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
沒有留言:
張貼留言