My Boarding School Blog

The Association of Boarding Schools (TABS) showed in their recent post that 8 percent of U.S. Rhodes Scholar recipients are graduates of boarding schools. In the last five years it has reflected that the chances of getting a scholarship in college from a boarding school skyrockets to 3,000%.

Every year the Rhodes Trust awards 82 scholarships and 32 of those goes to Americans. The Rhodes scholarship is a prestigious one that it screens highly qualified applicants that attains exemplary scholastic achievements.

The highly competitive curriculum that most boarding schools offer is the key factor that contributes to the high percentage of scholarships granted to students who had prepared for college through boarding school education. Boarding schools promote an exclusive environment that caters to mold an individual to be ready for college life. With its highly demanding academic curriculum to its highly qualified professors who take part in the learning of students and the overall feel of independency of living away from home and making it on your own has greatly influenced boarding school graduates to their advantage. With this more parents are feeling that they have made the right decision in investing in a boarding school education even with its high price tag.

An important factor to consider as one of the qualification of the Rhodes scholarship is its requirement that an applicant should be truthful, courageous and has a moral force of character that is potential for leading his or her fellow students. Most boarding schools are equipped with the necessary trainings and workshops on instilling camaraderie, leadership and moral responsibility in its students. Aside from teaching academics they are immersed into the values of being responsible, independent, and reliable in their various extracurricular activities.

A graduate from The Hill School in Pennsylvania, who is a recipient of the 2010 Rhodes scholarship, attested that he owes much of what he has to his boarding school experience. Not only did it prepared him for the vast academic curriculum he will be facing in college but rather more of a preparation into the person he needs to become to survive college. The ability to be able to interact closely and work together with colleagues, teachers, staff and administrators and be able to adapt to different cultures, beliefs and values of everyone else without sacrificing individuality is the best lesson in life.

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The New York Times report that teachers in France are slowly leaving their home land to teach in the United States. France is now facing an impending risk of “brain drain” from this growing incident. French government and officials are now becoming worried that there will be no more qualified teachers left because a good number of them has fled for the US.

What is most concerning is that the professionals leaving France are included the best among the best in their fields. Most of them studied in the finest and prestigious schools and universities in France. Biologists, economists and scientists are found to obtain their masters and doctorate studies in US and never came back. When asked why they leave France to pursue their professional career in the US, most of them answered that they are motivated by the American system of education wherein there are larger universities boasting of richer and flexible curriculum and a wide range of specialization. Scientists are attracted to the United States’ concept of being competitive in the scientific approach and in research which the French are less focused on.

France’s educational system still lacks the richness and intensive approach to quality standards that compared of the US. The French government does not allocate enough funds to nurture the educational demands of both teachers and students thus preventing their local’s talents to proliferate and develop. This brings a barrier to their full potential as successful individuals in their own chosen fields of study. Additionally French professors who work in the US are paid more than what they get when they teach in France.

The window of opportunity has opened for French teacher at the start of the US – France Teachers in Training Exchange Program wherein American teachers are exchanged with French teachers to teach in poor communities. Teachers are given seminars of the each country’s culture, history and society and these teachers in turn impart this knowledge to their students. French students learn American language, culture and history through the American exchange teachers. This program enables learning of different cultures and promotes healthy social development between students from two different countries.

This program is implemented and supported by the ECA, the Fulbright Commission and the French Ministry of Education. With a funding of around $350,000 the program aims to enrich teachers of both country into teaching and learning about each others culture, people and history.

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Formal education is an important part of every person’s personal achievement, social formation, growth, and development. This doesn’t only include primary level of education. More importantly, it also includes the tertiary level in college or university.

According to Higher Education in the Unites States – An Encyclopedia, a college or university education, also known as tertiary education, is chiefly designed to develop the technical skills of the student in preparation for the professional or working life, with the hope that it is in line with the degree earned.

Colleges and universities offer comprehensive body of knowledge from many disciplines. These can be acquired by taking up degree or non-degree courses. Degree courses entail a longer period of studying. These courses are mostly concentrated on theories in their contents and instructions.

Theories and different schools of thoughts included in their respective curriculums are taught to ensure the knowledge and the skills necessary in the real practice of the field are acquired.

On the other hand, non-degree courses mostly involve a shorter period of studying. These include direct teaching of practical and actual trainings from vocational and technical courses.
Actual trainings and on-the-job applications of theories are usually performed under these types of courses. The schools that offer these courses are equipped with the real tools and machineries the students are most likely to utilize in the real job scenario.

Not all colleges and universities offer these courses. Actually, colleges have more specific types of degrees offered while universities have broader and wider choices of courses.

