Treena, my step-mom, continues to play an important part in my development as a teacher. No matter which age group I may be working with, I bounce ideas off her and every time, she has much to offer, be it in refining my idea further or giving classroom management tips or suggesting simple things I can do to engage the students better. This is partly because she was a teacher before she started working in Child Care.
When she moved to Japan, she took the opportunity to be an English teacher there. When she returned to Canada, she decided to look for a Teaching Assistant (TA) job in schools. With her diploma in Early Childhood, she did not have any problem in becoming a TA.
We met over lunch the other day and in this conversation, she talks about her experiences in Japan, and what she loved about teaching. As a parent now, she is actively involved in my brother’s school, and hence, we also discuss ideas for making the classroom a more welcome place for kids as well as removing some fears the new teachers have.
Let’s start off with teaching in Japan. What grades did you teach there?
In Japan, I taught kids from 2 years of age to 82-year olds. I worked in elementary schools and also taught separate classes to adult learners: anyone who was interested in learning English. I taught conversational English, which is different from teaching English grammar. In Japan, there is a local Japanese teacher who teaches that part and then a conversational teacher, usually an Exchange person, teaches the conversational piece. I always worked in tandem with another teacher. We sang songs and played games. It was a lot of fun!
Is there a particular memory from your time as a teacher that you would like to share?
There are many memories. Some are good, and some are not as positive. I had a group if students in Japan who just would not settle down. They were chatting and weren’t listening to me. I knew very piece-meal Japanese at that time, bits and words. One of these words was pronounced ‘dame’ which means bad. So that day, I stood in front of the class and said, “Dame, come on you guys, I need you to listen!” The entire class burst into tears! I learned then that ‘dame’ doesn’t mean bad like “this is bad”; it is taken as a personal allegation. I spent the rest of the class reassuring everyone that I didn’t mean it that way at all.
Another time, I had a group of girls who came to class with Octopus equivalent of our Beef jerky. Now, Japanese classrooms are little Tatami rooms, sweat boxes and the room stank! I could hardly breathe and I couldn’t help heaving! At the end of the class, I said no food in my class.
In general, I loved teaching! I sang songs with the kids. In one of the classes, I did a flute performance. I got to do lots of research and play games. At that time, we didn’t have the Internet the same way as we do now. So, I enjoyed researching teaching techniques and how to keep a class engaged.
I have lots of good memories of teaching in Japan, but not so much of teaching here.
Why do you think your TA experience different?
As a TA, I would usually get kids who weren’t functioning well in class. They were the kids who had some behavior issues. The teachers would give me two or three of these kids, the worksheet they were supposed to be working on and send us to a little room to get it done. The kids weren’t anymore well-behaved than when they were in the class, even a group of 3-5 kids had the same issues.
For a while, I worked with a young man in junior high who was an excellent student but had mobility issues. My job as TA was to ensure he got to and from his class. I would carry his books for him, make sure he got into the washroom… things like that.
My teaching experience was more in Japan than what I did as a TA.
You are actively involved as parent in the school community. Do you think the school environment has changed since the time you were a TA?
No, I don’t think so. We still have overcrowded classrooms which increases the need for TAs as well as how we use them hasn’t changed.
I think we should give TAs the kids who are performing ok and then the teacher should work with the students who need more help, not the other way around.
The better use of the TA would be to get them to work with the kids who are doing ok on their own. That’s not what happens.
I will admit that when I have thought of TAs, it has never crossed my mind to give them the kids who are doing ok. We think of TAs as extra help and that usually means help where we need it, not help where we don’t need it.
I think we miss the opportunity to bring the kids who have behavior issues up to the level of the others. We give messages that they should work with someone else. Even if the TA worked in the classroom, at their desk it would be better than sending them away.
A positive change I have seen in schools, more teachers do it now, is recognizing that not all kids can sit still and that is not a disorder. Giving them a squishy seat or a fidget toy. More classes have such valuable tools now. Students are allowed to stand and work a t their desk if they can’t sit any longer. This recognition that a child’s attention isn’t necessarily an adult’s attention – sit, listen, focus – is great. There shouldn’t be a student who has a diagnosis for a class to have such tools available to them. They should be part of the class anyway.
For kids who are having a tough time and unable to keep their emotions in check, it is important to tell them that we will address the issue when they are calmer. They need to know that you, as the teacher, will deal with the issue but you need them to be calmer first for this to be productive.
Is there something that you imagine classrooms should have?
Kids being able to remove themselves from the activity if they can’t concentrate. The problem is we put kids in a classroom and decide that they will do social 9-10.30 am, for example. What is the kid can’t get social at this time? There isn’t an easy way around the class schedule, but we should give students the freedom to choose how they want to learn, whether by siting on the floor or from another space in the classroom. We know kids are always listening. Would it be bad if they listened from a place which isn’t their desk?
Alternate seating works great too. I saw a classroom where the teacher had made seats from milk crates. The classroom should be a more social place.
By having pods and group seating, it sets up the place as collaborative and allows the students to work together, explain their thinking to peers, doubts that they might be too scared to share with the teacher.
Is there something from your current job in Child Care that has important take-aways for educators?
Whether you are a teacher or not, you never stop teaching or learning. In Child Care, we often talk about learning opportunities or teachable moments. If a child does something in a program or does something to another kid, instead of looking at it as an opportunity for discipline, we look at it as a teachable moment. Let’s learn about how you react to stuff or learn about how you could have done this differently. What can we do differently to support you better? What clues could we have picked up earlier on to stop this from happening at all?
That must be scary for new teachers though. What if we miss a teachable moment?
Absolutely! But I also think and hope that people learn really quickly that
A moment that you will find as teachable moment is not what another colleague might find. You can only do what you can do from your perspective. We all have different experiences and hence we come at it from a different perspective. I think that’s really important.
And you need to not hold yourself to the same kind of ruler as another person: When you start as a new teacher, you can’t expect to be like the teacher who has been there 30 years. In your class, you will find the moments, the alarming-should-have-been-addressed cases. The rest, which you miss, are the apple pie at the end of dinner. It’s ok to miss them and there will be time to do all the extra stuff eventually.
Every educator’s experience teaches us something, even if they might not be in education anymore. Treena’s words about the apple pie resonated deeply with me. In the past year, there have been many teaching strategies and practices that I want to adopt into my classroom one day. I know though that it won’t be a single day when I will do everything. As I slowly roll out the tools and ideas I have, I will learn what works and what does not. Getting into teaching, or for that matter, any profession, with the attitude that things will happen at their own pace and that I will personally do my best is all that counts.
I hope more teachers will share their experience. I already feel less scared about missing teachable moments. I will catch the ones that matter to me.
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