For those of you unfamiliar with International education, there is a steep learning curve from the American educational system. At Beijing National Day School, we offer three diploma programs which are recognized world wide. The first is the International Baccalaureate, or IB program. It is a holistic, interconnected curriculum across all disciplines. It is very demanding, but produces life long learners who are fluent in at least two languages, who have completed community service projects, a research project and extended essay, and a challenging 'Theory of Knowledge' course which is similar to philosophy. It is a different way of teaching and learning, that demands IB training specific to your content area. Having this certification is typically the 'golden ticket' to teaching anywhere in the world. If I were 20 years younger, I would pursue this certification, as I believe in the program.
The second diploma is the AP program of which I am familiar, as it is run by the College Board. I teach AP Psychology here for BNDS; my brother, Kent, teaches AP Chemistry back in Lafayette, IN. Students who pass the AP exam (typically scoring a 4 or 5) can earn college credits while still in high school. In some ways, it is similar to being enrolled in dual credit courses, and many of these Chinese kids, (like three of my own children) will have a jump start on their college credits before ever setting foot on campus. The course I teach here at BNDS is the very same content and pace as when I taught PSYC 101 at the college in IN before my move to Beijing. It is both a marathon and a sprint to get these Chinese kids through a 746 page book and prepared for the exam by May 1st- but by golly almost ALL of them rise to the occasion! The Chinese are incredible test takers :)
The third diploma is the Cambridge International AS & A level program, based on the UK educational system. It is an entirely different breed of animal, and I was hired to teach Psychology for this program, too. Typically it is just a two year program (grades 11 & 12), but some AS courses are spread over grades 10 & 11. Thankfully, Psychology is one of them taught over two years. It would be impossible to cover all of the content in just one school year. Psychology in and of itself is a foreign and often misconstrued subject here in China, yet the content of this curriculum is WAY BEYOND what any 15 or 16 year old kid can digest- even if they were a native English speaker. The kind of work they are expected to do in AS Psychology would be typical of a third year college student in a BS/BA Psychology program- I kid you not.
In a nutshell, these kids are expected to read, comprehend and regurgitate 20 pieces of published research ("core studies") in Psychology, while simultaneously trying to learn a foundation to psychological terms and concepts. It's beyond nuts. Some of these studies are the more popular experiments that were conducted and published in the professional journals, like Milgram's (1963) experiment on obedience, Zimbardo's (1973) Prison Experiment, Freud's (1909) Little Hans case study, Rosenhan's (1973) On Being Sane in Insane Places. But then there are those more obscure ones they must try to comprehend and memorize the minutest of details like Held & Hein's (1963) Movement-Produced Stimulation of Visually Guided Behavior, more commonly known as the kitten carousel experiment. Their exams are all in essay format, and they literally must recall every aspect of the experiment from the sample type, the research methodology, hypotheses tested, IVs and DVs, the procedure of the experiment, the results (which requires knowledge of statistical formulas) and whether the hypotheses were supported. Furthermore, they must offer supporting arguments for different types of reliability and validity, and the experiment's usefulness and application to real world experience. Ugh. These are my grade 10's, my "Chinese babies" as I call them, who have yet to develop a strong command of the English language. Honestly, I feel sorry for them with this Psychology curriculum. It's ridiculous. There are college students who have a hard time reading and understanding published psychological research.
Thankfully, I have two years to get through 20 core studies, which may sound reasonable enough, but I often have weeks of teaching the 'back story' to the research, giving lessons in psychoanalytic, cognitive or physiological psychology while simultaneously teaching statistics, critical thinking and the like. It is very much like a Research Methodologies and Design course at the university level. I do my best to take it at a pace they can handle, often front loading lessons with 50 new vocabulary words or more. I feel like I am apologizing to them much of the time for how difficult the curriculum is....but some days, I change it up and try to make learning FUN instead of the drudgery of rote memorization of s**t they really don't understand! Sadly, they memorize components for constructing their essays and I would venture to say that many of them have little clue of what it is they are memorizing- to them it would be like asking American students to memorize the Declaration of Independence, verbatim, without really 'knowing' what they are reciting. That is the Alevel curriculum. Ugh. It makes MY brain hurt.
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| Before I could introduce Dematte's (2007) on Olfactory Cues Modulating Facial Attractiveness, they had to have a foundation on the human brain, neural activity, sensation and perception. Mind you, I had to define and explain what 'olfactory' and 'modulating facial attractiveness' meant at the start. Remember, these are ESL kids, and young ones at that, so often when I am defining terms, I have to also define the words that are used in the definition- kapish?! Also, these kids study physics and chemistry, so they don't even have a foundation in biology for me to work with. |
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| In addition developing games with the 90+ flashcards they had to make to get through the structures of the brain, the parts of the neuron, different types of brain imaging, etc., we had 'art class' one day to diagram the parts of a neuron. They loved it; and they sketched some impressive neurons! |
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| These kids got the field trip to the bathroom to illustrate depolarization and action potentials of neurons firing (more vocab words!) The bathroom field trip is always a hit. |
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| I then took them outside for a class period to play synaptic tag- several versions of it- to illustrate antagonists, the synaptic gap, enzymes and the reuptake process. (even more vocab words!) |
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| My Chinese babies had a grand time, and I would venture to say they won't soon forget all those vocabulary terms! |
And just to be sure to lock in their understanding of their
olfactory and gustatory senses, for a lab I fed them Starbursts and
Warhead candies that I smuggled in my suitcase from home :)
Is it any wonder these kids love Psychology?!
(Seriously, the 'breaks' in teaching are more for me than them!)
G'nite, y'all!
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