Part 3

Part 3- Reflection on the work of the teacher and the role of the teacher in relation to other stakeholders in the education community

During the shadowing activity which took place on the 2nd of March 2011, we asked some questions to the mentor regarding her relationships with other stakeholders in the education community. The responses from her to us were quite surprising and thus, I would like to share the interview result here in this essay.

The mentor that we were shadowing is a NET teacher in that primary school. She is responsible for the consolidation classes. She explained to us that the learning objective of a consolidation class is to provide an opportunity for students to revise the materials that they have learnt in ordinary English classes and hence, consolidate their knowledge. Therefore, the consolidation classes that our mentor responsible for are different from those ordinary English lessons.

In school:

Our mentor indicated the fact that due to her nature of being a NET teacher, she rarely come into contact with the school Principal. As a NET teacher in the school, she has her own office in the English room and she does not go to the staff office often, except for doing the printing job. Also, she does not have to attend the school general meetings because she is not required to do any administrative work for the school. She expressed her feelings of being lucky because when compared to the workload of other local English teachers, she is relatively enjoying more free time than the others. Our mentor suggested some occasions in which she came into contact with the school Principal, for example, during the Sports Day, she met the school Principal and while she was organizing the shadowing, she contacted the school Principal notifying her some students from HKU will come to have the shadowing. She has also suggested sometimes the school will call her for several meetings and those meetings are not on regular basis. 

Although our mentor does not meet and communicate with the school Principal often, she did keep a very close relationships with other teachers in the school. As mentioned previously, she is responsible for the consolidation classes, and usually teachers from ordinary English classes will come along with the class to the English room to have the consolidation class. Therefore, our mentor has to keep a very close relationship with the other English teachers discussing the flow of the class, the activity to be held in class and the outcomes of the class. Our mentor as a NET teacher of the school has to attend meetings for all English teachers. The purpose of those meetings are to discuss over the syllabus and the progress. Teachers from each grade will have to meet once a week, but due to the fact that our mentor is responsible for the consolidation classes of all grades, she has to attend every meeting for each grade.

The day before we went for the shadowing, our mentor sent an email to us notifying us there would be two student-teachers following her. The two student-teachers were from HKU also and they were like the "hands" of our mentor, helping her with the document jobs and marking etc. As observed, the relationship between the mentor and the two student-teachers was quite well. The mentor explained, it is quite usual to have student-teachers following her and some pupils would come shadowing her like us. While the mentor was teaching in her class, she is always a participant rather than a controller. Every time when the class activity started, she did not only walk around to monitor the progress but sat down in different groups playing the game with the kids. Not only in her lessons, while the student-teachers were teaching and the mentor was doing the class observation, she participated in students’ discussions as well (Harmer, 2004).

She does not come into contact with the social workers in school because she needs not to handle the discipline problems of students and it is not necessary for her to contact with the social workers regarding students with learning or behavioral problems.

Outside school:

Our mentor suggested that it is quite usual for her to come into contact with visitors coming from the Education Bureau. As a NET in the school, visitors from the Education Bureau will come to the school and make a visit frequently. She explained to us that the visitors from the EDB would come and observe her lessons and give her feedbacks afterwards. Also, the visitors are the bridge of communication between the Education Bureau and the NET teacher. Those visitors will also ask about whether the NET teacher having any difficulty working in the school and whether there is any deficiency that the NET teacher wishes to be improved. As the resources of employing a NET to a primary school comes from the Education Bureau, those visits were regraded as checking to see whether the resources put on a particular school is sufficient or not. Therefore, our mentor actually comes into a frequent contact with the people working in the Education Bureau.

As our mentor is taking her PGDE programme in HKU, it is quite usual for her to communicate with the researchers in the Department. She explained, she usually contact the researchers in her Department, who are actually her mentors for the PGDE course for academic problems. She sometimes needs the help from researchers to complete her research.

