It’s a Lockout
It goes pitched black at about 6pm here in North East India. So with an empty space where the TV should be there’s not an awful lot to do. Our nights normally include a dream list of what we would eat if we could eat anything (big mistake); I write this blog and we trawl through social media (which has now been saturated with Indian snack adverts).
It is this time of year when the picture-perfect classroom images are uploaded onto Twitter, Early Career Teachers (ECTs) are posting questions which make you remember how unprepared you felt when you first started out and there is also that sense of ‘new beginnings’ which only teaching really gives you.
This last few weeks has felt like starting out again for both myself and Tom but also for the staff we are working with and the children in the classrooms. Perhaps like some of the ECTs at home this week, we really felt we had a good idea of how things would run once we got out here: we would show everyone LBQ; everyone would love LBQ; we would demonstrate how to use it; they would use it and the children would make great progress. Quite obviously, in hindsight, that was never going to happen. There are far too many variables for it to play out that way - some of them beyond our control.
There are plenty examples of this: the curriculum here which doesn’t quite match up to LBQ; the cultural difference of teaching, it is firmly a rows-facing-front and teacher does-it-all kind of affair and in turn the children do not engage with ‘class discussions’ (although this is changing); staff training after school? Good luck with that, the teachers have left before you can say, ‘This won’t take long.’ The teachers are committed - but for most, this is not their only job - it can’t be: they wouldn’t survive.
There is then the communication aspect:
“Jop, do you have your relative pronoun lesson ready?”
“Yes, all done. Here are my notes, you asked me to be ready for pronouns. I am ready, look!”
“You are teaching possessive, relative, demonstrative, interrogative, indefinite and reciprocal pronouns in one lesson?”
“Yes, I am ready!”
“Jop, you only have 40 minutes…”
Was I clear enough when we spoke before? Probably not. Did I assume he knew relative pronouns to be just one aspect of pronouns? Probably.
As an ECT I always remember the sheer embarrassment when I realised I had misinterpreted an SLT piece of information,
‘Good morning everyone, We are conducting a learning walk next week and would like to be seeing engaging classrooms with engaging classroom displays.”
As the Chair of Governors entered my classroom I proudly pointed to my handwritten mini-whiteboard, propped up beside an orange (taken from my lunchbox). ‘Year 4! How many oranges can you fit into this classroom?’ An engaging masterpiece huh? No, not really and it didn’t really fit in with the place value topic we were covering.
Was SLT clear enough with a fledgling ECT? Probably not. Did they assume I knew what they meant by ‘engaging classroom displays’ and ‘engaging classrooms’? Probably.
With Khraw, Jop and the teachers, we are dispersing one bucketload of information. Too much information? Probably. One thing I find myself saying constantly is, “We are all learning here.” Not as a superficial ‘I’m with you brother.’ But genuinely - I have learnt so much. I have learnt that with any new initiative, those implementing it will have vastly different needs. Did I know that before? Yes. Have I sometimes been one-size-fits-all in the past? I think so. I’m really excited to get back into my UK school to get that right. We have a number of our own ECTs joining us this year so this self-realisation has been timely.
Realisation has been a key theme: we left our old accommodation last week after coming to terms that the hostel/shack was offering us about as much joy as … well, a waterless, bedless, toiletless hostel. Our new accommodation is quite the enigma. Is it fantastic? Or a death trap? I don’t know. It certainly looks out of place in its location overlooking the Assam Rifle Army Base. It is an Art Deco design with huge glass panels and double height ceilings. It is a million light years away from our soul-sucking hostel we were in. Yet with all those things said, it has the build quality of somewhere which makes you not want to close the doors too enthusiastically in fear of the door coming off or the roof falling down. When we were let in by the brother of the owner, he proudly showed us around and told us he had built it himself with no building experience. ‘Oh, really?’ He pointed out that the door had a latch and a lock to make the back door secure. We were also told to use this entrance as the front door didn’t work. Naturally.
On return from working at one of the schools we quickly realised that when we had left that morning and locked the door with the key, the internal latch had knocked down and ensured that the door remained firmly shut. Fantastic. After around 40 minutes of scouting an open window and prising the door open to fit a grass knife, pen, twig, rope and anything thin enough to fit through (like my patience) we managed to flip the latch up using the wire from the key ring.
Had Mr Builder presumed we were fully grown adults capable of not locking ourselves out? Probably. Should he have patronised us and showed us how to lock a door? Yes, probably.