Future.

Last night, I sent one of my boys home after extra class. I can’t remember exactly when things changed, but H now pays full attention in my classes and is engaged in lessons. He’s still pretty quiet compared to the rest of the boys, but it’s more than enough that he now answers my questions in class and does my work. So in the short drive home, I spoke to him about school and how things are for him, being in his particular classroom. We spoke about his English classes last year, and we eventually talked about his classmates.

I told him frankly, “Kawan-kawan kamu lah, yang duduk di belakang itu, semua tak dengar.” (Your friends who sit behind never pay attention to me.) I was referring to the bunch of apathetic boys who sat in the last couple of rows. A little background here: this particular class, 2G, is one of my notorious classes, and very, very difficult to control, but things have somehow gradually been improving in the past month. (Need to keep reminding myself, small steps, small steps!)

H’s instant reply caught me by surprise: “Ya lah, mereka tak fikir masa depan tu.“(Yes, because they are not thinking about their futures.)

I could have wept for joy, because H is thinking about his future, and that’s why he wants to learn, and I am so happy. I told him, “If only your friends all thought that way!”

One thing that I’ve noticed about this generation of kids, is that they are so, so playful, and still so immature in their thinking and behaviour. My 14- to 15-year-olds still act like they are in primary school, and I cannot tell you how many times I have lectured them to start behaving like young adults. What is it with this generation of teenagers, that they are not even thinking about their futures?

Some time back, I found out that one of my boys in 2I has ADD, and he is taking medication for it, but I always notice him intensely focusing during my lessons, and I am grateful and also sometimes surprised that he can sit so still in my classes. Even though he doesn’t understand much English, he still listens! When I check on him individually, he tries. I ask him to read for me, and he reads. At least he tries. Sometimes, that is more than enough.

I think that ever since I stepped into these shoes of being a teacher, you learn to really appreciate little moments like that.

Another anecdote before I go: one of my girls told me last night that she models, and even showed me a couple of her pictures. Yes, you read that right. And she said to me earnestly, “Cikgu, saya nak belajar cakap Bahasa Inggeris, kerana kalau photographer cakap dengan saya, saya malu nak cakap dan tak faham la.” (Teacher, I want to learn to speak English, because when photographers talk to me, I am too embarrassed to speak, and I don’t understand them.)

I’m all, whatever that motivates you to learn English, please, thank you very much! Well, I didn’t say that to her, of course, but I told her, “Good. So listen to me in class!”

One thing that I’ve noticed is that the students do understand me, but they lack confidence in speaking. And because they refuse to practice speaking the language, they just don’t improve at all. That’s the thing about language that I’ve been trying to get my students to understand—if you don’t practice it, you simply won’t improve. (Case in point: me. Hahaha. Since arriving in Malaysia, I think my Malay has improved exponentially. And probably my Chinese as well!)

Last Sunday night, in a conversation with my mom and my aunt, my mom said something that was very telling. She was reminiscing about her own secondary school days, and said to my aunt, “Remember, how we could understand English, but we were just too embarrassed to speak the language?”

And I think that is a sentiment that prevails even today.

I told that girl, and her friends, “I’m here with you for two years. If you don’t practice with me now, you won’t get the chance again. Don’t be shy, even if your friends laugh at you. Ignore them! Just speak, have confidence. I am here to help to correct your pronunciation and teach you new words.”

It’s funny, because you would think that being in an urban area, the level of English would be somewhat better than rural schools, but a lot of factors come back to the environments they are growing up in, and their family backgrounds. English, for many of my students, is truly a foreign language.

I really, really hope that like H, my students will find that motivation and spark to look ahead to the future, that they have it within themselves to get out of this vicious cycle of poverty—not a poverty of material wealth, but one of knowledge.

The little moments.

I’ll be frank. It hasn’t been the easiest three months, and I am perhaps close to burning out completely. But every day, there is such a strong sense that this is where I am meant to be at this point in my life; yes, it’s difficult and the challenge is daunting, but there is a little voice inside that says, “Do not give up.” There still remains an inexplicable sense of peace that spurs me on with whatever strength and hope I have left, and though the road ahead is so, so hard, I am still so, so glad to be where I am. Does that make sense? (Or perhaps makes me appear sadistic, even. Hah.)

I know I haven’t been blogging as much as I would love to, and there are so many anecdotes I would love to share. And I will start sharing. Names of my students will be changed, obviously, but the stories I will tell are real. This is the reality of what is happening at the grassroots level, the manifestation of *ahem*poor*ahem* policy-making and irrational decisions by people from the top who are (infuriatingly) politicians first before educators.

But more than anything, I resolve from today onwards to try my darndest best to blog something positive that happens each day, because I need it for my own sanity, more than anything else. To remind myself of why I am doing this, to remember the little moments that make me go, “Ah, this is exactly why I am doing this.”

