Train stations in the US and the UK resemble each other in that they both have trains running through them.  They also sell food.  That is where the similarities end.

American train stations are organized around the assumption that passengers will arrive no more than 30 seconds prior to their trip and will leave the station no more than 30 seconds after their arrival.  Those of you who have gotten to South Station in Boston or Penn Station in New York oh, say, five minutes early, and looked for a place to sit while waiting for your train are probably either still looking or have already resigned yourselves to a semi-permanent condition of hopelessness that may begin to creep into other aspects of your lives.  In short, there is basically nowhere to park your keister in many large, big city train stations, and I believe this is for one of two reasons:

• Reason 1: Train station architects have seen too many action movies and assumes that instead of waiting patiently for the train and then ambling aboard, most passengers will arrive while chased by bad guys, cinematically sprint through the station with little regard for the sunglass racks, postcard stands, or Sbarro chafing dishes that may get carelessly rearranged in the process, and leap onto the train just as the doors of the 5:06 to Washington are closing.  
• Reason 2: Municipal governments know full well the sordid acts (only some of which can be discussed on this blog because this is the internet, after all) that can take place on a seat at a train station (everyone's got a fetish, be it for molded plastic or stainless steel) and have tried to eliminate any fodder for depravity by systematically removing the seating so sympathetically incorporated in the original design.

So you stand, watching the departures board until your platform is announced, and then run frantically onto the train in an inelegant imitation of the imaginary passenger described above in Reason 1.  And then you get to where you're going, at which point your needs are covered for the next 30 seconds.

But suppose you are laden with heavy bags and might need to get both yourself and your earthly possessions out of the station?  No luggage trolleys, but there's always the dragging option.  Maybe you want to grab some reasonably healthy food before going home?  Sbarro offers three of your five a day in the shiny food section of the pyramid.  And what if you don't happen to live at the train station?  Outside of a few major cities in the Northeast, you could try walking, find a cab, or wait for the twice-a-day bus service.

So how great is Great Britain in the area of train stations?  As much as people here complain about the state of rail travel, the answer is very.  Train stations in the UK generally give you the feeling that the person responsible for their design may have once met a real, live human.  Stations may not be beautiful, may not have climate control systems, may not have Sbarro, but they address human travel needs 30 minutes (not seconds) before departure and 30 minutes after arrival. 

And by golly, you can sit!  You won't find chaises longues or high-backed leather (or even pleather) armchairs, but you will encounter pieces of horizontal furniture that the British call "seats."  When your train finally comes (often late, as a helpful reminder that the UK is not Europe) and you arrive at your destination, you will find that someone has clearly gone through a flowchart of the needs a human might experience after stepping onto the platform.  Laden with heavy bags?  Here are luggage trolleys.  Oh, but they probably cost a pretty penny.  Not so; a mere one pound deposit will do the trick!  Feeling peckish?  Yes, we offer food that shimmers like Sbarro's finest, but you could also try the station's miniature versions of chain grocery stores that sell produce, dairy, baked goods, dry goods, and meat at prices that match the large supermarkets.  And if you don't live at the train station?  Well, hop on a bus to the destination of your choice in this medium-sized English city.  OK, I'll just stop first to buy three long novels so I can enjoy the wait until this evening's bus departure.  Quit dallying, the bus is coming and if you miss it, you may have to wait up to 15 minutes!

In 2011 Lawrence Public Schools, a chronically underperforming school district, was placed under receivership by the Massachusetts State Legislature.  This process meant that the state appointed a receiver to take over responsibilities from the superintendent and the local school board and make decisions about how best to reform the city's schools.  As one component of reforming the city's schools, the receiver gave administrative control of some of the worst-performing schools to educational management organizations (EMOs, which are essentially charter networks) so that they could replicate models of effectiveness and turn around these schools.  I work at one of these schools, and for more on this you can read a brief New York Times editorial from last June.

But as interesting as this may be, what, you may ask, does this have to do with education in England?  Well, it turns out that when schools in England fail for too long (actually a much shorter time than they would be allowed to flounder in the US), control is taken away from local authorities and given to academy trusts (kind of like charter networks).  These academy trusts turn the schools into academies that replicate models that have proven successful at other schools in the trust.  Sounds kind of familiar, huh?  For a good summary, see The Economist.

Last week, I got to spend two days at Daleview Academy (name changed), which had been failing for some time (although, as mentioned previously, not as long as it would have been allowed to fail in America) and was turned into an academy about three years ago.  In many ways, it's quite similar to my school in Lawrence: high number of English language learners, low levels of family academic achievement, located in a neighborhood that has seen waves of immigration from different countries, a transient student population, administrative discussions driven by student data, and a dedicated school staff that sees the big picture in the work they accomplish.  In some ways, it's not: stronger social safety net for families in the UK's welfare state, huge linguistic diversity (upwards of 20 languages in a single classroom and no majority language, as opposed to Lawrence where you mainly just find Spanish), and kids learn to speak English with a Yorkshire accent.  Overall, a really good experience to see a school that's thousands of miles across the ocean from Lawrence but that could really be down the block.

Oh yeah, and really interesting kids who, like inner-city kids in America, have this edgy, pushy, almost frantic desire to learn that comes from a place of shear pride for all they have to share and sincere wonder at all they do not yet know.  How could you not want to teach students like that?  Here are some snippets of conversations I got to have with them:

• Students: Are you from Spain?  France!  Your voice is from Scotland!  No, Wales!

• Student: Do you know John Cena?  He's from America.

