A collection of insights that highlight issues or things that are unusual about education at MIS.
We start our day at 8am (students dropped off from 7:30am) and finish our face to face instructions tion at 1pm Monday to Friday. That does NOT mean that the academic day has finished.
We are using a hybrid system of teaching and learning. We were moving towards that prior to the 2020-2021 COVID pandemic but this episode just accelerated our transition. Students are expected to do additional work at home (previously that used ot be called ‘homework’ 😉) which can vary from about 10-15 minutes a day through to 2 hours a day. What is different is that the work is supported by documentation online through our learning and teaching portals, which includes video calls, curriculum presentation and assignment collection.
We are quite clear about the purpose of learning a second language and that is a way to open the mind to the possibility of seeing the world from a different perspective; since language is often the way that we communicate how we see the world.
This allows our students to be open minded when they are in their future workspace and they come across people where they are speaking to our future students in their second or third or more language. Our students, having experienced the awkwardness of trying to express yourself in a second language, are more open minded and tolerant of any clumsy or miscommunications that these future colleagues or stakeholders, or partner may express.
Senior students (Pod 11 and upwards) are eligible to take a Fiji Civil Avaiation Authority (CAAF) recognised drone license to fly small drones in Fiji. Students are eligble if they have passed their Year 8 human biology assessment.
We believe that havinga valid drone license is the 21st century equivalent of owning a car driving license. As employers begin to appreciate the value of drones are more than just photography (vertical inspections, aerial surveys, disaster relief), the value of having a drone license becomes more attractive to future employers.
Having obtained their license, students are engaged in various citizen science or citizen scoped work to build up their practical drone experience.
Parents are surprised that we do NOT teach our children the ‘ABC’.
This is because the science is very clear that the best way to teach how to read and write is through ‘pure’ or ‘synthetic’ phonics; as opposed to ‘blended’ or ‘eclectic’ phonics. The chant of ‘ABC…’ is actually the name of the symbols, but it’s not the most common sound the symbol makes. Small example: think of a typical alphabet chart where you see 26 boxes and one fo them says ‘A’ and underneath it is a picture of an apple. Teachers often say the name of the symbol ‘A…’ as in ‘Aey’ [think of the word ‘say’ and take out the ’s’] and then add ‘… is for Apple’.
But that doesn’t make sense does it? If it was logical they would say ‘Aey’ is for ‘Aey-pple’. Our method teaches our students to think of the sounds that symbols typically make.
Following on from the above. The science is quite clear that ‘on average’ humans tend to get a new ‘operating system’ in their brains at about 7 years old (± 2 years) that enables them to understand symbolism. That’s a fancy way of saying that they will understand that the symbol ‘f’ stands for making the sound ‘f’ as in ‘foxtrot’. Since that is the case and Year 1 is on average less than 7 years old, there is little point in trying to teach students how to read and write at this age using the symbols.
Instead we focus on the students in their first year learning how to ‘segment’ words into sounds (the word ‘thought’ for instance has three sounds (even though it has 7 symbols); and they also learn how to blend sounds together to make a word so the sounds ‘th’, and the sound ‘aw’, and the sound ’t’ are blended together to make the word ‘thawt’, even though (for historical reasons) it is spelt as ‘thought’.
In their second year they start to work with symbols even though they have been learning to read and write in year one, but it is through spoken sounds: segmenting and blending.
Especially from Year 11, students are expected to manage their own learning. They are given the benchmarks and task allocations to complete their work, but the way they learn is completely up to them.
Prior to them coming into Year 11 they have been guided gradually how to set their own pace and be responsible for their own learning. What this means though is that these students negotiate time with our teaching staff to help them with their assignments.
This is part of their task to learn how to teach themselves: which does not mean learn by themselves; rather they learn whom, when, how and where to ask for help. This sets them up to be a future competent self motivated learner ready for the future that is constantly changing and very unpredictable.
Our learning programme is a holistic one. We are concerned with students eventual quaility of life. Some skill sets seem more important to us than others in being able to succesfully have a good quality of life.
Take calculus. It’s a relatively few number of people that actually use calculus in their daily adult life at all, or improve their quality of life.
However the art of being polite is useful to everyone and it definitely improves one’s quality of life. Being polite does not mean being a push over, and we encourage our students to be assertive where necessary – but always polite.
We place a lot of value of performance art. Not instead of science, or social science, or visual art, but of equal importance.
Take drama – it has the ability to teach our students about empathy because drama often asks that we perform or act a part that is maybe different from our own way of living. It helps us to see the world through the eyes of the person that one is acting out.
Some parents have said ‘… but that is all well and good but Jone is going to become an accountant!’ To which we say that learning drama skills is important to accountants who might still need to take on the ‘role’ of being a motivational leader, a strong unflappable follower, a person who can deal an irate customer or other official. These are just ‘hats’ that individuals put on in the right circumstance even if by nature a student is ‘shy’ or ‘introverted’.
Fiji Ministry of Education registration number SF: 8239