.

The other possibility is that we review the types of assessments we are using. Cullen (2012) questions the validity of some assessments as they are "stand alone" and do relate to the needs of the learner in a classroom environment. Cullen goes on to suggest that some assessments even encourage the wrong types of skills in a learner. Though she was referring to reading assessments I believe this idea can be extended to other learning areas as well. Cullen advocates for 'Rich Tasks' which she describes as "authentic and meaningful" which will allow the teacher to "observe student behaviour and learning in a variety of settings and with various materials."

I plan to explore the idea of 'Rich Tasks' and how they can be used as a part of OTJs. I believe this important because we need to get most accurate and relevant data about student learning and also we need to take the pressure of our teachers.

 

Cullen, T. (2012). Assessment for Better Learning: A closer look at reading assessment. Reading Forum N.Z Vol. 27, No. 3 2012