students

Chances are, this blog will be long and boring, especially if you are not a teacher.  I might throw in a picture of a student or two but there wont be any sweeping landscapes or nifty architecture.  Just so you know you were warned.

I think I have written a little about the students at Robert College in other blog posts.  At the end of the 8th grade year, students all over Turkey (I am not sure if everyone takes it or just students hoping for a private school placement) take an entrance exam.  They also list the schools they want to go to in order of preference.  When the scores are announced in the middle of the summer, they are placed with the school they wanted starting with the highest scoring student.  Using this method, schools fill up their in coming rosters, when one school is full, they move on to the second choices, etc.  RC's class of 2016 (students in lise prep right now) all scored in the top 0.4% on that exam.  This means that most of them had a perfect score and the remaining minority missed one. One.  This is to say that the students here are good test takers and they know how to cram.  Are they all super smart? no.  Are they all good students? no.  Do they know how to behave? no.  Do they have an incredible capacity to memorize? probably.

Students at a ball with a pajama party theme.  They had entered a raffle to shave the mustache of some of the male teachers who were growing them in November.  It was very low light in the bubble, which is why this picture is blurry.  The woman with the camera front and center is an adult and the girlfriend of one of the teachers who was being shaved. 

This entrance exam has a little science, almost no art, and exactly no English.  It is mostly (as I understand it) math, language arts and history.  To do well on this exam students started going to cram school called dersane (three syllabuls: der-sa-ne) in the 7th grade.  This school after school taught them how to take tests, how to eliminate answers how to guess.  It also taught them all the factoids that could be on the multiple choice test.  The students had to work really hard to do regular school and dersane at the same time.  It cost a lot of money to go to a good dersane, one that has the best reputation for getting the most students into the best high schools.  They devoted afternoons and weekends to preparing and practicing.  We talk about high stakes testing in the US, but we have nothing on this, and it is only worse in high school.

So these super high scorers enter RC at 14 for a year of intense English instruction and basically a year off their other studies.  This is lise prep.  For some of them they are starting at zero and all of a sudden most of their classes are in English, for others, they have signifigant English already, some have spent years in the US, their parents speak English, the gap can be enormous.  I don't envy the job of the prep English teachers.  It is no easier in the subject classes.  Much of the material is a repeat for the students, with the only new twist is that now math is in English.  Even for a student new to English this can be boring, but for a student whose English is good, it can be awful.  By the end of the year, most students are ready to function (not necessary excel) in rigorous, high level classes completely in English.  But unfortunately they have also had a year off from rigorous high level classes in any thing but English. 

Some of them are away from home for the first time as well.  RC has ~100 residential boys and ~100 girls.  They live in buildings attached to, but on opposite ends of the main campus buildings.  They live 4-6 to a room in L9 but may work their way up to only 2 in a room by the time they are in L12. 

Those that live just outside of Istanbul 2-3 hours away, go home on the weekends, but others are here all seven.  The dorms are nice, we got to visit them this fall, they have new furniture, good laundry fascilities and nice common areas.  But they are still on campus all the time.  (Of course students can leave campus after school and on weekends.  There is even a very busy schedule of outings and tours for the students, but as a bit of a 7 day residential student myself, I can tell you, it is tough.  What they lack in age and experience, I lack in Turkish and since none of us can drive, I can say I have a lot of sympathy for especially the younger residential students.)

Lise 9 is a shock to most students.  They were the best student at their middle school, they got a perfect score on the entrance exam, lise prep was easy and then reality hits.  I think they take 9 classes as L9.  Math, 2 English classes, PE, Turkish, Social Studies, 2 science classes, French or German, plus homeroom, club, counseling and if they want to do an after school sport or instrument.  Their grades count and they don't know how to study.   These students are the same age as my sophomores back home, but they seem less mature.  I was worried about teaching chemistry to L9, until I found out that they would be 15-16,  and theoretically cognatively mature enough for the abstract concepts, and the do about as well over all as my chem 1 kids, different strengths and different weaknesses.

I am not sure if L10 is the golden year, or if this is just a particularly good group of tenth graders (which I have heard from more experienced teachers), but it does seem perfectly placed.  They are half way through the school, they know where things are and how they work, they are in the groove but they haven't started worrying too much about the next step.  I have L10 intro chemistry and L10 advanced chemistry and they seem to have made a signifignt step in maturity from the L9s, of course they are 16-17 years old and they haven't started going back to dersane.

Starting in L11, college entrance starts to loom and a couple of afternoons a week are spent back at the dersane.  We spend time trying to get them to think, be creative, and problem solve, skills we think will be useful not just for getting into college, but to be productive members of society.  At dersane they have to unlearn all of that and memorize facts, dates, names, places in preparation for the next entrance exam.  We spend all day teaching them science, art, English but at dersane there is no English, and no art and they have to learn all the science again, but in Turkish.  My 11s (advanced chem) have been the most challenging to teach.  They really push me and make sure I know my stuff.  They are the mostly like to catch me out or to dig for a deeper understanding.  They are very focused on their grades and every point counts, especially if they are planning to leave Turkey for college.

I dont have any L12s, but I hear that they are almost a new speices.  They started school a week later than the other students since they still had dersane summer lessons to attend.  They can also miss 45 days of school with no penalty (45/180 is a full quarter) and this is in addittion to being let off of second semester finals and being excused starting in the third week of May.  I hear that they basically dont show up second semester except when they need a break from dersane.  Second semester starts in a few weeks, I guess I will find out how true this is. 

RC requires the students to conform to a dress code.  For boys this means a RC polo shirt or a shirt and tie.  Slacks must be grey, black or khaki and the only sweat shirts allowed are the senior class designed sweat shirts worn by seniors only.  There is no rule about shoes, so that is really where the creativity comes out.  The girls have a bit more freedom.  They may wear skirts or slacks of the same colors and of a certain length.  They may also wear the RC polo, but what is considered a 'nice' blouse is much more open to interpretation and therefore there is great variety.  No facial hair is allowed on boys and their hair must be trimmed.  Girls can wear no jewlery besides stud earings and everyone can wear watches.   In general most of the students are well dressed, which has encouraged me to take a bit more care with what I wear.  Teachers could bend the rule more than students, but I choose my battles and just take liberties with my shoe color...
I am sure there is more to say about the students and maybe I will add to this later.  Any questions?