NETWORKING
EDITORS’
NOTES
(2) Kay Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A.
Edwards
By Khaw Choon Ean ,
Malaysia
“Come to the edge,” he
said.
They said, “We are
afraid.”
“Come to the edge, he
said.. They came. He pushed them… and they flew. —Guillaume
Appolinaire
The Scenario
When I was just a
fledgling in TOC, I was coerced into taking on a slot for a presentation on TOC. By fledgling, I mean the sum total of
my exposure to TOC was a day’s demonstration from none other than Kathy
Suerken, very little reading material other than the flyers she’d given, an
article, and a another flyer from Dr. Shameem who had met Kathy in Canada in
1999. But, everyone else in the
Curriculum Centre had attended the same session. So, why me?
I turned down the
invitation at first, basically because I was about to leave for another state
to run a workshop for some other project.
However, the person who had sent the request had sent several people to
waylay me at regular intervals to persuade me.
Finally I gave in, on condition it was the next day and not that very
afternoon. I was a bit worried
initially because I had never talked about the subject before and goodness me,
I was no expert! But I was challenging
myself to do something about it. So
what was this occasion that allowed me to test myself?
This
was an emergency workshop organized by the Curriculum Development Center
in May. The head teachers of 45 Tamil primary schools were asked to
attend a special course. Their schools
were found to have zero percent passes for the Primary School Evaluation Exam
because all of the students had failed the Malay Language Paper, mostly in
composition writing. In our school system, children can attend the national schools,
which are taught in the Malay language, or vernacular schools (Tamil, Chinese),
where lessons are conducted in the children’s mother tongue. However, all schools use the national
curriculum.
Twelve-year old pupils
sit for an important nationwide Primary School Evaluation Exam based on the
same common National Primary School Curriculum, which can be taken in the
Malay, Chinese, or Tamil languages.
However, it is compulsory to
pass the Malay Language paper. Failure
to do so results in failing the whole exam.
The 45 head teachers of Tamil primary schools
with zero pass rate for Primary School Exam all had to set an Improvement Goal
for the following year.
I knew just a little bit about TOC and TOCFE
and I knew about 2 tools and not even the names of the others. But, a little Internet search helped fill in
some gaps but not enough. Ah well, I
told myself I would be humble and share what I knew and anyway, in the land of
the blind, the one-eyed is king (…er, queen)!
Armed with transparencies that I started
creating at 2 AM in the morning and lots of shaky courage, I thought, “What if
they asked questions I couldn’t answer, what if they wanted more, what if they
wanted the names of the other 3 tools?).
By the time I was about to go on I had worked myself into a state.
The hotel room was a funny L-shaped one. Forty-five expectant dark faces looked at me
as I was introduced. All the head
teachers were Indians, mostly men. I
wished them “Good morning” in Tamil and was quick to add that I come not as an
expert but to share whatever I had. I
did a little exercise as an opener. I
asked for all the years of experience in education of everyone in the
room. It added to a total of 1,745
years of service in education. My
goodness, I was going to fool these people?
However, I was able to catch their
attention. After all, none of them had
ever heard of TOC. I warmed up with a
little “do-it yourself” activity. I
taught them quickly to do a time line.
They listed all the significant events in their life on a horizontal
line. At the meeting point where the horizontal line branched outwards
into 2 lines was where they were now.
One branch would be their preferred future, the other branch the
possible future. And then they were
asked to look at the gap between their preferred and possible futures. How do we close that gap?
THE
TIMELINE
Preferred Future
Past
A
GAP – Set an Ambitious Target
NOW Possible Future
Then I started talking about TOC and finally
got to the only second tool I knew—working for an ambitious target
collectively. The Ambitious Target was How
To Improve Writing Skills In The Malay Language In Indian Tamil Primary Schools
because it was the failure in the essay writing paper that had gotten these
schools their bad results.
We finally worked on an Ambitious Target that was set to address the
problem collectively. The goal was an
improvement goal: IMPROVING WRITING
SKILLS IN THE MALAY LANGUAGE IN INDIAN TAMIL PRIMARY SCHOOLS.
