Now that Practicum had ended and it's back to school for us, one of the compulsory module we had to do is to attend this seminar about CME taught by former teachers from Curriculum branch of MOE. It's actually a one size fits all program where the same content were taught read to us in class and the discussion with them numbs my brain somehow. And here's why.
1.) These former teachers were demonstrating how to teach and handle a class by treating us like secondary primary school kids.
Come on, we did classroom management modules and had our trials at practicum, definitely we know the virtues of having ground rules and such. There is little point in setting ground rules and *gasp* asking us to re-read the ground rules for *10 seconds* when some of us did not follow them. I felt insulted! Of course, they went on preaching about punishment should reflect the crime yada yada, something straight out of the book known as Dreikur's logical consequences model. I mean, they should find out the profile of the "students" they are "teaching" so they could equip us with new skills rather than repeating what had been done. And they demonstrate how NOT to build rapport with students too with their condescending approach.
Then of course they tried to do group work through assigning roles and gave us a grand total of 30 seconds to decide on the roles we will play in each group. They also preached the importance of scaffolding for students blah blah blah.. The problem is, we are not formed into groups when they gave us our "30 seconds" and we barely got the role thingy in place for the group work. In my humble opinion, they did badly in group work.
I won't blame people when they do things badly because we are constantly learning and picking up new things. But when people tell you to "listen, look and observe, we are showing you how to do it as a teacher", you would expect that they could do it at least reasonably well.
2.) Showing Disrespect to Colleague
This seminar was conducted by not one but two former teachers current MOE officer/specialist. And it is suppose to be one on civics and moral education, one to teach students the right stuff. Some good values that we are supposed to educate the young ones includes stuff like respect. What happened was that one speaker demonstrated that she had very little of that for her colleague.
"Now I think it is time for a break and when we come back we will ..." says speaker AThere are much better ways to say the same thing and shown some respect for speaker A. Linking this to point 1 made me even more disgusted with what I had seen.
"I think it is better to go through the following first before the break, let's look at ..." says speaker B.
Conflicting instructions? Overriding your colleague? If I'm speaker B I will feel insulted.
"What speaker A had missed out on these points are the ...."
Speaker B could have pointed out those points without letting the world knew that she had missed it!
"Yesterday some groups were lost and did not know... " says speaker A after speaker B had given the instructions for us to do group work...
Oh, so speaker B did not do well for this activity for the seminar yesterday...
3.) Taking the Moral High Ground by Assuming Every Student is Immature
Last but not least, we came to a discussion on how to teach values that we don't agree on. Like how do we tell students not to smoke if the teachers themselves do smoke, or why say no to premarital sex when teachers themselve do practice them? Their standard answer (along with some fellow trainee teachers), students are too young and immature to understand the consequences so we need to say no. (But not all students are immature!) And they try to force that down during the discussion, what for having a discussion when you intend for it to end this way?!
Personally, I don't see how smoking and premarital sex is an immoral thing to do, if all parties involved are fully aware of the consequences, are engaging these activities out of their own free will and did no harm any other people when they do it. I mean, you can't say that I do not have integrity or is dishonest because I smoke right? (Just for the record, I don't smoke) So it will be hard to convince students or anyone else for that matter that premarital sex or smoking is wrong. This is because the activity itself isn't wrong.
The only thing wrong about premarital sex and smoking for students are that they are underage and by the laws of Singapore, they are not allowed to do these activities. But how do you convince anyone that doing so-so is wrong when you are 18 and below but is right when you are older?
However, I would strongly discourage, or even forbid my students from engaging in activities such as smoking or premarital sex for other reasons. Reasons as such:
Smoking is a very expensive hobby, it is harmful to your health, your loved ones (mum, dad and teachers) will be hurt and disappointed to know that you smoke.Students may or may not fully understand the consequences of these activities, but I will not stop them because they are immature. I will stop them because I don't want them to walk on the wrong path and regret their lifes. Don't you think so?
Premarital sex may lead to teenage pregnancy, how would your loved ones (family and friends) react if you are pregnant? Your b/f may end up in jail because you are underage. Could you bear the physical and emotional pain of abortion? Are you able to feed your baby and provide for your child at this young age?
I still have round two of the CME seminar to endure through. Wish me better luck.
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2 comments:
- At 3:33 am Jon said...
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Singapore could do with a lot more teachers like yourself. Having gone through the neighbourhood schooling system in Singapore myself, I can relate to a lot of stereotypes that you have just mentioned.
I was very surprised actually to discover that you were actually a teacher until I read further down. Given the scenario described in point 1, I am slightly disturbed that such an approach is used on adults, and teachers no less.
May I ask what level of education you are teaching?? - At 8:33 am Mastermind said...
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Thanks for you comments. For your information, I'll be taking the Secondary/JC level.
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