Parents:

Although our mentor is an English teacher in a primary school, she does not need to meet parents due to her role as a NET. She is not a home-teacher of any classes and she does not need to handle any administrative work, therefore she is not required to come into contact with parents. And surprisingly, no parents contacted her. She explained this is because her role in the school is just to help consolidating students' knowledge learnt in ordinary English lessons, therefore parents will usually contact the English teachers who are in charge of the ordinary English lessons if they have any problems regarding the learning of their children. However, as in current years, there are more emphasis put on the school-parent partnership, which is believed that the partnership and the cooperation between parents in the family and teachers in school can bring positive influences towards students’ learning (Pang, 2005).

To conclude, the interview impressed me in the way that although our mentor is in charge of the consolidation classes only in the school, she needs not to handle any administrative work and students' problems, she is still a hard-working teacher. This nature can be seen from the activities in her classes, she must have done many preparations before lessons and she successfully motivated students' learning through playing games and some group activities. I could see students were enjoyable during the class and almost all the students were participating in class. I do appreciate our mentor's efforts and passions towards teaching.Moreover, I regard my mentor as a effective teacher because she definitely succeed in establishing friendly relationships with her students (Arends, 2001).  She has also enjoyment of pupil relationships which could be seen from the example that she is not the home-teacher for the P.2B class but she insisted to go to that class every morning before lesson starts to make a visit to the kids. From the way she talked with students and interacted with them, I could feel her passions towards staying with students.

References

Arends, R.L. (2001). ‘The Effective Teacher’ in Exploring teaching: an introduction

education. New York: McGraw Hill, pp. 44-66 Retrieved from http://bedlanged.edu.hku.hk/file.php/46/Effective_teaching_Arends_Winitzky_Tannenbaum_Exploring_Teaching.pdf

Harmer. J, (2004). ‘Describing teachers’ in English Language Teaching. Pearson

Longman, pp. 107-120 Retreived from http://bedlanged.edu.hku.hk/file.php/46/Reading_2/Describing_Language_Teachers_Roles_Harmer_2007.pdf

Pang, I.W. (2005). ‘School-Family-Community Partnership in Hong Kong-

Perspectives and Challenges’ in Educational Research for Policy and Practice. Springer. pp. 109-125 Retreieved from http://bedlanged.edu.hku.hk/file.php/46/School_Family_Community_HK_by_Pang_2005.pdf

Part 2- School-based Diary Entry

School-based Diary Entry

Shadowing Date: 02-03-2011

At 7:30 a.m.

After receiving the notification from the General Office at the school gate, she went down to the gate to join us (the four students from the HKU). She introduced herself to us and then immediately brought us to the General Office meeting the school Vice-Principal, who was the mentor of two of our classmates as well as meeting the school Principal. As mentioned by the school Principal, there would be some other visitors coming from the Chinese University, the school would be very busy and crowded. After the brief introduction, the mentor left us with the student-teachers and she rushed to her office. She seemed to be very busy all the time because she walked fast and spoke fast. She did not join the morning assembly while we were in the playground observing the students doing exercise during the morning assembly.

At 8:00 a.m.

Right after the morning assembly, we and the student-teachers went back to the preparation room and the mentor came in. She chatted with us and asked us to introduce us to her. As mentioned, she seemed to have a packed schedule and she seemed not to be listening during the introduction. Quickly ended up the introduction part, she handed her timetable to us and then immediately left the room. She then visited the 2B class. She was not the class teacher of the class but she did the visit because she likes the class and will go for a visit every morning. During the visit to the class, she had casual chatted to students. She asked a male-student whether he has taken his medication, later she explained to us she showed her care to the boy because he was absent from the Sports Day last Friday. During the time, she also collected the class feedback form from some of the students because they did not have enough time to complete the form in the previous lesson. The mentor seemed to be enjoyable when she walked around and chatted with the students, and with no doubts the students like her as they would initiate a conversation with her. Although the mentor kept her high-speed talking, she showed her smile finally when she was chatting with the students and I felt she enjoyed the visit so much.

At 8:20 a.m.

