Resetting My Attitude as I End My Fellowship

My week started exhaustively. Got back from a good holiday and my physical body is tired. Yet, my brain does not allow me to sleep or nap for the past two days. Been struggling with insomnia during the night and hence late for school for two days in a row. Totally unacceptable to my own standard, although it was late by minutes only.

Had to invigilate in a school hall for final year exam and hence needed to be super alert. With my tired body, I forced myself to constantly walk through students just to stay awake. With a restless body, I find myself heartbroken to see so many students sleeping through their English paper.

I was at the brim of telling myself: I'm done with all these nonsense. I closed my eyes and said a little prayer: Lord, carry me through the day and let me honour you in everything I do.

I continue to force myself not to sleep through exam hall, being the rajin-teacher that walks around and uphold students to the highest standards of exam rules while other teachers chatting at the back of the hall or manning their own business.

I came back from the hall after all the invigilation, just to find a meeting notice on my table. Both English and History Panel meeting that is happening concurrently. In the past, I've always chose history one to attend as I'm supposed to teach history as my option. But my heart told me, it's my last meeting with the English teachers and they have been my supporters in things that I do.

In the meeting, my new panel head, Miss R, that I admire much on her righteousness through keeping her integrity in this challenging profession, chaired her first panel meeting as a new head. She's strict and follows procedures thus not too much of a liking of most of the teachers, but I love her style. No-nonsense policy sometimes is needed to perform unfavorable tasks like this.

As we went through the meeting, the biggest concern of the panel remains on the teachers that we are lacking in teaching English. As me and my collab from TFM are ending our contract with the school by the end of this year, the school will struggle badly as they will only have 4 English optionist to teach English. I found myself care a lot on how to help the non-optionist teachers to teach better, as many of them express concerns on their capability to be an English teacher. Yes, English, and all languages for that matter, is tough to teach if one is not trained. More so where a school like mine, where student's are struggling way below their form level. The teachers felt helpless, one even shared that his high blood pressure remains high ever since he took on one English class. Stress has been a constant companion to him. Oh, such poor thing.

When my head panel ask everyone in the round table to share anything else as closing of the meeting, me and my collab spoke the most. I shared on how I think we can manage our Human Resource better with or without TFM teachers being around and how I've done some best-practices in my classroom, align to what my head panel was saying regarding the wishes of my principal.

My head panel then suggested one of the best gift I can ever have as a closing of my journey as a teacher in TFM. She suggested we should have a sharing session / farewell party for me and my collab to share with the other teachers what we've done throughout these two years in school. I was elated to hear that and thank God for her support.

Now, my soul is recharged, knowing that I will end my fellowship with imparting my learning takeaways to the people that have seen me bloom as a teacher. My body remains tired but I thank God for carrying me through today and gave me more than I could expect. I thank you Lord for blessing me so much throughout these two years of fellowship, through the good times and the bad.

To Miss R, I pray oh Lord, that He continues to favour you and bless you in everything you undertake for your attitude in serving the Lord and the student is just beautiful.

Like my principal like to say, what is life's most important ingredient? Money? No. Success? No. It's ATTITUDE. 

Truly in whatever we undertake, it's bound to be challenging. There will be bad times! But having the right attitude will be the key to success.

In the past two years of my fellowship, I've been working hard to bring my students to greater heights. I felt that I've left my mark. I'll be sharing more the next time, but when you show you truly care for a student, you will touch their lifes and make them believe in themselves again -- faith restoration I call it.

However, I've not done a good job in supporting my fellow teachers around, mainly also it is because the conservative culture that I've been working in believes in seniority. Hence, a young teacher will be offensive if he or she approaches a senior teacher and tells them what they think should be done.

That is why as I end my fellowship, I wanted to do more. Something for the teachers this time. I want to help to impact teachers and thus having the ripple event, impacting more students. As I end my fellowship, I will embark on another role in coaching and consulting teachers and administrators of schools. 

If I need to describe my attitude in my fellowship, I would say my attitude is #forthekids. My main priority has always been my clients, the students, and not my employer, the Ministry of Education. But as for my upcoming role, I guess I will reset my attitude to -- help building a support network and community within teaching profession. #supportteachers

I hope I will achieve that. This I pray onto the Lord. Amen!

8 months into teaching

8 months into teaching,
I could finally breath a little,
Find time to pamper myself a little,
Connect back to what I used to love,
But still so far from achieving my teaching goal.

I could see the improvement in attitude,
the eager to perform in class,
the love the students shower over me,
wanting to proof themselves to me,
but its still a long road from closing their achievement gap.

I want to see myself doing so much more,
I still learn everyday,
But even angels might get tired sometimes,
And it's so very important for you to pick yourself up,
Because fooling around 100 people's life is ain't cool job.

Classroom,changes,consistency,
How I wish it all describes who Cheryl Chin is,
But she's far from consistently making changes in the classroom.

She knows she don't have any single minute to fool around,
And she got to step up her game much more,
But always in search for a springboard that would help her jump the huge leap,
Knowing well waiting for a springboard is just a lame excuse to stop dreaming and starting making a difference.