• Student: I know you're American because you sound like Willy Wonka. (not sure if this was a reference to Gene Wilder or Johnny Depp)

• Student: Do you have friends?
• Teacher: Yeah, I have lots of friends, but most of them don't live in Leeds.
• Student: No, do you watch Friends?
• Teacher: Yeah, I like to watch that show.  It's really funny.
• Student: You look and sound like Ross.

A Non-Alphabetical and Uncategorized Phrasebook (abridged)

• add (plus): Five add four equals nine.

• subtract (minus): Five subtract four equals one.

• multiply (times): Five multiply four equals twenty.

These actually makes tons (tonnes) of sense since they name the operation in the number sentence instead of naming symbols like plus and minus.  Children are also less likely to say things like "I have to solve this problem by plussing five and four."  Since I'm much more used to the American phrasing, there's a growing list of British kids who look at me dumbfounded when I try to "help" them with their maths (see below).

• maths (math): We're going to start learning fractions in maths today.

There is, however, no such thing as readings, histories, or sciences.

• inverted commas (quotation marks)

• full stop (period)

 

• sensible: Push in your chairs sensibly!  Be sensible when you play your maths game.

I can't think of a good translation, but this is a brilliant (brill) catch-all for making the right choices throughout the day.  I hear teachers use it about as often as I say "expectations" in my classroom, which is to say that they use it a lot.

• fuss: Don't fuss while you're putting on your coats!  You hurt your knee and you didn't even fuss!  You don't need to fuss when you hear a loud noise.

Again, I can't think of a translation that encompasses all the uses of fuss, but it's kind of like messing around while maintaining a British reserve.

• dinner (lunch)
• tea (dinner)
• supper (a light bite late at night)
• pudding (dessert)
• canteen (cafeteria)

Apparently calling the midday meal lunch and the evening meal dinner is considered posh.

• sir (an unknown man): Ask sir (referring to me) to help you with your maths if you get stuck.



Every classroom I've ever seen (including many in the US and a handful in the UK) has a set of rules posted in a fairly visible location.  The phrasing of these rules may differ from one school to another, but they generally convey the same message: be kind to your classmates, respect adults, try not to hurt people or things, and raise your hand.  Any child who has spent more than a day at school knows that in order to ask questions, answer questions, or share a story about the cupcakes at his sister's birthday, he has to raise his hand.  He may forget this rule when the excitement to share becomes too much to bear, or when the teacher takes way too long to acknowledge the patiently raised hand, but the rule is there and the child knows that hands are for raising.  One school I visited made me question just how universal that last rule might be.

A bit of background before continuing...In most classrooms in the US and the UK, the majority of teacher-student interactions can be described by the Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) model, sounding something like this:
Teacher: How does Ferdinand feel when he gets taken to the bullfight in Madrid?  Pedro?
Pedro: Sad.
Teacher: Good job.
The teacher initiates the interaction by asking a question, waits for the student's response, and assesses the response by using a binary evaluation system of right or wrong (think Wolf Blitzer's "Good thing, bad thing?" on CNN).  Dialogic teaching is an alternative model, in which the teacher's question initiates a dialogue or conversation that gives students opportunities for thoughtful speaking, active listening, and deeper thinking.  Within a dialogic model, this is how the above teaching moment might go:
Teacher: How does Ferdinand feel when he gets taken to the bullfight in Madrid?  Pedro?
Pedro: Sad.
Teacher: Tell us with a complete sentence.
Pedro: Ferdinand feels sad when he goes to the bullfight.
Teacher: Pedro, ask Rachid for a word you might use instead of sad.
Pedro: Rachid, do you have another word?
Rachid: Depressed.
Teacher: Pedro?
Pedro: Ferdinand feels depressed when he goes to the bullfight.
Teacher: What in the story makes you think that?
Pedro: I think that because he has to leave his mom.
Teacher: Now that we have one piece of evidence supporting how Ferdinand feels, turn to your partner and identify two more pieces of evidence...Karly, what evidence did your partner share with you?
Without going into too much detail, let's just say this second interchange is a little different from the first one.

Back to the hand-raising rule.  In Barking and Dagenham, a far outer borough of London, the Peter's Bridge Primary School (name changed) serves a housing estate (British for "the projects") with high levels of deprivation (British for high crime, high poverty, and low educational attainment).  The school population is about half White British and half non-White, with large numbers of relatively recent arrivals from Africa.  Over the past ten years, Peter's Bridge has undertaken significant work to raise student achievement by subtly changing patterns of instruction.  Teachers at Peter's Bridge have largely moved away from IRE instruction and have fully bought into a dialogic approach to teaching.  Because of this, classrooms feel and sound different from a typical elementary school and most of them have this rule, surprising to an outsider, posted just as visibly as the other rules:

This is a No Hands Up School.

The adult will always say the name of the person they would like to speak when they ask a question.

We do not call out; we join in with the conversation.

Remember to wait for a gap.

Welcome to my blog!

I am spending four months in Leeds, England to research primary education in the UK as part of the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching program.  In addition to auditing two classes at the University of Leeds, I get to spend my time in schools observing teachers and students, transcribing the language they use in the processes of teaching and learning, and organizing ideas for my final project (more on that as it unfolds).

As an extra perk, I also get to explore the UK with my lovely wife, Frances.  Leeds is almost equidistant between London and Edinburgh, which makes it really easy to get out and about to see as much of this "green and pleasant land" as we can.

Hope you enjoy the blog, and please comment with questions/ideas/suggestions/opinions/airings of grievances.

Leeds, Yorkshire's only Gamma-level (that's the one after Alpha and Beta) world city