Miss Seah Jiak Choo
It’s the end of March and for me, the end of a hectic but
interesting month. The month began with the Singapore ASCD AGM and our guest
speaker this time was none other than our former Director General of Education,
Miss Seah Jiak Choo. I have heard her speak on one or two former occasions and
each time I have been struck by her honesty, her no-nonsense approach and her
genuine love for what she does. Again, she did not disappoint us this time.
My greatest take away from her talk entitled Teacher
Leadership has been the fact that all teachers are leaders by virtue of the
fact that they all have followers who are growing and contributing to the
greater good- yes, their students. I wonder if teachers know this. She went on
to say that some teachers are more successful than others as leaders and this
is because some have no opportunities to develop their leadership skills.
Another significant gem from her that is related to what I
wrote about in my last post is the fact that all teachers must be obsessed with
the belief that all children can learn. I thought that this is such an
important idea for all teachers to embrace because it is the premise upon which
we function as teachers. If we no longer believe in the fact that all our
children can learn, we will be no longer effective as teachers and we should
then leave the profession.
This message was reinforced for me a week later when I
attended the ASCD conference in Philadelphia.
Yvette Jackson spoke about a pedagogy of confidence where educators
start teaching from students’ strengths instead of focusing on their
weakness. Yvette described a weakness as
an undeveloped skill. It’s not that
students don’t know but it’s that they don’t know... YET! But they will get it
eventually.
The secret to teaching these children is to change the
input; find another way of teaching them, change the script so that they are
not constantly exposed to the same script and the same input. Think of how
often we insist on giving weaker children watered down materials and easy
tasks. Our intention is always good and that is not to frustrate them. But the opposite also happens. Too many dumb down tasks will result in no
learning and a loss of motivation. Remember the rich do become richer and the
poor can become poorer. Weak students
need more rich input.
I compared this to fertilising plants when discussing this
topic with my teachers recently. We need to spread a lot of good fertiliser
around in our garden to encourage the plants to grow. It’s true that sometimes the plants cannot
take this. I know this from firsthand experience. Some plants will even die
from too much richness, but most will show some growth but there will be some
that will blossom and grow even faster and stronger. Teaching must be like
spreading fertiliser. If the input is not rich, none of the students will
benefit. If it’s very rich, some may be lost but there will be many others who
will benefit.
Yvette offered seven principles for a pedagogy of
confidence, and in a nutshell they are:
- Identifying and activating strengths
- Building relationships
- Nurturing high intellectual performances
- Providing enrichment
- Incorporating prerequisites ( as in providing supporting help and materials)
- Situating learning in the lives of students
- Amplifying student voice
Finally, an interesting activity we did together was to
develop a bubble map (semantic web) of the strengths of underachieving
students. In fact, this activity is best done with students themselves. I bet
they never thought deeply about the strengths they have. Once they have
identified their strengths, think of how you can build upon each of these
individual strengths. Begin your planning with that strength in mind and see if
you can give your lesson a new twist. Yvette’s example was that students do not
understand World War 2 but they all understand conflict. Begin with conflict.
Ultimately, as teachers we need to flip the script and reframe
the issues. It’s only when we are equipped with a new and more positive perspective
of our underachievers that we can begin to help them to learn. Our pedagogy can then be one of confidence.
