london friday

Breakfast in the hotel.
We had an academic wrap up meeting where we all sang and meditated at first. They we broke into pairs and discussed what we've seen this week. We then got into groups to plan what we are going to do presentations about once we get back. My group is doing inclusion and how schools include children with special needs in the mainstream. All of the special schools seem to have connections to other schools in the area and the two schools do activities together. Students who are at a high enough level are sent to classes at the mainstream school. If students make enough progress then they can test out of the special school. Overall the idea seems to be that it's better for the students with special needs to get the individualized attention and to be in a smaller more comfortable environment. One teacher was saying that at first parents fight having their child go to a special school because of the stigma but then once the child is there and doing so much better the parent switches to feeling guilty that they didn't send their child there sooner.
Jan talked about the National Curriculum and how the attempt was to deal with the social stratification and diversity of the british society. If everyone is learning the same thing then eventually the hope is that every one will gain the social capital they need to succeed. Despite this no one likes the National Curriculum and all the teachers wanted to work to adapt it to reflect the interests of the students. Jan also talked about all these different factors to take into account when comparing cultures.
We had lunch at Carluccio's on St. Christophers Place (a very upscale area with boutiquey shops like Godiva and fancy clothes stores). Lunch was spinach and cheese ravioli and icecream in some sort of nutmegy tasting sauce.
We got on the bus and got the airport. We were there really early so we walked around. I got Cadbury Easter eggs for my host family. Elizabeth got a dark brown leather purse.
Oh a few things I forgot about London: everyone is in a huge rush, you walk and drive on the left, the streets say Look Left or Look Right, the tube announcer says "Mind the Gap" becuase the gap between the platform and the train, there is so much diversity, it's a HUGE fairly overwhelming city, british english is harder to understand than the english that many Danes speak, lunch=dinner and dinner=tea.