How to Confuse a Parent

[franceslievens]

Entering the school building I'm intercepted by the tiny hug-machine that has entered first grade. She flings herself at my legs, nearly toppling me over, crying out "Miss Frances!" "Err, hi Hug-Machine," my dim-witted, still somewhat groggy from sleep, Self replies. I kiss the cheek that presents itself to me and walk on, shaking my head and muttering something about "kids these days".
From the corner of my eye I spot a Father looking baffled from me to his daughter. I turn and explain: "Err, hi, I'm the morality teacher..." The Father nods and produces a smile. Morality: Explains it all. I'm the crazy teacher who sings in class and makes bears talk.

Comments

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Awwwww!
I'm mostly surrounded by teenagers and while some of them are very sweet a whole bunch of them performs true to the stereotype of sneering anti-social yob. Well, next summer it will be the little ones again.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

Do you move up with your groups? Over here we are bound to ages. So you've got teachers doing 6-12, and in most schools every teacher has his or her year, meaning it's only the kids who move up. In secondary school there are teachers for years 1 to 4 and the job-oriented years ("regenten") and teachers for years 3 to 6 ("licentiaten" or now called "masters"). I'm the second one, but am allowed to teach in the lower grades as well, but in that case will get payed as someone who teaches in the lower grades (which is less than what someone who teaches in the higher grades earns).

But since I teach in primary school now all of this doesn't matter anyway. :-)

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I'm qualified to teach children from 10-adulthood. At my school we're assigned one class as a form teacher and follow them from year 5 up to year 10 - my form is in year 10 now. (Our elementary school is short - it's year 1-4.) I also teach in what an English person would call our sixth form college - currently teaching in year 12 and 13 (which is the graduating class). At most other schools you only stay two or three years with one form and then get a new one. Sometimes that's preferable, but staying with a class for six years means you get to know the students really well.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Or in easier terms: I'm a secondary school teacher and our secondary school goes from year 5-13 - though two states or so start secondary school later with year 7. We count the years up from primary school - kindergarten doesn't have years and isn't considered part of the school system.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

Aha, thanks for the clarification. So your smallest kids are actualy the age of my oldest, right? I can follow my kids for six years, because I only teach them 2 hours a year. They actualy prefer this for the world view courses, so the themes won't overlap too much and you really get to know the kids in the end. I've had them for two years now and at the start of the school year I can actualy tell the new form teacher certain things.

Does this mean your kids have different teachers for different subjects starting at ten?

You could say the first two years of secondary school (that are only taught by regenten) are the Belgian equivalent of middle school and the last two years of the A-track (that are only taught by licentiaten) are the equivalent of high school or even college.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

This is how it works in primary school: You have a form teacher who teaches most subjects you have and you usually stay with this teacher for two or the full four years, but there are usually one or two other teachers that will teach in this group - things like P.E. or R.E. and sometimes maybe Maths and German depending on the qualifications of the form teacher.

At most schools it's fairly rare to have two subjects with one teacher, but at my school it's policy to have the two form teachers cover as many subjects as possible - and to have the other subjects covered by teachers in the same year team. I know all students in my year by name and I've taught most of them at one time or the other.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

Primary school sounds like here: One form teacher who teaches all the subjects, and then a different teacher for P.E., R.E. (morality) and sometimes French, because in Brussels you need to pass an exam to be able to teach French.

In secondary school it depends on the credentials of the teacher whether (s)he teaches more than one subject. It depends on (1) whether someone teaches a subject of which the students have a lot of hours (someone who teaches maths or Dutch doesn't need a lot of classes to get a full schedule) and (2) again there's a licentiaat/regent-divide. The latter do more subjects in their training, whereas the first have done university and have studied only one subject. Exceptions are usualy made for people who studied sciences. Those usualy end up teaching all sciences and maths. The morality teacher otoh just ends up with a lot of different classes.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

See, there's a difference. We've got three to four different teaching qualifications and all involve a proper university education. (Though graduates from technical universities currently have the opportunity to qualify for certain teaching jobs, too.)

Basically, you can do primary school education and for that you train to teach a variety of subjects but specialise in two I think. You also have to do lots of really difficult maths which you'll never ever need to teach your pupils but which serves as some sort of deterrent so that not everyone will start studying to be a primary school teacher.

Secondary school is divided into stages I and II. Some teachers only study for stage I and they get paid less which is totally unfair - which seems to be similar to your licentiaat/regent-didvide.
I did stage II with an added stage I qualification (an essay and two fifteen minute oral exams - so laughable) - which meant that I studied two subjects at university level just like the other students not going for a teachers' degree but with some added didactics and pedagogy courses. At secondary level most teachers are qualified to teach two subjects and some others also manage to get qualified to teach a third or even fourth subject. You do your first round of exams at uni and then it's two years of teacher training.

That's how it worked when I went to uni - the generation before me had teacher training colleges and things are being reformed again. I don't know how and it's complicated because there are subtle differences in the education systems of each state because it's a state matter and not bound by national law - except for some very basic ground rules.