Truly Diversified School Environment - Learning Journey at UWC - Part II
- Rachael Oktem, B.Sc, MT
- Feb 24, 2020
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 8, 2020
Today (Feb 24, 2020) is my 9th day in this school. This blog post will discuss my first impressions of the school, the demographics of the student body, personal and professional insights and lingering questions.
My First impressions of UWC Pearson College
There are absolutely no words to describe how beautiful this school is. I feel all the pictures I have seen before coming can’t justify how truly peaceful, enriched with nature and filled with kind students. Prior to my arrival, my associate teacher had circulated my picture and provided my biography to students. This school is located about an hour away from the closest town and all the students including some teachers reside on campus. Since it’s a very small community everyone knows each other and they can recognize when a new face arrives on campus. Ever since I arrived, all the students on the campus are saying “hi” and introducing themselves to me. My accommodations are located in Max Bell Hall. My arrival at UWC coincided with the exam period. These exams are both stressful and motivational for students to master the classroom material. I saw students studying in various places on the campus during the day and preparing for their yearly show called “One World” in the evenings. This preparation would often run late into the night and takes place in the J. W. McConell theatre located in Max Bell Hall. All the students are very excited and eager to show their best work for this event.
Just to give you a bit of background about this school the following information will be of help to establish context. UWC lasts for two years and students apply to attend this school after they finished their grade 11 or equivalent. During the program students focus on the standard IB curriculum in an intense and integrated fashion. The curriculum consists of two foreign language courses and biology, chemistry, physics, math, English, and theory of knowledge. Additionally, they participate in marine science, economics, philosophy or global politics classes.
So far, I have been involved in several learning activities helping students form a community while learning important life lessons. I observed a few IB Biology and math classrooms and started running IB chemistry tutorials as students showed interest in additional instruction. Furthermore, I have taken part in the process of designing a curriculum that is associated with a routine field trip to an island called Race Rocks just off of the schools property. During tutorials, we go over questions students need support with and I highlight a few questions from their textbook that are illustrative of foundational concepts. I have to s
ay my experience in this school has been different than my previous practicums. Students are very strong with their knowledge and are eager to learn more than in other schools. Lastly, the fast pace of this school has challenged my approach to teaching chemistry from a first principles perspective. I have found that the demands from students writing IB tests are more reliant on memorization of key facts.
Student Demographics
I can’t believe how students from 80 different countries (this is approximately 2-3 students per each country) live in such harmony. A reoccurring sentiment amongst students is best summarized by Yousef who said “We are so like-minded that we almost have to fake conflicts to look normal”. Students here have a lot of commonalities from sharing similar interests such as (sailing, diving, canoeing, kayaking, etc.) to sharing songs and teaching cultural dances to each other.
On my second day, I was at the dining hall enjoying my coffee and looking out the large windows with a view to the ocean. A student from Bermuda approached me saying he has been informed about my arrival and wanted to chat to get to know me. We briefly talked about the weather and how it’s been raining pretty much every day for the past 2 months. That day was so beautiful, warm and sunny and he said: “mother nature wanted to welcome me here with nice weather”. Furthermore, we talked about his experience in school. He said that the school is exhausting. He stated:
“too many things to juggle in two years and it’s too much for a seventeen-year-old”
However, he valued the experience greatly and said he wants to continue his higher education in Europe. He said UWC showed him that what we are a part of in this world is bigger than we know and he wants to further his education into humanities studies. He wants to impact the world in a positive way. Also, he was reflecting on his school experience expressing the sentiment that he hopes his experience at UWC “isn’t the top of the peak and that the experiences I will have in the future will be bigger and better”.
All of the students have been preparing for an event called “One World” that's going to be taking place on March 21st. It’s a cultural show where students showcase traditional singing and dancing. They sing, dance, play instruments and perform spoken word poems. This multicultural event showcases stories from a multitude of countries. I believe UWC truly unites students from all over the world for the greater good.
Students in this school don’t seem to interact with Canadians other than a handful of Canadian students in attendance. One lingering question I have is what do the international students think of Canada overall? I have had a chat with some other students where all of them were from a different country such as Malta, Colombia, Bulgaria, HongKong and Eutopia. They expressed themselves as living and studying in the World, rather than studying in Canada. They said they don’t think about where the school is and often forget which country their school is in.
Personal Insights on Culture and Identity
One area of research that interested me is cultural diversity and how students grow to embrace other students with diverse backgrounds. What are the academic settings that maximize the successful integration of diverse students? Also, what mental models do the teachers and students have to embrace diversity? Can students learn to become more open to diversity or is this trait inherent to the individual and selected for at UWC?
I have done some reading on diversity in the classroom and the empirical evidence seems to suggest that diverse classrooms are learning better relative to the baseline group of students. “In line with research on cultural diversity, results indicated performance benefits as the percentage of immigrant students increased across nations. Interestingly, these effects remained significant for both native and immigrant students, once several other predictors of test performance at the national, school, and individual levels were controlled for.” (Konan, Chatard, Selimbegović & Mugny, 2010)
Furthermore, I found this article enumerating the benefits of the diverse classrooms to be highly persuasive. The article discusses how diverse classrooms mirror the diversity present in the goal workforce. Thus, students are benefited from integration at an early age in order to maximize their success in their professional lives as well. “With the growth of globalization, it is important for students to be able to work with diverse groups of people” (Bennette, 2015)
Thanks for reading!
References
Konan, P. N. D., Chatard, A., Selimbegović, L., & Mugny, G. (2010). Cultural diversity in the classroom and its effects on academic performance. Social Psychology. Retrieved from:
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