A little bit of background (because I don’t think I have mentioned this before): I teach English, the afternoon session. I have one Form 1 class, and three Form 2 classes (used to be four, before classes were reshuffled—that is yet another post for another day, this reshuffling business. It’s culture shock every other day, I tell you!). So I am teaching 13- to 15-year-olds. Teenagers. Gotta love ‘em!

My particular school is very diverse, so my classes are an interesting mix of all three major ethnic groups, with a small number of Indonesians and ‘others’. My biggest challenge is unsurprisingly, the language barrier. Most of my kids’ literacy standard are at a shocking and very upsetting primary level. A small number are at kindergarten level. Is it any wonder that their other subjects suffer as a result of poor literacy?

(Sometimes when I see stupid headlines and comments made by politicians in this country, I really feel like screaming, Come into MY classroom and see reality for yourself. But I digress.)

I started out being trilingual in my classes, but I have gradually been cutting back on translation and started using more and more English in an effort to get them used to listening to and understanding English. Most of them are weak not just in English, but also in Malay. The only language they’re probably proficient in are their own mother tongues. Even my Malay kids don’t speak proper Malay.

Today’s positive story:

It was the last class for the day, and I am in 2I. This is the second last class in the level. (I honestly dislike this streaming business, and labeling of classes as “last”, “mediocre” and “good”. Already students are in this vicious cycle of a negative self-fulfilling prophecy, a they-are-in-the-last-class-what’s-the-point-anyway mentality.)

Anyway, today I taught adjectives to my students, and after explaining and guiding them through some examples, I set some exercises for them to do. As they attempted to work through the exercises I have given them, I went to the back of the class (that’s where all the Chinese kids are sitting) to check on them. As I sat with them to explain the English words, one of my girls suddenly said to me (in Mandarin):

“Teacher, you know you have been a positive influence ever since you entered into this class,” she said. (This is one of my girls who has been really putting in extra effort to learn English. She has recently started coming early before school for extra classes with me. To give you an idea of her level, she’s currently reading the Ladybird ‘Peter and Jane’ series 9A. I started her on 8A.)

I turned to her, feeling surprised. “Really?” Behind me, the din made by the other students was suddenly very loud and her statement seemed rather ironic.

“Yes,” she said. “It’s quite amazing that they [the other students] are doing your work and will actually sit down to listen to you. Before this, all they want to do is play in class and not listen to the teacher at all.”

And that kind of made the day a little better. And I remember the students that have changed ever since I stepped into the classrooms from Day 1 onwards. Like the boy in 2G who moves away from sitting with his friends, so that he won’t be distracted by talking to them, and listen to the lesson, even though he probably can’t understand half of what I’m saying. My best English student in 2G who told me today that her previous English teacher sometimes just let them do whatever, and not teach at all sometimes. My 2J girl who has improved from kindergarten level and is now at 3B since I started her on the 1A Peter and Jane book a month ago, who could not even pronounce he or has properly before. And a number of previously disinterested students who are now invested and willing to learn.

Sometimes I forget that I am not Supergirl, thinking that I need to save everyone. As much as I want to do that, I am only one teacher, and there are so many factors at work. I forget that it’s only been three months, and I cannot expect to see miracles straightaway. I forget I still have one and a half years to go, and perhaps more, if I decide to stay on.

The harsh reality is that I cannot save every single student. If I try to focus on each and every one of my 150 students, I will burn out faster than you can strike a match. I think that was part of what made everything feel so overwhelming. I need to remind myself to start slow, fight the little battles and win small victories day by day. Pace thyself.

And so it is little moments like that incident in 2I today that reminded me once again of the crazy, important responsibility that now lies on my shoulders. Many of my kids come from disadvantaged backgrounds, broken families of low to average socio-economic statuses. If at home they are already not getting the attention they need to grow into responsible, knowledgeable people, what more of the roles we play as educators in the school? Sometimes we may be the only role model these students will ever have. If only every single teacher who goes into this profession will remember that. Alas, there’s too many things I can complain about the system, but for now, my focus is on my kids. It’s too easy to rant about the system and bureaucracy, to feel beaten down by it.

For now, those little moments keep me hanging on. And for now, that’s more than enough.

“Tread softly”

The weekend was spent in the mountains; it wasn’t far, about half an hour’s drive from the school, and we were asked to go along (new teachers, and all, you see). The purpose of this two-day-one-night excursion was to inspire and motivate the student councillors, prefects and librarians—the leaders and student role models of the school.

We weren’t given anything much to do, except to “be there” and well… be there.

The one hundred odd students who went for the retreat were generally pretty well behaved and were mostly the better students. I think the three of us placed in this school have gotten it relatively easier than most of our fellow friends in other schools; every time we hear the stories and incidents that happened to them, we know that we are fortunate not to have had such serious disciplinary issues.

Even though classroom management hasn’t been fantastic, it hasn’t been all that bad either. Six weeks in, I’m honestly more concerned about where my students are standing academically rather than how they are behaving. And I don’t blame them entirely for misbehaving when they do—would I listen in class if I had no idea what was going on? I now have had my fair share of sitting through meetings conducted entirely in Malay, and of course, the sessions during training at Institute. I won’t deny it—I zone out, usually about halfway through, because it becomes mentally tiring, forcing myself to listen and try to understand a language I hardly use, in spite of having learned it from kindergarten till Form 5.