The home-teacher time ended and the mentor went back to her room and counted the number of cards she needed in the afternoon class. There were two cards missing, and she had to run to the staff room to do the printing before the first class starts. She looked confused when she discovered two cards were missing because this accident would affect the grouping of the class and hence, affected the progress. At that moment, she did not talk anything to us but rushed to the office, leaving us in the room. The students arrived late, and so provided extra time for the mentor to make the cards. The mentor was not surprised by the late-coming of students as she explained; usually the first lesson will start late because there are many things to be settled during the home-teacher time. When students reached the English room, which is the mentor’s room, she gave the instruction of forming a big circle of 26. Her tone was severe, probably because she wanted to start the lesson quickly and smoothly. The students responded quite well and got everything completed within 1 minute. The lesson was fluent and students were generally on-task. Though when the mentor moved on to another game, there were misunderstandings that the students did not understand the instructions and started the game without the mentor’s permission. The mentor showed her disappointment to the other two teachers and had a quick decision to resume the class and continued to play the first game. Initially the mentor was calm and stayed at a soft voice, but later she turned into a severe voice and ordered the class to get back to their seats. After the lesson, the mentored had some complaints about the class performance and she was obviously feeling unsatisfied because of the incompletion of tasks.

Between 08:50-09:25 a.m.

The mentor had a free lesson during this time slot. While the two student-teachers went to have class observation, the mentor sat down with us and had a discussion over her work as a NET teacher in school. She showed some mini-books which were produced by her students to us, and I felt her being proud when showing the work to us because the content of the mini-books is actually quite complicated for Primary One students to do and the content was beyond students’ zone of proximal development. The mentor also showed her tiredness to us, she explained the tiredness was because of the packed schedule, she has to attend lectures after school-days. She added, she usually arrives home at 12pm and can only sleep for a few hours. The shadowing activity also made her stressed because she had a lot of arrangements to deal with. Although teaching life is tiring, she loves teaching because she thinks it is enjoyable and challenging. I appreciate her attitude towards the professions, because although she was tired, she was energetic during lessons and she tried her very best to motivate students’ participation.

At 09:35 a.m.

It was the lesson of the two-student teachers and so the mentor will be observing the lesson and then give comments to them. The lesson started late, it started 10 minutes after the bell rang. The mentor sometimes helped with the class management during the class and she was helping the student-teachers to record the lesson. She seemed to be enjoying the lesson. When some students made a very silly story, she laughed out.

At 10:05 a.m.

The class ended and the mentor rushed to the playground because she is in charge of the English Ambassadors Activity. She had to rush to the playground because the previous lesson ended late. She brought along her recording machine with her to the playground in order to tape the interview between her and the students. While we were standing aside her and observing her during the activity, she seemed to be not so happy and she dropped a sentence:” Don’t follow me!” to us. Then, we walked around the playground and chatted with students. The students were quite interested in the English Ambassadors activity and they lined up and waited for the questions asked by senior primary students. Later when the bell rang, we got back to the mentor’s room and waited for her.

At 10:20 a.m.

The mentor arrived and had the P.1 English class, teaching students the body parts. The mentor sang a song with the students “Put your right hand in” to revise the vocabulary items regarding different parts of the body. Students were excited, but the mentor seemed to be lacking of energy. After the song, the mentor started giving instructions about the worksheet-Draw a monster.

Between 10:53-11:30 a.m.

The game started and the mentor walked around to observe the progress. Students spun the wheel and drew the appointed body parts on the worksheet to form a monster. Students in group took turns to spin the wheel.

The game ended with peer appraisal that the mentor showed students’ work to the whole class. The class was excited during the peer-evaluation section when they saw the others’ work. I think the mentor felt happy for this lesson because the planned tasks were completed and the responses from students were positive.

Between 11:30 a.m. -12:35p.m.

Lesson ended and started lunch. We stayed with the student-teachers in the preparation room to have lunch. After lunch we took a walk in the school and when we passed by the mentor’s room, she was sleeping inside her room. I understood she was so tired and needed a nap before she started her afternoon classes.

Between 12:40-13:10 p.m.

