The Ron Clark Story

"I teach you, and you teach me. And together we learn to love to learn."



If you are a teacher, or a teacher in training like me, and you feel like you need inspiration or motivation to teach, you should certainly check out 'The Triumph' (The Ron Clark Story)...I've watched it a few years before on the Hallmark Channel, but sadly my brain is never able to recall things when I need them ;p

Recently, I've been to a secondary school in Gillingham, Kent for a whole week, observing classes, looking at the school, its ethos, management and system. It was really inspiring to see the teachers and students so ready to learn together. Though there were brilliant classes, and there were some not-so-good classes, the general atmosphere in that school was one which I really admire, and which really fitted my idea of an almost-perfect school.

When I thought of what kind of teacher I'd be, I had no idea at all. Ideally, I'd want all kids in my class to love learning my subject, and make significant progress in it. However, life is not perfect. You might end up in a class who already has negative assumptions about the subject and be really against learning it. So I thought, well, I'd just teach those who want to learn then.

Going into Rainham Mark Secondary School altered my perspective. The general atmosphere in that school is one of learning, to do everything necessary to ensure that the best environment is given to the students so that they'll be in...say an optimum learning sphere. I also had quite a long talk with one of the assistant head teachers there about Assessment for Learning, and I am frankly and absolutely impressed by all the work he has done over the past five years to implement the idea of AfL. From staff training to changing students' perspectives and mindsets about teaching and learning, he has covered and changed most of the things he can. The rest, is of course left to how the teacher actually teaches in the classroom, the students' firm beliefs about learning in the classroom and so on.

And then, I started to think that being a teacher is a great load of work. It's not just about delivering content - an automated teaching machine can do that. There's so many other factors that comes into play - the students' background, way of thinking, the government, variables in feelings and ideas, interaction, and the list is non-exhaustive. And then I worry, and keep on worrying, if I am up to that job. I can't be another person, I can't be a teacher whom I admire and regard as a role model, however hard I try. What if I turn out to be a teacher my students dislike? What if I don't have the patience to help less bright students? What if I get so restrained by the curriculum and syllabus and all those stupid rules that I eventually forget my original goals for teaching?

Then I started to wonder about the point of me being in this course. Sure, I love English, but loving something and teaching it is not necessarily the same thing. It's like playing the violin, you could perform a piece really fantastically, but you cannot make another person play it the way you do. The fact that it's a language adds so many more variables to it, as the usage of the language depends on an individual's perception of the world.

So I moped around for quite a bit until I talked to my friends and came across this video on Youtube again. The brief of the plot is: This teacher is responsible to raising the standards of students for national exams, and he's just been employed to teach the lowest achieving class in a school. Everyone expects the class to fail, or just at least pass with a bare minimum. However, he does not subscribe to that presumption and instead raises the expectations for his class. At first, it was tough, he had to face many obstacles such as the students' unwillingness to learn, problems in their families, culture and all, but through determination, persistence and sincerity, he triumphed over what everyone said was 'impossible'.

So, perhaps, in my own small insignificant way, I could affect other people too?

P.S: I could go on and on about my experience in the awesome secondary school I went to, but it'll remain a secret for now ;)

Teaching is like cooking...

It's quite an interesting comparison:

1. The ingredients should be trimmed into manageable, edible chunks to ease consumption and digestion. (Except in the case of flashy fish or meat dishes, or a whole roast turkey, but they'd eventually be cut or sliced to put on smaller plates)
2. The appearance of the food is a key factor to attracting people to eat it. Dressing it up and arranging it nicely won't hurt.
3. Different people have different sets of taste buds. There's no one dish that suits all.
4. Always be ready to adapt your recipe to available ingredients.
5. Sometimes you have to put away your pride as a chef and remember that spontaneous decisions will affect the enjoyment of your food. Always be ready to add salt or pepper or any other condiments to cater to the consumer's taste, or maybe have a backup potato salad for the occasional vegetarian.
6. However good you are at cooking, there's forever someone out there that you can learn from to make yourself better.
7. You could try out new dishes, but too much radical changes in the dishes over a short period of time might put people off.
8. To be a good cook, one of the prerequisites is that you are passionate about cooking.

Last but not least, you can memorise a whole cookbook and be able to recite it from memory, but what counts is that you DO carry out the act of cooking, and that will help you get better at it. Don't worry if you fail at first, as a failure is just another step towards success.

~失败乃是成功之母~