A Fish Funeral and Helping Kids to Write

I don’t know if I can describe Junior as a good or a keen writer. Like many boys, he does not really enjoy writing but he cannot avoid it. And when he has to write, the best writing that he has done is always when he does it with conviction and when he has a clear message to communicate. Now as an adult student, I often remind him that his best writing is often accompanied by a convincing voice.

But when he was a child, I did try many ways to get him interested in writing. The most significant thing I did was to read to him and to help him develop a love for reading.  I do believe that reading is a way into writing because books are good models for young writers to see what they themselves can do. I don’t think children will know about writing or be interested in writing if they did not read themselves.

My earliest memory of writing with Junior was when he was around two years old. One fine summer day in California, we had left home for a day trip. When we got home, Junior dashed into the kitchen to check up on his pets, two goldfish named Huckle and Happy.  They lived in a fishbowl and Mum was supposed to clean it and change the water periodically. Maybe she was too busy that week and did not change the water. Maybe the day was just too hot, as Californian summers can be.  But when Junior looked into the fishbowl, Huckle and Happy were both floating upside down. Junior was of course devastated, and I felt more than a bit guilty.

Finally, I helped him organise a fish funeral. We buried both fish in the garden and placed a small rock on top to mark the grave. Junior insisted on writing their names on the rock which I did with a marker pen. It consoled him a little but before long, he was sobbing again. It was then that I hit upon the idea of writing a story about the fish. I told him that this will help him remember the fish. As we talked through the story, I wrote down the words for him. I helped Junior to see himself as a loving fish dad and recalled all the fun things he did with the fish. The truth is that I could not tell one fish from the other but perhaps Junior did.  But writing down the stories helped Junior to see that writing can do many things among which is to help us remember, to record memories and events and even to solve problems.  

In later years, I continued to help Junior write, but I did not make him write on his own. Instead, I often supported his attempts by doing dictated writing with him. This was when he made up his stories, dictated them to me and I wrote them down for him. We often wrote new versions of the books he read in school, such as “To Town” or “The Jigaree”. We had a whole series of stories based on “The Adventures of the Three Tum Tees” and about the dastardly deeds of one Captain Terror who was hell bent on destroying the world, especially Marine Parade, where we were living then.  

After a story was written, we would read the story over again and he would draw some pictures and make his story into a booklet, which he then tried to sell to his doting grandparents. He had the makings of an entrepreneur even then. We did a fair amount of writing on the computer using various programs to make books.  We wrote poetry too and here's one from his primary school days. I won’t say that it's a great poem but for a little kid, I think that it was great that he had something to say and was willing to write it down.

Junior's Collection of Poems

Often, my focus was to help him see that writing is one way to help him think and to record ideas. This sneaking mum did not hesitate to introduce writing into the most mundane activities. So Junior’s trip to the supermarket was often accompanied by a shopping list that he had to make out. And if he wanted a new toy or a special toy, he needed to write down a list of reasons to convince me to buy it for him. Unfortunately, the one list I still have was written in pencil and could not be read when scanned but here are some of his reasons:

Why I like Action Pack II

 Because it has an injured man

It has an apc and a ship

One man has a stinger missille

 It has a jeep and two planes

It has a bazooker

There is a medica man

There is a radio man

 It has a grenade

Was I then successful in initiating him into the joys of writing? I don’t know. It’s still too early to tell. But he is a prolific list maker. I myself did not enjoy writing as a youth and did not write regularly until I was in my forties.

I came across this interesting and useful article from a homeschooling mum on how she helped her child to write. She has some very firm convictions about what should be done, some of which we, as non-native speakers in English, may disagree with. Read it here and see what you think.

In the end, I believe that setting an example is important. If you want your child to be a writer, try to be one yourself. Help your child to see a reason for writing and take it beyond getting a good grade for composition. Having a personal meaning and use for writing are very essential first steps towards developing an interest in writing.

When I was a young teacher...

                                         
                                                      With my junior college colleagues

                                                            Young and innocent...

I ended last month by attending the Teachers’ Conference. It’s a privilege to listen to the keynote speakers and this year, they did not disappoint. The two speakers who resonated most with me were Professor Marilyn Cochrane-Smith and Professor Elizabeth Birr Moje.

Professor Cochrane-Smith told a compelling story about two young trainee teachers and their experiences during their first year of training. She looked at the factors which shaped their learning experiences and commented on four aspects of  successful teaching practice: deprivatisation, high expectations for all students and oneself as a teacher, taking an inquiry stance on the work of teaching and participating in multiple overlapping learning communities.

I don’t really want to discuss the technical aspects of her research but for those of you who are keen to read a bit about her work, here is a link which discusses her work into inquiry as a stance in learning: http://www.kdp.org/publications/pdf/record/Centennial/Record_Centennial.pdf

During the session, she challenged participants to recall their own learning experiences as a teacher and this brought me back some 33 years ago when I started on my professional road to becoming a teacher.  Well, before I came to join the then Institute of Education (IE), I had taught in various places in KL.  I taught History in my former secondary school where, I am ashamed to say, that I taught in the only way I knew how to - from my own History teacher- and that is to dictate or copy out copious amount of notes on various topics. Then I taught English in two different private colleges and even taught General Paper in Malay for a spell. Did I have any clue about teaching? No, but I relied heavily on my glib tongue and my rapport with the students to see me through each lesson.