The group of head teachers were given the opportunity to identify what
they saw as the obstacles that were preventing them from achieving their
goal. To my surprise, it was not just
the lack of writing strategies and methods that were surfaced. In using the tool, we found that the head
teachers started delving beyond the surface to address other issues that were
contributing to the problem. The
following obstacles were some of those seen, as being in the way of the goal
that had been set:
The
Obstacles
1. Pupils lack reading skills in Malay.
2. The pupils have a limited vocabulary.
3. There is no interest in reading for any
language.
4. Pupils do not use the Malay Language to
communicate.
5. There are not enough reading materials in
the Malay schools.
6. Pupils do not do any homework and so do not
practise writing skills.
7. Lack of understanding of the Malay
Language.
8. Pupils play truant and cannot follow Malay
lessons.
9. Teachers
have no proper and effective teaching strategies for teaching writing in Malay
language.
10. There are different
expectations from education authorities and the school.
11. Parents and pupils are not aware of
importance of education.
12. No love for the language
When these were brought
forward, it was revealing that the identified obstacles had not touched just
solely on the strategy of language writing, but actually got into possible root
causes of the situation.
Here were some of the
IOs that they had for the obstacles above:
1. Build proficiency in reading.
2. Emphasize learning of vocabulary.
3. Create interest in the language.
4. Make them use the Malay language to
communicate.
5. Obtain more reading materials in Malay.
6. Make sure they do their homework.
7. Help them use and understand the Malay
Language.
8. Find out
reasons for high truancy from school and find solutions for truancy problems.
9. Improve
and introduce effective teaching strategies for teaching writing skills.
10. Standardise the expectations between the
different parties.
11. Create awareness in education for parents
and pupils.
12. Develop a love for the language.
And they went on to give suggested steps that
would later be used for their Action Plans:
Suggested Steps
1. Prepare
graded lessons
9. Do not punish
latecomers who have good reasons so that they will come to school.
11. The
Ministry of Education should standardise expectations at state, district and
school levels.
14. Improve teaching methods and presentations.
As a conclusion to the 2-hour session, the group of
head-teachers were again reminded of their total years of service to education
that had all added up to a remarkable grand total of 1,745
years of service. It seemed apt to point out that, with so
many years of experience together in that room, surely we could do something to
bring about a change for the children in their schools? The split second silence on realising this
awesome total seemed thoughtful somehow.
We finished the session with this empowering thought and a whole lot of
ideas to take back.
The two-hour slot that had been approached with such
temerity had finished on quite a jubilant note. And even though at that point of time, I had not quite learnt how
to manage fully the PrT and its immense potential, we had enough to keep us
occupied and our thoughts meaningful.
I left for my next appointment out of town with mixed feelings
wondering as always, in those early days whether I had done things right.
The results of the nationwide Primary
School Evaluation Exam for 2000 were announced on November 7, 2000. This is an extract from an analysis of
results published in the newspaper:
Subject Area |
Type of Schools |
1999 |
2000 |
Performance |
Malay Language (Writing) |
Tamil Schools |
24.90 |
39.20 |
+14.30 |
*
Tuesday, November 7, 2000 THE STAR p.4
Quoted from the same paper as the words from
our Director-General of Education, Datuk Seri Dr. Abdul Shukor, “The
improvement of both Chinese and Tamil schools, particularly in the BM (Malay)
paper, is encouraging and something to be proud of. They should be commended for this.”
There are probably many other contributory
factors to this improvement as a concerted effort to achieving the goal. But the important fact is that there has
been an improvement as proof that when collaboratively we work towards a goal,
it can be realized, however difficult it may seem at the beginning.
I showed a few quotes extracted from some
material Kathy had given us at her briefing.
I asked the head teachers to choose what they thought best reflected
their situation. This is the one they
chose.
“The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem,
but rather if it is the same problem that you had last year“
—John Foster Dulles
I rest my case.
(2) Kay
Buckner-Seal, Cheryl A. Edwards
To the rest of our TOCFE family, send your
contributions to Cheryl A. Edwards, 2253 S. Hill
Island Rd., Cedarville, MI 49719, USA.
Or, send hyperlink to <redwards@sault.com> or
<bucknek@resa.net.