St. Joseph's School

Today we spent an amazing day at St. Joseph's school. St. Joseph's is a catholic elementary school located in South Auckland. The school has approximately 300 students, which is a medium sized school for Auckland. St. Joseph's is a decile two school. We learned from principal Liz Horgan that decile two is considered a low-income ranking and that decile rankings for school are determined based on the latest census information. This is different from Chicago Public Schools, as we determine the SES status our schools using free and reduced lunch applications. Mrs. Horgan explained to us that a long time ago the Catholic school system was integrated with the state system allowing Catholic schools to receive federal funding. The specific type of federal funding allocated for low decile schools is called Targeted Funding for Educational Achievement (TFEA). Ninety percent of the students that comprise St. Joseph's population are from the Pacific Islands and Maori and Pacific Island students are over-represented in terms of low decile status.

Now, with all the facts laid out we can go on to describe our great experience at this fantastic school! We were greeted by the school's principal and participated in a welcome meeting and once again had morning tea! This morning tea was special, as we were able to chat with teachers from the school before we were to visit their classrooms. During the classroom visits, we spent out time in year one, two, three, and four classrooms - our kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade. The teaching looked familiar - center work, reading strategy instruction, small group guided reading with instructional level text, computer work, and read aloud! The students were friendly and were excited for visitors from the states. They asked us questions and were curious about life in the United States. At one point, Jennifer lost her notebook! The assistant principal was nice enough to look for her notebook and while on her brief search the students referred to Jen as "the girl with the golden hair." Very cute. Pilar spent time reading books about the ocean with a year one student while Jen read a big book with a girl from the same class.

We observed a fantastic strategy to use with bilingual students called Plus, Plus. This strategy encourages students to develop their oral language as they are prompted to elaborate on descriptive statements. We took some video of this strategy in action to share with our colleagues at Mozart School in Chicago!

The day concluded with a wrap-up meeting in the Principal's office where we debriefed on our observations. We found a lot of similarities between our instructional practices, but discussed how the climate of standardized testing has affected the stress level of teachers in the United States. New Zealand has just adopted National Standards and fear a standardized assessment is to follow. We all wondered how this would impact the calm and student-centered learning environment that has been so clearly established in New Zealand classrooms. This is a story we will be following even after we go home to Chicago.