13 13-year-old Ukrainian woman on life and study in the USA
'01.08.2018'
Source: Womo
I am 13 years old, and I have been living with my parents in the United States for a year and study at an ordinary American school, - writes Sonia Rashkovan for Womo. During these 12 months, I saw how the American approach to learning differs from the Ukrainian one. So, the points:
1. Diversity - this is not just 56 nationalities at school, but an understanding and acceptance of the fact that children and people around are different. Our school is very proud of it! At school, you learn to look at a person as a person, and not to pay attention to the fact that he looks different. Self-expression for Americans is very important.
2. Identity to workand also understand her. When I came to the first English lesson, I was expecting to learn the rules of grammar or reading classic novels, but what was my surprise when the teacher asked what our personality consists of. It was a topic for a full quarter, which ended with an essay on the topic that is most unique in our personality.
3. Social activity is more important than your ratings. From primary school, children are taught to work and help their community. Before the end of the 12 class, everyone should receive an 75 hours of assistance for the community. Even if all grades are excellent, but there are no 75 hours, the student will not be able to go to college.
4. Anyone can be a leader, just someone needs help in realizing it. At World Studies (symbiosis of history, geography, economics and political science) we constantly played team games, and each time the teacher appointed different children as team captains, explaining that he wanted to give everyone the opportunity to feel confident in the role of leader. By the end of the year, the children themselves had already chosen new people each time as captains.
5. Need to learn to use your rights.. Each school year, two types of elections are held at the school: the first to the school board of the local government, and the second to the school district self-government. Before voting, everyone is told that we practice in exercising our constitutional right to choose people who represent us, and also repeat many times that everyone (not “everyone”, but everyone) should vote, because everyone’s opinion is important!
6. Read interesting, just need to find booksthat you like. In the Ukrainian school I didn’t like to read very much, but in the American school I started reading constantly and with pleasure. First of all, in the media center of the new school, the librarian asked a lot of questions about what I was interested in, and after 5 minutes I suggested a book that I liked. Now, every time I enter the library, I’m already waiting for a book that is right for me. And so for every avid reader in the school library.
7. Pupils are given free choice in everything. For example, it is not necessary to teach languages at school, but a student can choose from Japanese, Italian, Spanish, French, Chinese, and Russian, as well as choose their own pace of study. I chose to learn French in an accelerated program.
8. The ability / desire to ask questions has been developing since childhood. It consists in questioning what you already know, which means looking at familiar things from a different angle. Favorite phrase of my brother's teacher: “Thanks for a good question!”. And every question is definitely encouraged.
9. The teacher is not always right, so he is always happy to help. The most obvious example was in Science when the teacher was talking about dinosaurs, but one of the students challenged one of the aspects. The teacher promised to check the information, and at the next lesson he admitted his mistake and praised the student for thinking outside the box.
10. Asking for help shouldn't be scary
Every day we have a lesson-TAG, which lasts 30 minutes, and students can go for a consultation with any teacher. And everyone is very happy to help. I often sought the help of an algebra teacher and never once did she refuse to help me or other students who visited her daily at the TAG.
11. All knowledge can be put into practice.: and knowledge about the structure of the human body, because then we can choose the best products for ourselves, and the exponential function can be calculated how quickly aliens can capture Mars, well, or, for example, all files are deleted because of a virus on a computer, etc. . Any topic is shown in practice, and there are no excuses anymore: “It will never be useful to me in life!”.
12. English is not difficult to goand scary. The most frequently asked question: was it difficult to learn all the subjects in English? I studied in Kiev in a specialized school with in-depth study of English, so I went to an American school with confidence in my English, but everything turned out to be not as easy as I thought. The most important thing is not to keep silent until you speak correctly, because the grammar will come with time, and the freedom to communicate is harder to get.
13. USA is not only New York and Los Angeles. During the year we traveled a lot, and every time I was surprised at the uniqueness of nature in different states: mountains, oceans, forests, deserts ... We try to go where we can be surprised by nature, and not just “tick off” that we visited the most popular tourist places.