Vocational courses are exclusively offered by vocational and technical schools. However, these schools may also be part of a university. College, on the other hand, is specific in its category of courses offered such as College of Law or College of Medicine, such as the American College of Physicians. It is immediately implicated that the courses offered are related to medicine or law only.

As defined in the New World encyclopedia, a university consists of different schools or colleges. A university may have school of arts and sciences, college of education, or school of business. Thus, the university offers more courses while a college has a particular category or group of disciplines offered.

In realizing one’s dreams and aspirations, it is critical that the person has a specific path chosen to achieve such goals. These paths are through training and education. Without this, the person can only rely on either just instinct or trial and error methods. These methods are not only ineffective and unscientific; they are also costly and may prove harmful to one’s future. Therefore, it is imperative that every person decides on which type of course to enroll from a specific college or university that he or she considers as the one that can provide the necessary tools in achieving their dream.

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Active learning is a technique wherein students participate in a lecture instead of just being a listener to the teacher. Students participate by processing, discovering and applying knowledge gained in the process. It comes from two basic theories that (1) people learn by active endeavor and (2) learning is different between individuals. Many researches show that learning increases as students practice active learning.

In a traditional setting active learning may bring some resistance to students who are used to just listen to their teachers. But with this kind of teaching method a student with a limited attention span will soon become bored and when this takes place learning is halted. Research shows that active learning is better than traditional way of teaching. It is best to explain the objectives before doing the exercises that initiates active learning to lower resistance and achieve best results. Active learning can be done in different settings-inside the classroom or outside and is applicable to all levels of students whether in primary or graduate school. Here are some examples of active learning techniques.

1. Think-Pair-Share activity. Students take some time to ponder on the previous lesson to be discussed later among one or two peers and lastly to share it in class. An overview of the topic should be given to the students so that they can somehow discuss it among themselves them misconceptions can be corrected when they discuss it in front of the class. This exercise is helpful to learners to determine and relate what they already know to others. A good preparation with detailed instructions is the key in making the discussion among their group fruitful and substantial.
2. Games. Crossword puzzles can be incorporated in review tests in order to check on understanding from lectures and lessons. It can be a group activity or individual review exam types.
3. Student debates. It can be formal or informal in nature. This gives the students an opportunity to take a stand on what they believe in, fostering analytical thinking and developing verbal communication skills when raising arguments towards the opposing parties. This builds confidence in a student.
4. Concept Mapping. Students will create visual graphs and representations of models, ideas and concepts and show their relationship with each other. This can be done as a group or individually. The student explains their model in front of the class and demonstrated the relationship of their model to other concepts and ideas.
5. Reaction to video. Watching a video clip is enjoyable for students to break the monotonous teacher lectures. This also enhances their visual creativity by seeing visual resources of the topics being studied at hand. It will be best to ask questions before showing the video presentation to give them an outline of things to look out for as they watch the video.

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Standardized tests are examinations in which all students answer the same set of questions usually in a multiple choice format with only one correct answer per question. There are many debates arguing whether standardized tests can truly measure a student’s academic performance. Some argues that answering a series of questions by choosing the correct answer among the options does not cultivate creative thinking or create anything.

The reliability of standardized tests can be 100% reliable if the results are the same when taken twice. But for all tests there is what we call a measurement error. A measurement error is the variation of an individual’s score due to different testing conditions or the taker’s mental or overall state at the time the test was taken. Because of measurement error two individuals with different scores on a test today might get the same scores on the test given the following day.

Standardized tests cannot really measure difference between two individuals as they rarely cover different factors of an individual’s intellect furthermore a student’s overall academic excellence is not brought by just excellence in cognitive ability rather it is a combination of cognitive, analytical, creativity and skills. Students learn when they can actively extract meaning out of their actions then connecting this knowledge to something that they are trying to learn. Most standardized tests only concentrate on narrow skills and memorization on facts.

Listed below are the most common standardized achievement tests administered to students today.

Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)

A standardized test for college applicants published by the College Board, a non-profit organization in the United States is one of the most common tests high school students are preparing for.

American College Testing (ACT)

Is a standardized test for college admissions to screen applicants for higher education in the US produced by the ACT Inc. It is a multiple choice examinations covering subject areas in English, Math, Reading Comprehension and Science.

Standardized testing is faced with a lot of loop holes in fairly evaluating our student’s academic performance. A much better way to evaluate student achievement should be done by integrating teacher observation, student work and performance assessment. In these factors a student’s overall hard work is evaluated fairly. This is a good reference for companies that offer standardized tests so they can progress from the ancient testing method that we use today.

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