Cultural differences

My visit to USA has taught me many things that are impossible to summarize in a few words.
When we think of education and what we want for our students, we are also thinking about what kind of person we want our students to become.
A trip like this has shown me that although you had an idea of what the human being is and this idea may have been correct; possibly it is not the only correct perception. It is indispensable to avoid relativism, but it is a mistake to think that your way is the only way. I have found many valuable things from each of the different cultures on this trip.

Home-School conection

To educate is build the future, and for this reason the responsability of educate can not be avoided for schools and parents first, and for society, secondly. Althought it seems something obvious, many parents declare that if their children are poorly educated, the fault is of the schools. Alike many teachers complain that their students do not go educated to school, and they do not hesitate in assert that the teacher´s goal is teach contents but not educate.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights saids (art. 26,3.) "Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children". Althougt it has been a polemic topic, I think that this article declares a right but also a responsability for parents who can not delegate in the schools.

The European Union in European Report on the quality of school education (2001) http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/educ/indic/rapinen.pdf
recognizes the effective contribution that parents can give to improve the schools.

In Spain, the Constitucion from 1978 declares the right and obligation of parents of educate to their children, and it establishes the posibility that teachers, students and parents participe in the goverment of schools. It gives a context where is posible to share the responsability of educate between home and schools. But the reality is diferent. Althought this posibility exist, many parents and teachers prefer work alone or give this responsability to others.
I think that it is not just a right and a obligation but the best way to cooperate in order to get the best education for our children. It is the best way by which teachers can meet the student's environment and, by extension, the same student. It is also the best way to give the same message to the students and avoid contradictions. It is a hard task that in my country must be fostered if we want improve our educational system and hope a better future.

How have schools in Spain responded to minoritys cultures and languages?

In Spain, in recent years, we are living important social changes. People from diferents nationalities and cultures are coming to our country. From 1999, the number of immigrants has increased by 6, and in this moment they are around 10% of the Spanish population. The educational system is trying meet this demand through diferentes measures.


The current education law in Spain, whose name is LOE (Law Organic of Education) planned to adapt the teaching to the studens who have any kind of special educational need, in order to guarantee their access, continuance and progression in the educational system. For this, the law establishes several measures related with the organization of the schools and the curriculum.

It is important note that this law is based on the idea of the inclusion in the educational treatment of the diversity. It goes beyond the idea of integration, which rejected the exclusion of students but developed different measures for their integration into the majority. The idea of inclusion is consistent with the principles of individualized education and treatment to each student according to their characteristics.

The measures that the current law provides can be clasificated in ordinary measures and extraordinary measures. Then I am going to explain briefly some of the most important measures.

Ordinary measures:

• Flexible grouping. This measure, very used in Spain in last years, aims to put students into groups that foster a better environment to improve theirs achievement.
  


• Optional subjects, that allows to the students set their curriculum according to their interests, abilities and needs.
  


• Programs to strengthen basic skills.

Extraordinary measures:

-To stay one more year in the same academic course. (This measure have very specific requirements).

-Diversified curriculum. For students in last years of the obligatory education, who have important dificulties to stay in the regular course. It consists of a reorganization of the content and the use of methodologies based on practical activities that enable students to achieve the overall objectives and core competencies of educational stage.

-Initial Professional Qualification Programs (PCPI), for students with poor motivation to continue their education, with a low level of curricular competence and interest in acquiring training that enables them to enter the world of work.

-Curricular adaptation. When we talk about curriculum adaptation refers to adjustment or modification of the educational curriculum that is needed to enable students to access, stay or promotion within the education system. Starting from a different reality in which every student is different from others and has a particular educational needs, educational action must changes the curriculum or its access ways, so that students can participate and achieve, the best they can, the basic objectives of the stage.

In this way, we can find different kinds of curricular adaptation according to their aim: acting on access to the curriculum or the curriculum itself, and depending on their significance level. Finally, it is important notes that my country is composed of seventeen autonomous communities, where state law does not determine completely what to do in each place, but it leaves certain freedom in the curriculum that is realized in each community, each class and student. This is known as open or semi-open curriculum.

In the Autonomous Community of Madrid in where I live, you can find various measures that attempt to respond to the diversity of students. It´s important the measure known as "link-classroom" where students who do not speak Spanish stay a time, about 6 months, in which the main objective is to learn this language. However, the most part of immigrants students is coming from Latin American and their native language is Spanish, so that measures of attention to diversity do not stay in teaching language, but far beyond.

Maybe in EWU

Some things that the people want to do in their life are to write a book, to have children, to plant a tree, or perhaps to travel around the world. But in somes cases the people wants speak other languages. I am into this kind of people. It can look a stupid thing because a lot of people speaks two, three, four or more languages, but when you study a language and you don´t get speak it, it becomes an important challenge.

I feel that I am lucky. In this moment, I am in a place to 8,548 km / 5,311 miles from my home in Madrid. I am in Cheney, a little, quiet and friendly village near to Spokane, Washington State, USA. I have the oportunity to improve my English.

My group and me arrived here last saturday and we are doing a lot of things together. But I haven´t said that the reason of my trip is for study. I am in Eastern Washington University for five weeks. We are studing many things about the educational systems of USA and from diferents educational systems from Europe, because in my group you can find people from France, Germany, England and Scotland.

After this, I can explain the two dimensions of my learning of English as the criteria that Professor Petrie has taught us.
First, I am developing one kind of habilities related with social interactions. Altought we are in classroom 9 hours a day, the rest of the time we are speaking English about several topics. It was experts such as Jim Cummins called Basic Interpersonal Communitation Skills (BICS). It does not require a efford cognitive but is important to several things. It is important to integrate in a group, to feel that you are able to ask a coffee or ask address of a place. It is necessary to not feel alone in a country that is very diferent from yours.

By other hand, I am acquiring important skills for my academic instruction. They are called Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) , and I can acquire them in the class that we have everyday. The principal diferent with the others one is that in this case is not enought understand what the profesor is saying. Besides this you must elaborate the information and to do something with it.

I am sorry that this blog looks like a diary, but my experience in learning English is happening now, in this moment, everyday here.