The new curriculum in Sabah is trying to push a more learner-centred way of teaching. Part of this is that exams shouldn't be given anymore - a welcome change, as last year I saw more than enough tiny 6-year-olds sitting at a desk for 1.5 hours writing an exam they couldn't understand. I've been trying to push this idea with my teachers, and generally they're keen to do more ongoing assessment, but they have lots of other stakeholders to convince too - headteachers, heads of departments, non-English teachers, parents, the district office... There are a lot of people whose minds and hearts need changing! (The general attitude amongst those in power is, "This is the way I learnt, what's wrong with it?")
So this year I set up a few workshops on assessment for my mentees.
Last week was assessment week for all the schools. Assuming that Years 1 and 2 would be having regular lessons while the older kids (under the old curriculum) sat exams, I turned up to schools as usual.
The little kids were sitting exams.
My approach of discussing the issue with my mentee and then suggesting they follow through with other non-English teachers had failed, so in the end, I set up discussion groups at each school with all the new curriculum teachers, and tried to make amends. Hopefully this will be fruitful when we get to the end-of-year exam time!
All this examination meant a lot of invigilating. And so it was at one school I found myself with no available teachers, but a very chatty headteacher. He's a lovely man, and I found myself completely absorbed by his story for nearly two hours. (And by the way, for those entire two hours, during which I barely got a word in, he constantly apologised for his lack of English...) One reason his English was reasonably good was that he was in almost the last batch of Malaysian children to attend school in English. His headmaster was Malaysian, but every single teacher was foreign, and his mother tongue was banned in school. He tells me that he managed to get through six years of high school without speaking a word - he was afraid to speak English and wasn't allowed to speak Malay - and passed his exams by studying every night in Malay!
But what I found really interesting was his story of his first few years as a teacher.
He was placed first in a rural school in Ranau district. This school was rural. And when I mean rural, I don't mean my own experience of rural Malinsau, but rural. He had to catch a minibus an hour from Ranau. It dropped him off by the side of the road, and then from there he walked to the school. "The children they stay at night because very far from their homes. Sixteen hours!"
"Sixteen hours walking?" I said. "You walked for sixteen hours to get to school?"
"Oh no," he said, smiling, "I didn't walk for sixteen hours, that was the children and the parents. No, no, I only had to walk for nine hours to get there."
I just sat in silence. This man used to walk nine hours to school. And by walk, mind you, he doesn't mean a gentle stroll down a wooded path - he means nine hours through wet, muddy, dangerous, hilly rainforest. In the days before serious deforestation.
I finally asked, "So did all the teachers make this journey every weekend?"
"Oh no, once I was out there I stayed for the whole term and only came back to town in the long holiday. Oh, and also, I was the only teacher there. The headmaster met me on the first day, then he went back to town for the rest of the year, and there was nobody else."
I asked how many children he was teaching, all on his own, out in the rainforest, on his very first job out of college.
"Not too many. I had only 16 children from Year 1 to Year 6. I taught one class, then gave them work, then I went to teach another class..."
And so on.
People are pretty remarkable sometimes...
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