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.