When I first arrived in Sabah, it was a month before I realised that any of my schools even had a library. This was partially because some of the teachers were embarrassed to show the library to me, and partially because some schools actually didn't have a library - in one, they had a few books in boxes, and a room without a floor. The lack of a floor was pretty serious, as the building was two metres above the ground.
When I moved to the more urban schools the situation was a little better. They all have libraries, even if the room doubles as a faculty meeting room and the children can't access it outside of their scheduled library class. And they all have books - although those books can sometimes be less than entirely appropriate... Librarians don't know where to find high quality books, and are preyed upon by visiting salesmen, who push substandard, flimsy books riddled with spelling errors and grammatical bruises. Sometimes, books get donated by foreign governments; these are either culturally insensitive, or, again, substandard fare that wouldn't be given to their own students, but are dumped on Malaysian students because "something is better than nothing." I disagree a fair bit with this statement, but that's another tale.
Anyway - as I've mentioned before, when my schools were offered the chance to apply for a book flood, three of them leapt at the opportunity, and in the end, one of them was chosen, and they have done the most amazing things with their Year 1 to 3 classrooms, trying to engage the children with the new books. Remember this classroom?
It's being used constantly, for storytelling lessons in English, but also for remedial classes, Science, Malay language lessons, Maths games, and just chilling after school. I am continually being amazed by how appreciated the teachers' hard work has been in the four weeks since we finished these reading corners at 10pm on the night before the opening day!
No comments:
Post a Comment