I am not the best fellow you can find,
And would probably not be the worst teacher you will meet,
But I am not going to stay in this status any longer,
Because after this Syawal break,
This hot blooded 22 year old girl,
Is going to march her way the last march before the academic year ends,
And ALL HER STUDENTS WILL PASS THEIR EXAMS by the end of the year.

Sounds like nothing big deal to you?
Yeah, it's nothing much statistically,
But don't judge the book by its cover,
Because I'm talking about students that has 4 or 8 years worth of study to do,
To be able to qualify a PASS as what the nation has set as what they should be performing.

They are not stupid,
They are not slow,
They may be lazy,
But its because they never understood.

Never understood why education is important.
Never understood why they must study.
Never understood the value of responsibility.
Never had an expectation for themselves in class.
Never expected a chance to dream.
Never been told they could succeed.

I don't care whether they ever know or never understood whatever I have listed up there, but I am making a vow here that I am going to nail this to every single one of my student to make them believe that they can!

....because I care!

There have been this boy in my English and History class that I am really proud of now. From a student that didn't care to do any single word other than writing his name on the worksheet, he has been bringing his exercise books now and participating in class!

Ignorant Stage
On the first week, I gave students diagnostic test for English. I know it is a really tough paper for most of them and I know most of them are dis-invested in English as a subject. They are all learning English as a Second Language, which they hardly see a reason to use on a daily basis. Internet? Oh, they just happily translate all things into Malay, even Facebook.

So obviously they find it such a hard hour to pass. But my instructions were clear, I DON'T WANT TO SEE ANY SINGLE BLANK LINES IN THE TEST PAPER, EVEN IF YOU JUST BLINDLY COPY SOMETHING FROM THE PASSAGE! I repeated the instructions throughout the hour and went to every student to check their progress.

Then when I came to this boy, we shall name him LMan, he wrote his name and started to sleep after attempting the paper for 5 minutes.I knocked on his desk and asked him to try and I told him I know it is difficult for you, but I want you to just try. I can sense his frustration and most probably thinking:

 "What's wrong with her? Can't she just ignore me? It's not like I'll get anything correct anyway?!" 

 He picked up his pen and just quickly circled all the multiple question and zone out in his little own world while staring at the school field. Didn't attempt to do any question that needs filling in the blank. I came back to him and ask him to try again and he gave me a long sigh....... I checked on him for the third time and this time, and this time, he asked:

Why?

I replied him and said:

Because I think you're better than this.

Disruptive Stage
During the first month of teaching, he would bring nothing for my class, do nothing in my class except for sleeping. When I asked him to do his work, he didn't even want to take out a piece of paper and work. I gave him a blank A4 paper and he asked:

Why do you do that?

I replied him and said:

Because I care!

The Turning Point
He started to bring his books and try to copy down his work once I started to use my reward system. Everyone will get 2 Scholar Dollar for being Ready to Learn- which means bringing their books and being on time.

There was once he was being disruptive in class and I gave him my third consequence, which is deducting Scholar Dollar and there will be a permanent mark on the deducted Scholar Dollar. He really tried to refuse it but I found his Homework Book and deducted the Scholar Dollar from him. He got very upset during that class but I told him if you participate in class and answer my questions, you will be able to earn extra Scholar Dollar for participation.

Since that day I deducted his Scholar Dollar, during every class of mine, he will be begging me to give him back the Scholar Dollar I deducted that day. At first, I really needed to explain to him why did I deducted it and how he can earn it back. I even went to the extent of giving him first priority in answering question, but he simply refused to do so.

After a week of begging me for the Scholar Dollar back and my constant nagging how things run in my class, he started to do my work, like seriously. I still gave him more chance to answer, which he did answer and I gave him extra Scholar Dollar for participation. I guess he realised it wasn't that hard after all to earn back the Scholar Dollar, or he is over the 'testing the water' stage.

Now, he eagerly copies down the notes, always ask me to reward him with Scholar Dollar, showing me his effort in class. He stopped sitting at the back now and is helping to me control my class. Whenever the disruptive students talking in class, I would usually do the teacher stare at them and LMan would help me say:

Diamlah! Cikgu tengah ajar!

Although he still has anger issues and would tend to punch his friends when they say stuff he doesn't agree with but he listens to me and is wanting to learn in class. I am so proud of him :)

#OneChildAtATime

Take responsibility through Pen

I noticed some of my students, at the age of 16, were still using pencil to write their notes and exercises. I immediately took some time to tell them this.

Me: "Why do we ask you to use pen to write in secondary school?"
Students: BLANK FACE.0.0
Me: "Is pencil just for kids to use?" "NO!"
Me: "But what's the reason we should use pen to write?"
Me: "Of course, in exams, you need to write using pen, so that the ink will last longer and it wouldn't be able to be erased by others. Ink is permanent."
Me: "It is also because ink pens create a permanent mark, writing using pen teaches us how to take responsibility."
Student: SUPER BLANK FACE! >.<

My explanation:
When we writing using pen, anything that we write or draw in permanent. We can try to correct it using liquid paper, correction tape, blank white sticker or cross out. But the point is this, there is a permanent mark that reminds us it was a mistake.

 But the thing is this, we shouldn't be too negative about this mistake. Instead, take it as a remembrance that we made a mistake and quickly learn from it. I took that analogy to remind them, as we grow up, we learn how to take responsibility.

Every action we take in life has a consequence, even when we write.