Saturday, February 25, 2012

Stops – A necessity in school


Friday was a very busy day for me. With back to back lessons, student exam registration, cohort matters and especially still recovering from the “bug”, my first thought being so busy was “That is not possible! How to stop when there is so much to do?” And if I want to be good at this, is there even much more that needs to be done? Certainty, there are many teachers who felt this way.

Fortunately for me, I was “stopped” by 3 meaningful events in school which helped me to end the day more energetic than when I started in the morning. The first was by my students, who “stopped” my lesson so as to celebrate my birthday. Their sincere actions made me turn a tiring day into beautiful banquet of life experience. Their actions of songs and a “bear” propelled me to wanting to spend more of my time to prepare for my students’ tomorrow and I know that I will enjoy those spend time. Their well-wishing cards expressing their thoughts and appreciations had brought me a high sense of job satisfaction.

The second “stop” was by fellow teachers who also devoted a few moments also to celebrate my birthday with me, enjoying each other’s company. These two teachers have worked with me for just two months now and have made my life easier. I know that I would need to thank them more often. I promised myself that I would endeavor to employ techniques to understand, shape and support help my teachers develop professionally – to be partners, collaborative effort to make a critical difference for our students. Finally, I was “stopped” by my fellow management members who celebrated 3 fellow members birthday. Such support and shared celebrations culture which is been cultivated is something which I value. It speaks of an inclusion and moral culture.

After all these “stops”, I came to consider how fortunate I was to be doing just what I am today – with my students, my fellow teachers and my fellow committee members. And having such thoughts had made me realized that even my business, the challenges faced and frustrations are actually gifts because they acts as fuel to propel me to improve myself in at least some way.

Teaching in our Hearts



After 7 years of trying to learn my art of teaching, every class comes down to this: my students and I, face to face engaged in an exchange – communication. The techniques I have mastered do not disappear, but I know that neither do they suffice. I have to continually apply the techniques, reflect and change. Face to face with my students, only one resource is at my immediate command, my identity, my sense of this “I” who teaches – without which I am not sure if my students will learn – this is what I know as important.

In every class I teach, my ability to connect with my students, and so to connect them to the subject, depends less on the methods I use but more on the degree to which I know and willing to make it available. My evidence for this claim comes, in part, from years of asking students to tell me about their good teachers. In every story I heard, they would share one trait, a strong sense of identity together with the teaching. “ Mr Ang is really there when he teaches”, a student tell me “Ms Ng has such enthusiasm for her subject”

I believe that as teachers, there is no way to separate ourselves, the subject we are teaching and the students whom we are teaching. They are joined and undivided whole. The connections made are held not by my methods but in our hearts – the place where our minds, our body and our hearts will converge in each of us.

As such, the ability to connect to our students can be showed in many forms as there are many forms of personality. Two great teachers stand out from my own experience at NIE and during my masters course. They differ radially from each other in technique, but both were grifted at connecting students, teacher and subject in a common point of learning.

One did not know the meaning of silence and often lectured incessantly while we listen. Indeed he became so engaged with his materials –through stories from his own lives and great thinkers that we too become stimulated to learn. The other assigned lots of reading and when we gathered around, encouraged by her brilliant guidance, started doing the readings, making comments and asking questions, proving herself to be interactive.

These two great teachers were polar opposites in substance and in style. But both created the connectedness, the point of learning, which is essential to teaching and learning. They did so by trusting and teaching from their own identity and integrity that is the centre of all good work – and by using the different techniques that allowed them to show to us students rather than conceal who they were.

These two great teachers had inspired and provided me with profound gift which I would never forget. It is not only about techniques, but how I would grow in bring forth myself and amplify the same gift which I have received onto my students.

Above shows photo of my class of 4E3 celebrating my Birthday with me.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Teacher Learning

I cannot help agreeing with the many pointers both teachers provided in their respective reflections. The teachers’ reflections suggested teacher learning be in a community to learn to teach that enable the teachers to develop understandings about teaching, learning and more importantly about their students, and that the teachers know how to use this knowledge. Practices that allow the teachers to act on their own intentions and beliefs and supporting their effort in enabling student to learn. I draw from these pointers in offering my own belief in describing teacher learning.

It is important that as teachers, we ourselves have a sense of where we are going and then how we are going to get our students there. One such practice I find useful to help teachers is reflecting on their work, which will help guide their practice and direct their own learning. Why is it important? My reason is that as a teacher, I need to know what is possible and desirable in teaching first before I am able to decide and direct my own learning and practice. In addition, through such practice, I am able to connect important values which I hold dearly to actualizing it in the classroom practice.

Teachers with deep knowledge or understanding of their subject and making the content accessible rely greatly on an understanding of their students. Both teachers had emphasized the importance of knowing the students well and practiced gathering information after each topic/lesson. I also took up such a practice as I believe that effective communication rests upon such understanding of students’ thinking, experiences and development.

To put these understanding into action in the classroom, teachers then develop tools such as instructional approaches namely differentiated learning and other strategies. Such tools will help teachers to work smarter and to realize their intentions in practice – which is to enable learning for all students.