My days at the IE were no better. I remember many long lectures about the psychology and the philosophy of education but nothing which prepared me for how to deal with forty girls in the classroom. Thank goodness they were good girls whom I sufficiently charmed so that they never gave me any disciplinary problems. But I taught them English and Geography and while I did pick up a few tips for teaching Geography from dear old Mrs Ng in secondary school, I was completely clueless when it came to teaching English. It didn’t help that I was supposedly trained for teaching Literature so no training in teaching English language was provided for at IE.

Nowadays, we would look to our cooperating teacher as a mentor; I don’t even remember one in my time. There were 2 other trainee teachers with me; one taught English and the other Science but competition, and maybe foolish pride, prevented us from sharing any teaching tips. But we did get together to groan and whine about our supervisors.  Needless to say, my supervisor was not impressed with my teaching. I remember after one mediocre English lesson, he told me to try and do more group work. Honestly, that didn’t mean much to me then apart from physically grouping the students into smaller units and I promptly did that when he next visited. Well, he was not pleased again because he said the group work did not serve the purpose of the lesson. Now, on hind sight, I knew what he meant but at that point in time, I remember being frustrated as I did what he wanted but he was not satisfied.  Explicit teaching was not a part of the norm then and supervisors often just talked and rarely showed.

After graduation from IE, I was posted to a junior college where I started teaching General Paper (GP), again a subject for which I had no training. In those days, junior colleges had lecture theatres where lectures were given to prepare these elite students for the real world of university studies. My first test was to give a GP lecture to the second year students and I remember lecturing on something about national languages. Don’t ask me why I chose that topic but I recall that the Head of GP then was suitably impressed, either by my knowledge of national languages or the smoothness with which I delivered the whole lecture. But beyond lecturing, I sure didn’t know anything about teaching GP although in my years at that junior college, I had a lot of success helping students to move from a low to a high grade in their exams.  Not surprisingly, after I joined NIE as a staff member, one of the first papers I ever wrote and published was on teaching GP.

We didn’t talk about how to teach then; nor did our senior colleagues give us advice on teaching. We just did our best and there was nobody to call for help, no books we knew that we could consult, and the Ministry remained a fortress on a hill that we never went to until our turn came for the fateful tea and interview. I remember too having to direct a play as a trainee teacher and to coach students for the drama festival. Yes, I was a drama student at university but that didn’t prepare me enough for these extracurricular tasks. But somehow I had to make it work.

Was teaching private then? You bet it was. Nobody knew what went on in our classes and I only remember my Head visiting my class once. Nobody thought we needed help and perhaps we didn’t think so either. 

Fast forward thirty years and what a change. Teachers now not only get all sorts of help, support and training, they attend conferences and present their ideas on how to teach! They get bonuses for good performance. An average teacher today has access to a range of services and upgrading opportunities. True, her workload seems heavier but she does not have to do this work in an uninformed way. Some sections of the Ministry are even a tad friendlier; why, you can be their Facebook friend now!  The improvements in the teaching service in the last thirty years have been most impressive and having seen the changes, I have to admit that the government has done plenty for the profession.

Thinking about these changes, I was somewhat taken aback when another expatriate friend criticised the teaching service here by describing a teacher’s negative experiences in a neighbourhood school.  True, I cannot deny that there may be still a few tyrannical principals who live to control the teachers’ every move.  I don’t deny that there is a lot of extra, out of classroom duties in the form of co-curricular activities. And yes, there is still some politicking, backbiting and backstabbing in the staffrooms of schools. But this happens everywhere, not just in schools.  I would say that by and large, our teachers work in healthy and often happier environments. I would say that the opportunities to develop themselves as teachers are plentiful and few teachers would describe themselves as oppressed.

But even so, many trainees in their first year out in schools fall through the cracks. I know of a number of my own supervisees who eventually left teaching for other jobs.  I know though that it’s not always because they hate teaching or the conditions in schools.  Professor Cochrane-Smith’s story reminds us that many factors contribute to a young professional’s transition from trainee to full time teacher, and many of these factors are related to the kind of support they receive, their attitude to and understanding of the nature of the job and the kind of socialisation process they undergo as trainees and young teachers. As experienced teachers, we can do our part to initiate young teachers into the profession. Sadly, I still hear stories about senior colleagues discouraging young teachers from staying in the profession and discrediting it with negative comments.   But the number of confident young teachers is certainly growing.

Indeed, nowadays, we don’t even speak of teacher training but of teacher education.  The education and growing of teachers is an activity that deserves the best of our resources and the best of our young talent.  Although parents have taken on much of the education of their children, it cannot be denied that children still spend a large proportion of their time in school with teachers. Harriet Martineau asked:

What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honourable than teaching?

None, I think and I am very glad I became a teacher. Indeed, I see myself teaching for a long time to come. 

Writing Fears

From the Singapore Writing Project blog:

http://writinginsingapore.blogspot.sg/