After the lunch hour we went to the mentor’s room joining her for the mock interview practice. According to the mentor, she has been doing these mock interviews with those P.6 students for three months. A group of P.6 students came to the English room and took turns to practice the interview for applying secondary schools. The mentor was responsible for asking the “candidates” questions. However, the students’ performances were far from satisfactory, and initially the mentor’s mood was fine, but it turns negative afterwards. I think the mentor was unhappy and regarded the performances as unsatisfactory because of their poor attitudes. The mock interviews ended early, because the mentor could no longer stand for the performance and she showed her anger to us when the students left. I was surprised by the mentor’s reaction because she stopped the students from giving responses. I guess this reaction was because of the accumulated anger and tiredness.

Between 13:10-13:41 p.m.

After the mock interview practice, a P.2 lesson started 18 minutes after the bell rang. The learning objective of the lesson was about the days of the week. After the greeting, the mentor sang a song with the students and when the students memorized the lyrics, the mentor hided some of the lyrics and students were required to guess the day of the week. She then assigned some students out to answer the questions, later the mentor explained to us that the students she assigned were students of lower learning abilities. After the singing of the song, the mentor started introducing the rule of the card game and had invited some pupils out for demonstration.

At 13:50 p.m.

The mentor started distributing the materials for the game and in some groups, they started the game. However, there was an incident happened: it happened when the mentor asked students representatives out to collect the materials; a male-student from the grey group told the mentor that he was from the purple group. When the mentor discovered, she immediately called out the student, asked him to stand at the door, and stopped the boy from joining the game. The boy stood at the door and cried for so long while the mentor was joining every group in the class and was playing the game with students. Later after comforting by the student-teacher, our mentor approached the student, talked to him and allowed him to go back to his group. However, when the boy went back to his group, he was lagged behind and it seemed that his group mates ignored him. At last, he couldn’t join the game and the game ended. My interpretation to the mentor’s reaction towards the boy’s behavior was that, there might be misunderstandings between the boy and the mentor. Maybe the mentor thought the boy did it purposely and the boy did not explain. As an outsider, I think the punishment was a bit too heavy because the boy did not have to chance to explain himself. I had a look on the picture, the grey color was faded and the color was not obvious. I felt pity about this incident and I think the mentor was in an extremely bad mood influencing her attitude and decision at that moment.

At 14:15 p.m.

The game and the class ended. The mentor stayed in her room playing with her computer. We grabbed the chance to interview her regarding her relationships and interactions with the other participants, like the school Principal, the other teachers and researchers. After the interview, we stayed in the mentor’s room and waited until the school ended.

At 16:00 p.m.

School ended. The mentor brought us to the Principal and notified the Principal that we will leave. We showed our appreciation towards the shadowing arrangement and said goodbye to the Principal. Afterwards, the mentor brought us to the school gate and sent us away. While we were saying goodbye to her, she seemed to be a little bit impatient and rushed. Probably because she had to attend classes for her PGDE programme or she had got something to do afterwards. Anyway, shadowing a NET teacher was a fruitful and unforgettable experience to me. I enjoyed it very much! J

Activity Six- Visual metaphors for teaching and explanations

l  Teaching is like running a marathon, once you have started the marathon, it would be a long-run competition

     and you could not give up in the middle.

l   Teaching is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire. It is the process of inspiring and motivating students, provide

 them with the chances to develop themslves to the fullest extent.

l   Teaching is like growing a tree. It takes a very long time to see a tree grows. It is also not an easy process to grow a tree and we do not know whether there will be fruits at the end. But still, neglectin the result, we have to insert efforts for its growth.

l   Teaching is like a fertilizer. It is necessay for a plant to be fertilized in order to help the plant growing nicely. Just like when studetns are growing up, teachers have to be with them, assisting and directing them so that they will be on the right track.

l   Teaching is like filling a cup of water. Sometimes people will think teaching is complicated and there are many challenges ahead. But maybe we can consider it in another way. The glass of water can be regarded as half-filled or half-emptied. Teaching can be a fruitful experience if we consider this cup of water as half-emptied.

l   Teaching is like a campass. We need a compass if we lost our direction. A teacher is like a campass, the role of teacher is to direct students to a postive and appropriate way.

Activity Five- Annotated images for the roles of the language teacher

Activity Four- Word Association

J If teaching is a color, what color would it be?

l   If teaching is a color, it would be pink. It is because pink is my favorite color while teaching is my ambition. Also, the color of pink seems to me very energetic and passionate. Being a teacher needs to be energetic and passionate towards the profession.

