Visit IX: Fitzroy High School

The ninth school visit.

In the prior eight visits, we had been to institutions ranging from a primary catering to new migrants and refugees, to one of the most prestigious secondary schools, to a military school. On 21st June, the day of the ninth school visit, we went to yet another type of school.

Fitzroy High School is relatively new in that it reopened as a new school in 2004. The school is structured so that it is similar to a primary school in order to make the transition to secondary schooling smoother. For example, for junior secondary, a teacher teaches the same class several subjects so that the teachers and students can form a closer bond. The students can also form close-knit groups. Moreover, unlike the more traditional schools, Fitzroy tries to integrate different subjects under the same theme in order to promote deep learning. For example, the theme might be plants and students would learn about “plant communities” in science, the history of these “plant communities” in history, and botanical drawings in art.

I had an opportunity to observe a Year 11 studio arts class. The class had 1 teacher and 2 teaching assistants presiding over eleven students. For that particular lesson, the students were asked to decide on what they want to do for their term production. The students had plenty of freedom in terms of the form in which their production may be. For example, it could be a painting, a sketch, or even a Photoshop production. Although I didn’t study art during my secondary school days, I know that students weren’t given such freedom for assignments. Usually, students had to all do the same form of art for the ease of assessment.

Moreover, I found the interaction between teachers and students quite interesting and new. Like other most other schools we have visited, the teachers like to move around the classroom to check on the students’ progress, provide feedback and give suggestions if necessary. However, the teachers liked to discuss with students concerning their ideas and their form of production. That way, students could become clearer about what theme they wanted to choose and what tools they could use. Also, the teachers would give a lot of choices to students to push them along if they weren’t making much progress. Ultimately, though, the students would have to make the choices themselves.

For students who had already decided on what they wanted to do, the teachers sometimes set up simple exercises on-the-spot in order for students to be more proficient skills-wise. For example, the teacher might ask a student using Photoshop to play around with certain tools or features.

I think students in that particular class have a lot of freedom to do what they want, yet not have their learning compromised. In contrast, in Hong Kong, students seem to learn in order to be assessed, even for subjects like art where creativity and freedom is so vital. Students should be allowed more space to think and create.