Far away from home

As a teacher in Malaysia, sometimes we are required to serve in different states that are far from our home. And one of the most feared was the East Malaysia postings. This is because, it is far away from Peninsular Malaysia and there are possibilities to be posted to a rural and remote area.

My first posting was in Dalat, Sarawak (East Malaysia). Honestly, when I received my first posting letter, I had mixed feelings about it. Serving far away from hometown, meeting people with different languages and cultures are some of the questions that kept on playing on my mind. Yet, I believe God composes the symphony of life. He seems to know what is best for us. My stayed at Sarawak had revealed a lot of new lessons and help me grow as a teacher. I was blessed to be in a small town like Dalat where teachers are highly respected by the communities and the relationship among teachers are so close. This scenario really helps a lot in developing my character as a teacher.

In fact, teaching in a school far away from town means that I have bigger responsibilities in moulding and shaping the students. With limited facilities and no private tuition classes, the students depend 100% on the teaching in the classroom. Knowing that my students depend totally on me, this prompted me to deliver my best in the classroom. A part from that, what I really enjoy is the fellowship and companionship I have with my students. Being in a small village means that everywhere I go I’ll meet up with my students and the greetings I received from them really make up my day.

Of course, I have this longing to serve at my hometown, close to home and in a place where I am more familiar. Yet, a small and peaceful village by the river like Dalat is a good training ground to prepare me for the challenges ahead. So, even though I am far away from home, it is worth it.

Teaching and blogging

Blogging is something that is still new in Malaysia. In fact, bloggers do not have good reputation in this country. A blogger is always considered as someone that is unethical and rebellious. Bad highlights and misused of blogs for political platforms have really worsen the situation.
One of the questions that I would like to answer in my weblog is “Can a teacher become a blogger?” For me, blogging is not something that is totally strange to us as educators. As a teacher we are encouraged to keep records and journals of our daily teaching experiences. In our daily lesson plan itself, we are required to make a reflection of every lesson we taught. This instrument is vital in evaluating the effectiveness of each lesson.
Being reflective of our daily teaching experience is crucial because it will benefit us in the future. As a baby blogger, I always believe that my blog entries are precious journals that will help to encourage me in difficult time to come. Every success and failure in the classroom should be recorded so that it can become a source of reference in the future.
To make it clear, I am not suggesting that every teacher should become a blogger. We have our own ways of keeping record, such as writing diary, audio and video recording. As long as it can be a medium that helps you to reflect back to your lessons in class than you are doing the right thing. My personal experience has taught me that if we teachers do not take time to post-mortem our works in the class then we will not improve.
In a nutshell, teaching and blogging are two components that complement each other. Blogging can be a powerful tool that helps us to be a better teacher if we use it in the right way. So, the answer is YES, a teacher can also be a blogger. I’m proud to be a blogger myself.

My reflection

Today, my school becomes the organizer of Cooking Competition for the state level. For the whole week my colleagues and I have been busy preparing for this special event. Each of us was assigned with specific tasks such technical, documentation, venue preparation, and other duties.

Being in charged of public address (PA) system really prompted me to channel all my energy and time to make sure everything goes on well. However when I reflect back I can say that I spent too much time focusing on this duty, thus leaving me less time and energy to focus on my core business of teaching.

And for me this is one of the major challenges faced by all the teachers nowadays. There are constant calls for teachers to fill in the job as clerks, technicians, gardeners, landscapers, sports coach and other responsibilities. The larger question is do teachers work hard at the right things? Are we focusing more to these secondary calling and rob us from our primary business? This is the question that keeps bordering me every time I was called to handle this secondary task.

Of course, through this multitasking and duties I have really learned a lot of new things and experiences that can really help me in my professional progress. However, I still feel guilty if I need to compromise the quality times with my students.

Perhaps the solution to this problem is time management. This is something we as a teacher needs to master and learn in these challenging days. Employing more clerks, gardeners and technicians per school may also solve this problem.

At the end of the day, there will always be a lot of tasks, responsibilities and expectation given to a teacher. We can’t change that .But what we can do is keep ourselves focus on our core business in whatever situation (I am reminding myself too) and work through these secondary duties.

The Power of Words

As the teacher on duty this week I was bombarded with a lot of disciplines cases. Maybe mid semester is the time when these students start to show their true colours. However, handling one of the students’ fighting cases really makes me realize that words can carry great power. The fight started when these students exchanged words and teased at each other.
This incident really reminded me of how much words can affect the scenario in class. There are times in my class that I really need to inject a lot of encouragement and motivation to keep my students’ hope alive through my words. I will always praise every little efforts and improvement made by my students. In my questions & answers session itself, the vocabularies that I used were “Good”, “Nice Try" and “Brilliant”. Teenagers today are used to immediate gratification and our compliments can really encourage them.
Of course, as a teacher sometimes we are so used to shouting and raising our voice at students. There are days and times when I reflect at it and feel regret for the choices of words that I had used to scold my students. Yet I will always remind myself to focus more on giving encouragement and motivation.
As a teacher, our tongue is a powerful weapon. We have the power both to build up and tear down our students. So, how are you using your power?