With these understanding and tools, the teacher is now armed with a beginning repertoire of classroom skills to help the teacher to promote student learning.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

My take on Reflection

Today as I spoke to one of my teachers regarding her reflections, it brought me back to another similar conversation regarding my support of solitary reflection – on why I chose such an approach for improving “my teaching and learning”.

Often, teachers adopt new techniques or attend courses as approaches to improving teaching and learning. The focus is on the actions of teaching and the “how” of teaching. I also believe that such focus is important but I find that these methods alone do not deepen our own sense of belief, resulting in teachers often doing things just for the moment in time.

Why embark on reflection in my teaching and learning in the first place? For one reason, I am not a vocal person, more of an introvert. Reflections help me voice out my inner thoughts, feelings and beliefs as I go about thinking about teaching and learning, about the students and about my subject. But why the need to journey through my inner self? I believe in doing this because teaching is a very human activity, and ultimately it has to come out from one’s inwardness, for better or for worse. As mentioned in my previous reflection, when the teacher finished the teaching, such teaching is made personal to from the teacher to the students. As teachers teach, we observed the condition of the inner self projected onto the students and the experience in the classroom does affect the teacher’s inner self no more or less. Hence, I view teaching as a mirror of one’s inner self. And if I am willing to look into our own inner wardness, and learn from it regardless good or bad, I can gain self-awareness – and like learning, knowing myself is important to good teaching as I know my subjects, my content and my pedagogy.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Approach to classroom management – Internal Motivation

During the last two weeks, I have been hearing of teachers having issues to strive to organize meaningful lessons for their students, trying to get them to learn. Unfortunately their hopes are not fully realized. I would like to share one of the practices that I have been using which has helped to bring out good in my students – the use of internal motivation.

I put this internal motivation to good use by helping students see how it can bring about satisfaction or pleasure in their learning. I see myself more as a stimulator instead of just motivator, who activates students’ motivation from within in positive ways. Traditionally, teachers had tried to motivate students by urging, directing, cajoling, criticizing and using rewards and punishments. But these are external factors and so they do not often result in real change, instead just to avoid discomfort and possibly gain the approval of their favorite teacher. Unfortunately, these external factors are also responsible for the “stress” and poor relations seen in many situations. What I am saying can be summarized in two words – Trust students. This can be simple – or rather more difficult. Difficult, because to trust students we must trust ourselves – that we ourselves need to be trusted by the students. And so teachers go on to treat students as teachers themselves were trusted by the students. Call this “reality” or say bitterly, “If I could up with it, they can too”.

One important way to get results from this approach is to inspire students to achieve and ensure that they find pleasure in our classroom – a classroom which promotes positive attitude and good relationships. And how to do this? My emphasis is on positivity, choice and reflection.

Positivity is about influence. Apart from peer influence, another major factor is the teacher in the classroom. Being around optimistic people makes us feel better, so likewise, students will probably be pleased to be in your class if they see the teacher as positive in his/her outlook and how well the teacher deal with others, rather than negative.

Choice is what I empower my students by offering them options. I would try to elicit from students what choices they had when learning and how they could make better choices. Then, the teacher and students come to a final decision.

Reflection is about the student himself/herself, regarding thinking of the student’s behavior shown in learning in classroom and getting him/her to judge the merit of such behavior. Teachers must first understand that we cannot control students by only demanding obedience or imposing consequences. Teachers cannot force change in how students think, want to learn or how they behave, want to behave. Students must do these things for themselves. What I do is to get the students to be notice things they never knew they could do before, and in these find the learning interesting and worth learning. I try to whet their curiosity and add their understanding and so they learn more than they started at the beginning of the lesson.

What we can do as teachers is to establish expectations and empower them to attain them. The process I use has helped me gain the students’ trust and prompt my students to jumpstart thinking about how they behave in learning and sets in motion a positive learning environment for my students.

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Motivation – the critical point

Today’s discussions with our vice principal, cohort deans, counselor and discipline mistress led me to conclude that the academic success of the students can happen with the success of the motivational task.

Motivation is one of the most powerful influences on learning. For I believe that if someone has the motivation to learn, they will likely to succeed in doing so. If not, they are much less likely to do so.

I firstly believe in motivation as something that comes from within, the self-drive to do things and in my case, the drive to learn. With this internal drive to learn, the programs can then be designed around the developing the emergence of this drive – hence this is my core purpose to communicate with my graduating cohort (in the upcoming assembly talk before the target setting and during the parent teacher meeting). Since such motivation does not need to be supplied by external influences like teachers or environment, it is based on the students’ own current interests and developing the readiness of the student. As the cohort dean, I would closely monitor their progression in their learning.

Motivation can also, however, be extrinsic. Students who does not have the drive to learn and one who is not currently interested in the subject matter, then I think that it may be
possible to provide motivation in the prospect of the future benefits or through giving the “push”.

Previously, there tend to take extrinsic motivation more seriously than internal drive. I believe that the two types of motivation is not incompatible with each other, but I personally feel that providing our students with the internal drive for learning makes learning more pleasant and effective than extrinsic motivation. However, I am also mindful of students who are not always self-driven in learning, then extrinsic motivation may be an unavoidable necessity for my graduating cohort.