JOB SHADOWING VIS

Job shadowing at Vienna International School

May 29th- June 3rdLaura Balat

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JUST FROM THE BEGINNING

On Sunday 29th June, our trip to Vienna International School starts. We are a team of three teachers: Montse Mora from Wagner School, Gemma Martínez and me, Laura Balat, both from Annexa School.We are going to do a job shadowing about school libraries.Right from the beginning we realise that we are going to learn a lot from the job shadowing but also from each other. I think we will end up with a bag full of ideas and reflections about the way we teach.

Flying from Barcelona airport to Vienna. It's a nice day and we are pretty excited about what is going to come next.

We arrive at Wombat's Hostel Vienna. We are going to sleep here. It's a beautiful, quiet and clean place, full of young travellers. It's located just in front of Naschmarkt, one of the most famous and luxurious food market in Austria. As we walk around the city we can see that Sunday is a quiet day in Vienna. We have good vibrations about what is going to come next week.

WOMBATS HOSTEL IN NASCHMARKT

STUDENTS AND FAMILIES

Students learn English very quickly as all lessons are in English. New students who don't speak English have three hours a week of support.

Students in Vienna International School come from wealthy families who pay a lot of money to bring their kids to school. Most of the parents work in the UN. They are diplomats or business people who travel a lot for work. They are usually between 5 to 7 years in one country and then they move.At school there are more than 100 different nationalities from all over the world. They all use English as the vehicular language and they also learn German.Mother tongues are also very valuable at school and they have books for all of them in the library.

FINALLY, WE ARE THERE: VIENNA INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL.

Parents dropping off their kids at school, security guards at the door, identification cards for visitors,... Vienna International School looks very different from our public schools back home.

David Bancroft receives us in the Secondary Library. We start with a tour around the school: Secondary Library, Primary Library, teachers room, the theatre, the canteen, the art room, the outdoor playgrounds and gardens,... There are really wide spaces and big classrooms full of resources and also teachers, lots of teachers. During the week we'll have to bear in mind that we don't have such resources back home. So, we'll have to pay attention to those that don't need much money to be implemented.

SCHOOL ATMOSPHERE

We feel very welcomed at school. People is very nice and lots of teachers greet us and offer help. the language is not a barrier as everybody speaks English

Right from the beginning we feel a calm and peaceful atmosphere in the school corridors. Students move around freely and autonomously without adults being around. Teachers tell us they invest a lot of time talking and making them reflect on their behaviour. They also foccus on the students being a part of a community in which they have to collaborate in order to feel safe. Punishments are avoided.The first two weeks of school are dedicated exclusively to know the students better and classroom and school agreements on behaviour.

Title 1

International Baccalaureate Early Stages Learning

International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme

International Baccalaureate Middle Ages Programme

International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme

David Bancroft, the librarian, tells us how the International Baccalaureate works, the stages and the different projects students need to do throughout the programmes. In 5th grade they need to do the Personal Project which is an individual project about a topic they want to investigate about. Between 11th and 12th

grade they will do the Extended Essay which is an academic report about a topic students choose. Both projects need to be well documented. This is going to be very important to understand the link between the library and the students learning process.

THE CURRICULUM

At VIS the curriculum is available at the corridors for everybody to read. It is inquiry based and it highlights the importance of individual choices for the community relationships.

Also in the corridors we can find scaffolding posters and methodology posters.

SCAFFOLDING IN THE CORRIDORS

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SCAFFOLDING IN THE CORRIDORS

There are posters with some help for students on how to write their personal project, how to learn maths, how to assesss themselves,...

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Primary classroom

We have the opportunity to talk with Eugenia, a 5-6 years old classroom teacher. She tells us about a day in the classroom.

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Title 1

Every Monday they write about the weekend. The teacher takes a group of kids to work with them while the other ones are working independently or with the teacher assistant.Before they write there is a lot of modelling done by the teacher.

PROJECT BASED LEARNING

Throughout the whole Primary, students learn through projects. The projects are related to the curriculum and they are organised in different frames: Who we are, Where we are in place and time, How we express ourselves, How the world works, How we organise ourselves and Sharing the planet. Teachers feel free to work on any content related to these topics. All the levels work on these frames but they do different projects.The librarians know, at every stage of the year, what the students are learning about so that they can prepare all the books to look for information. So, there is a strong link between the library and the curriculum.

The ICT teacher who doesn't have an assigned group of students also knows about the projects every class is doing. So, when a teacher needs an ICT activity to work on a specific topic, she can contact the ICT teacher and ask her to prepare an ICT lesson on it. This clear curriculum which is posted on the corridors allows them to organise the entire school year. It is known by everybody and it allows teachers to work collaboratively as a team. Learning programmes and students assessments are also posted in a public digital platform so that all the school teachers can look at them.

There are two libraries at VIS: Primary and Secondary. They both have the same objectives but they work and organise in different ways.

THE PRIMARY LIBRARY

The Secondary Library

There is a strong link between the library and what students learn. The library supports students learning.

What surprised me about the Secondary Library was the atmosphere. David, the librarian, believes the library is a social place where students socialise. It's not a place to be in complete silence. They need to keep their voices low but they can talk and do projects together.I loved that all the mother tongues that are spoken in the school have a section in the library. It's a good way to respect and value all languages.

Mercè Rodoreda at VIS

We lived a very special moment in a Secondary classroom.

On Thursday we visited a Secondary Literature class. Some months ago they had been reading 'La plaça del diamant' by Mercè Rodoreda. We had the opportunity to talk about the novel, about our country, the situation of Catalan language and how we feel about it. Montse read a piece of the novel and students loved the sound of Catalan. We helped them solve some questions about the book. It was a pretty magical moment. We showed them 'Castellers', we talked about 'sardana' and 'correfocs' and we shared the beauty of our country.

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It's been a week full of nice new people who treated us wonderfully, full of new ideas and information that will be very powerful back home and also a week for learning and sharing.We had the opportunity to talk about education, resources, school and to visit the city of Vienna. I would recommend such an experience to every teacher who wants to keep learning to make education better everyday.