Being Schooled

There are some lessons you never learn in teacher training.

Muddling through NIE and rehashing contemporary, fashionable education ideas about teaching being a two-way process in my essays, I'm only beginning to understand what a professor of mine in  Bristol once said to me.

I asked him how he got from studying engineering to teaching then to training teachers and finally to becoming an educational cognitive neuroscientist. As he related his story, he had this faraway thoughtful look of wistfulness, sadness, pride and amusement when he touched on his teaching career. Then he paused and said, "Yeah. Teaching. Knocked a few edges off me."

Then we went back to talking about my dissertation artificial agents.

In the last 6 months, I've certainly had some edges knocked off me.

Here's a lesson in pain and resilience:

There was a kid in my class who has an impressive track record of crime since he was 7. It ranges from housebreaking and theft to arson and violence. His family background isn't the most stellar, with both parents in jail. He had absolutely no interest in studying and in Term 3, he was in school only 18 days out of 40. Also, he's a brilliant kid and a fast learner, but because of his chronic absenteeism, he had fallen behind very badly and couldn't follow the pace of lessons whenever he returned to school.

So he gave me some problems in class, and for the first few months, I was always nervous of this kid, because I didn't know quite how to relate to him. For one, he didn't seem to care that much for rules or routines in class, and probably saw through my discipline attempts - that I was pretty hopeless at being tyrannical. Here are some reasons why I will always remember this kid.

1. One day after banishing him to the back of the class because he had lied about doing his homework, I called him to me after I gave the others seat work. I asked him why he thought I was angry and he muttered under his breath, not looking at me and being really pissed off, "Because I didn't do my homework." To which I told him it wasn't because he hadn't done his homework, I knew he couldn't do it, I was disappointed because he had lied. I told him simply that I knew he was a better person than that.

I didn't know what an effect my words could have on this kid. He lifted his eyes to stare at me, and in that moment, that hardened look I saw so often in his eyes gave way to tears.

2. I heard from the social worker that his mum had gone into jail. His dad had gone in about a year earlier. His aunt was now looking after him and his sister. A day after his mum had gone in, during snack time, I noticed he didn't have anything to eat and during recess again, he sat by himself on the bench, not talking to anyone. I asked him to show me his wallet, so I could check if he had any money on him. He took out a brand new wallet and opened it.

There was nothing inside - no money, no ez-link card - except for a tiny, carefully preserved picture of his father.

I felt a lump rise in my throat as I asked him what he had for breakfast, and what he was going to have for lunch and dinner. He said his aunt would cook for him if she was home.

"What if she isn't home?" I asked.

"I drink water," was the reply.

Now, after the social workers' visits to the house, the aunt ensures that his meals are well taken care of.

3. His mum was pregnant when she went into jail. This kid was really worried because the doctor had told them that his baby brother wasn't going to be able to function mentally as well as other children. I suppose he didn't really know how to express this to me, because he told me when we had built a better relationship that his baby brother was going to be 'handicapped'. He always furrowed his brow and tear up whenever he told me about this. One day, as I was marking, he sidled over and asked shyly, "Miss Tan, is 24 October last week?"

I confirmed this and he smiled happily, "Oh. My baby brother born already." Then he skipped away. I've never met a kid who remembers dates like that.

4. As far I knew, this kid was completely unsentimental on the outside to his friends. He was one of the biggest troublemakers in school, but as time went by, I saw a side of him that makes me want to cry. There was a day where I made him stay back with me to go through his Science homework because his exams were coming up soon.

The next day, I found a tiny, crumpled up note shoved into my class letter box. It read:

"Thank you, Miss Tan, you help me Sience homework." 

5. During an FTGP lesson, we had the kids identify their love language, then write down one person in their lives that they wanted to show their love language to them.

This kid couldn't follow and probably didn't quite understand what was happening, but this was what he wrote.

Now that the year is up, I still think about this kid's notes to me. I think about how he carries his family's burdens, but still has innocent childish worries about others not playing with him. I think about how he wrote 'goli' in his exam paper, because he couldn't remember the English word for 'marble'.

Most of all, I think about how he thanked me and I really want to say to him,

Thank you for teaching me more about life. 

Teaching Experiment #4: The Silly Ingredient

When I was still doing my MEd. in the Psychology of Education and debunking neuromyths, we had a session discussing how BrainGym wasn't really "repatterning and rebalancing our brains" for better learning. However, simple exercises could aid in learning because it's associated with blood flow in the frontoparietal areas, regions which help in higher-order reasoning processes. For a full report on BrainGym, click here.

So what does the Silly Ingredient have anything to do with this, you might be wondering.

I was sitting in class one day after the exams (yes, revision went by in a blur, and exams have come and gone!), looking at my kids, who were needless to say, a bundle of energy encased in tiny human bodies. I had to go through the answers to them and ensure that some sort of learning did take place. So I brightly told the class we were on a mission to zoom through the exam paper and I really really really needed their help for that. As all eager-to-please 10 year olds do, they boisterously stepped up to the task of assisting their teacher.

Within 5 minutes, I had lost them. They were all dropping like flies.

In desperation, I recalled Energizers I had encountered in Cooperative Learning strategies. Then I remembered how physical movement and exercise could really get the blood in the brain flowing (Finally, the point!). So I made up some short, silly energizers you could play with the kids to wake them up and get them ready for the next 20 minutes of chalk-and-talk. Over the past few months, I've perfected some. Feel free to make your own up - the sillier, the better!


1. Call the Action
First, tag actions to your own set of words. Then simply call out the actions and the kids will have to show them as quickly as they can. To make it more confusing and to drive the kids nuts, I often call out the actions and show the wrong action to throw them off. For example:
a) I tagged 1 to showing 1 index finger, 2 to showing 2 index fingers, 3 to putting both index fingers on one's lip.
b) High 5 to putting one's hand up in the air, high 10 to put 2 hands up, high 15 (leave this to the kids' imaginations - my kids put up both hands and one foot), high 20 (this one is always funny)
c) Bunny ears (to show bunny ears behind their heads with their fingers)
d) Medusa (intertwine 3 fingers from each hand and wriggle them behind your head to simulate Medusa's hair)

2. Mix Your Seats 
I call out people with a defining characteristic and those who belong in that group has to jump up and change seats as I count down. Some categories I use are:
a) Those with long hair....change seats!
b) Those who wear glasses
c) Those who love peanut butter
d) Those who are scared of the dark

I also use this activity to get to know my kids better and find out things about them. Make up silly categories for your kids - they love those!

3. The Best Freezer 
Basically, I get the kids to do a series of actions, where they have to concentrate on memorizing them. Teach the kids the actions in a rhythm so they can remember the series better. Then as they are doing them, I shout out "FREEZE!", and they have to freeze in the action, which is always very entertaining for their friends and me. Those who move get disqualified and stand in front with me to identify their unfortunate friends who aren't able to keep stock-still in the next round.

Another variation of this is me getting the kids to walk around the class and I would call out a particular category and those people who fall in it have to freeze. At this point, the kids usually get extremely noisy, so I incorporated this phrase, "You have to keep quiet because I'm calling...THOSE WHO SIT BY THE WINDOW!" After a couple of rounds, the kids learn that they have to scamper around while suppressing their laughter and excitement to an acceptable noise level, otherwise they won't be able to hear the group I'm calling out.


After 5-10 minutes of these energizers, the kids are normally on an adrenaline high. So to get them back to a more sedate state, I get them to sit down and close their eyes. Then I get them to take a deep breath, while I count down from 5 to 1 before they breathe out. This usually settles them down a little, leaving me with more perked-up kids and a longer time before their concentration flags again!