J If teaching is a person in your in life, who would it be?

l   If teaching is a person in my life or in my family, it must be my mother. My mother is the one who supports

me all the time and comforts me whenever I face frustrations. She is essential in my life. Just like teaching,

the roles of a mother and teaching are the same, which is nurturing children and help them with their personal growth.

J If teaching is a number, which number would it be?

l   If teaching is a number, it would be a zero. A zero means a foundation, Everything will start beyond zero, and

     teaching is actually a foundation, a foundation for students to develop their fullest potentials  

J If teacing is a smell, what would it be?

l   If teaching is a smell, it would be the smell of flowers. The flowers’ smell

     is always fresh and it implied the meaning that teaching is ever-green and teachers have to be passionate all the

     time.

J If teaching is a cloth, what would it be?

l   If teaching is a cloth, it would be a sock. It implied that teachers and students will have to work collaboratively

    to make one thing success.

J If teaching is a food, what would it be?

l   If teaching is a food, I will regard it as fruits. This is because fruits make us healthy, like teaching, we teach

    because we wish students to have a good life in the future.



Activity Three-My reasons for becoming a teacher

 

Activity Two-What kind of teacher do I want to be?

Think back to your primary school days. Think about a teacher that you admired. Write down the qualities that made her/him admirable.

The teacher that I admired from my primary school was my class teacher when I was in Primary 3 and 4. He was my class teacher as well as my Chinese and Mathematics teacher. His lesson was enjoyable and interactive. He sometimes invited students to perform a drama about the textbook passage. This increased my interest towards Chinese subject. He was also a patient teacher, as my mathematics academic performance was not satisfactory, he spent time to have tutorials with me and other weaker students two times a week. I appreciated his attitudes towards his professions and he never blamed me or scolded me for my poor performance in his subjects. He would also praise students if students had improvements. He acted as a friend of the students as he would join students’ Xmas party and played with us. To conclude, he was a professional, patient and friendly teacher. These criterions made him an admirable teacher.

Think about a teacher that you didn’t admire. Note the qualities that caused you not to admire that teacher.

One of the teachers who I did not admire was my P1 Chinese teacher. I remembered when I had the first Chinese dictation in P.1, my private-tutor helped me with the revision and she put some Chinese characters there in the English book in order to help me memorizing the meaning of the English words. Before we started the dictation, my Chinese teacher asked the class to bring out the English textbook to cover our dictation book. She told us to turn to a certain chapter. While she walked pass me, she found that there were some Chinese characters in the English textbook and she blamed me for cheating in the dictation. I felt so bad because I did not intend to do so and it was just an accident! I tried to explain to her but she refused to listen to my explanation. I did not admire her because of her dominance. Frankly speaking, up until now I am still angry about this issue because I was innocent. I believe the way she treated me was because of the high hierarchy she had as a teacher. I keep reminding myself I have to be a good listener to students because teacher and students are equal. 

Now think about the kind of teacher that you would like to be.

Make notes and/or create a web and/or draw a visual representation of the kind of teacher that you would like to become.

Later on, scan this work and put it in your e-portfolio.

I wish I could be friendly and supportive teacher like the cartoon character Anapanman from Japan. The Anapanman is a superman from Japan and he is always helpful and supportive. He is also friendly to the others. More importantly, he is a person willing to sacrifice for the others. While he was doing his mission rescuing people who suffered, if the person is starving, because of his nature as bread, he will give part of his body for people to eat in order to save the others’ lives.

As a teacher in the future, I understand that there might be many challenges that we may have to cope with. Possible challenges may include school policies, students’ behavior problems, heavy workload etc. We have to be mentally well-prepared to cope with all these challenges. Teachers are people who sacrifice because they will have to sacrifice their personal time for preparing lesson and other administrative work. They also need to sacrifice because they are no longer on the top of students but at the same level with students, to be friendly with them.

Teachers who are willing to sacrifice can gain students’ appreciation and can maintain his or her professionalism even he or she has difficulty in the education field.