Oh, don’t even get me started on colloquialisms… When my colleagues berborak-borak, I struggle immensely to keep up. Case in point: the other day, I could only sit helplessly through an animated five-minute conversation between the other teachers, trying to understand what they are talking about… and failed miserably. I could not understand a single thing. They were speaking too fast for me to catch anything.

So what more my students, who can barely understand, read, and write English?

But I often forget. It’s too easy to grow frustrated at the near-illiteracy of my kids and I end up feeling a greater sense of hopelessness and anger at my helplessness.

I think about the responsibility that teachers have, and it is scary—imagine stepping into a classroom, and there are least thirty pairs of eyes looking back at you.

The fact is, I am playing an important role in their lives, and can influence where they will possibly end up in life. Whether they like it or not, I am there to teach, to guide, to show them that education is important, that English is important. They might hate English, enjoy it, or perhaps, have completely no interest in studying at all, but nevertheless, I am there to teach. No matter how difficult it gets—and it will be tough indeed—I cannot afford to give up. How can one trifle with the lives of thirty to forty kids entrusted to one’s care?

By now, I must have questioned almost every one of my students on what are their hopes and dreams. Last Friday, Andrew and I were tasked with giving a ‘motivational’ talk to the non-Muslim students in the second half of the afternoon. We shared our own personal stories and then got the kids to write down their ambitions, dreams and hopes on pieces of paper. I asked all of them to fold the papers into paper airplanes, and aim it at a goal I had put up at the front. Tell yourself you will achieve that goal, no matter what, I kept saying to each student. Aim high, and believe in yourself! 

I collected all the papers. Opened each one, read them. Promised them I wouldn’t show them to anyone. I told them they can write in Chinese, if they really can’t do it in English or Malay. More than half were written in Mandarin (I got Andrew to translate the words I couldn’t read). A few were deeply personal and touching. Some were no more than half-hearted attempts to get something down on paper for the sake of the exasperated teacher standing at the front imploring them in broken Mandarin for them to write, write, write. Others ranged from fairly standard statements to amusing or interesting. And then there’s a handful who didn’t even bother.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W.B. Yeats, “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven”

Yeats’ poem is usually often interpreted romantically. But the last three lines seem to me, especially poignant for these students. As teachers, that responsibility to “tread softly” seems more pertinent than ever.

My biggest fear is letting my students down, and to wake up one day and discover in tears and shock that I have somehow unknowingly been trampling on their futures.

Sometimes, their dreams are all they have. (Although interestingly, the majority of my Chinese students are my most disinterested, and are always the ones without any ambition or aspirations for their future; but that is another blog post to ruminate in.) Many of our students come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and most lack confidence and belief in themselves.

The paper airplanes are suddenly very precious to me, no matter how half-hearted some of them are. At least they wrote something, and that counts for a lot. And these fragile hopes and dreams of my thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds, I will tread ever so gently.

Undefined

The clock ticks each second away, reminding me of how precious a commodity time has become ever since I embarked on the craziest chapter of my life yet.

But such an uncaring fiend it is, that Time. It devours everything in its path, relentlessly pushing forward, paying no heed to the myriad tasks that accumulate day by day.

I thought I knew what to expect—we all knew what was coming and braced ourselves as First Day approached. It came and went, and though we knew—oh, we knew—yet, Reality is still a difficult pill to swallow. And when you do swallow it, it brings with it a jolt and the shock of, Yeap, this is everything you expected—and so much more. 

Every day, I grow more and more frustrated at the system that we are in, and am furious, depressed, saddened, heartbroken, all at once, at the situation that is my kids who can neither read nor write English. Their BM is no better. I can’t comprehend it, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t ask, “How can this happen?” How can this be happening?? 

How is it that these children are allowed to advance to the next level, when their abilities and proficiency clearly do not allow them to perform up to standard? Even my best student is at an intermediate primary school level. And each teacher is tasked to sew the patchwork on as best as he or she can. Where do I begin? This question haunts me every day. Where do I even begin to fix this mess of sloppy stitching? 

I know, I know. Locus of control, et cetera. There are certain things which are beyond our control, and the infuriating state of our education system is one of those things. I may not be able to change the system. Not now, anyway. And that isn’t why I am here. “I want to change the world”—big words, tall order; but if I could change the world for even at least one of these kids, then that is why I am doing what I have chosen to do. But the upward climb is suddenly steep and very scary.

He works for the good of those who believes in Him.

Beth Moore at Passion 2010:

“Don’t despise your past and what has happened to you. It’s what equips you for ministry. It’s what makes you authentic in ministry.”

Why I journal: words, whether inked on paper or displayed on the screen, come alive from the past, speak to me, comfort, and remind me of lessons I am still learning.