Guy, the I’mpossible Kid

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“I think if I had to put a finger on what I consider a good education, a good radical education, it wouldn’t be anything about methods or techniques. It would be about loving people first. And that means all people everywhere, not just your family or your own countrymen or your own color. And wanting for them what you want for yourself. And then the next is respect for people’s ability to learn and to act and to shape their own lives.

–       Myles Horton, We Make the Road By Walking

I somehow stumbled upon this quote again, and it puts into words all that I believe in, and all that I want to do with Tutoría both in Singapore and in Thailand.

I recall my teaching days and sometimes I felt that it was easy to lose sight of this, chasing students for deadlines and homework, scolding and yelling in class or wishing I had a fiercer face so that kids won’t muck around during lessons or that I could control the class with a stare.

While I understand that discipline is love, I also knew I didn’t always act that way. Sometimes I was disciplining because of me, my ego of winning an argument that seemed to get the better of me. And they knew how to get to you. Other times it was just difficult to love. Kids with anger management problems blowing up and affecting the class (yes, names are coming to mind) or kids who just simply defiant, with irritating behaviors that irk the hell out of you, offensive, hurtful or still can’t seem to get it when you’ve got a gazillion other things to do and you’re not sure how else to explain the word ‘twice’. I hope other teachers can identify, or maybe it’s just me who struggles with this.

What I learned in Mexico began to topple these ideas of control – as scary as it sounds – and deal with the person in a one-on-one relationship, at their time and emotional state, and then go beyond that to believe that each one of them can do the same for someone else too. And they can do it, and there is a way to train them to do so.

I saw just that in Padoongrasdra School in Phitsanulok. This was my 3^rd visit already to do training with the teachers and students in English at the Primary 4 level. This time was the most fun because after training pockets of students, we were finally rolling out the lessons into the main classroom. Armed with 16 trained student-tutors, we brought in the class of 40 to receive Tutoría training from their fellow classmates. We wanted to live out their school name – that many hands hold education – with students taking ownership and driving learning at school in a very real way.

 

The class came in, group by group and got seated. When the last group walked in, I was introduced to Guy as ‘the kid who was kind of impossible to teach.’ Teacher Mu said he had the shortest attention span and it’s so hard for him to remember anything. I said hi and his teacher seated him a bench of his own. He sat there without a partner, probably thinking, I’m not going to learn today, again.

As I was organizing the class, Teacher Mu sat down with Guy and began tutoring him. I moved over to him and saw Teacher Mu helping him with the flashcards of various places in the Tema called, “My Hometown”. She told me, he’ll only learn the 5 words instead of the original 9. I nodded and sat down next to Guy.

Teacher Mu had left to help another child and left Guy with the five flash cards. I asked him what he was doing and he fell silent. Shyly, he showed me the bus and said ‘bus…’. Then he scrunched up his face and curled up, almost in agony in trying to remember what that place was. Suddenly he lit up, saying  “Bus-ketball!” And then looked puzzled as that didn’t sounds right. He gave up, saying ‘I can’t remember.”

 

Slowly we worked together and mastered 3 places – the bus station, supermarket and zoo. I told him, if he learned them well enough, he could tutor some of his classmates. He just said, oh, I can’t be a tutor. I can’t do it. I just said when you’re ready, I’m sure you can.

I tried asking him to write the Thai phonetics or the thai translation of each of the places but Guy said, “Oh, Thai, I can’t – I can’t read Thai,” and then went back to the new flash cards. I then gave Guy a two-minute break to just relax. During those two minutes, I expected him to run around or doodle, but he took the cards again, with his head lowered and repeating under his breath, “bus station, zoo, temple, supermarket.” Another girl came around and read some of the cards. She stopped at one and then asked Guy, “What’s this?” Guy looked up, and proudly said, “Bus station!” I beamed in delight – that was exactly right.

Guy was so delighted, that when she left, he went through all the cards again, just over and over again. Out of the pile of 5, he glanced at the remaining stack of cards on the edge of the table. “How about these?” he shyly asked. I felt my heart about to explode with joy. He wanted to learn.

That’s the power of feeling worthy of learning and learning make you feel like you’re worth it. Today for a moment, I saw Guy, filled with that joy. And it’s those moments that you know that Tutoría empowers in the tiniest but most powerful way through the simple opportunity to share knowledge with someone else and empower them to do the same for another. Its FiftyFold.

If we could do more of that in our schools, our students would be in a very different place right and so would our world. With the new FiftyFolf team in Thailand, beginning in 8 schools next Jan, we’re slowly but surely well on our way.

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Eating an Elephant

Art Students Tutoría team!

I apologize for not blogged in a LONG while. It’s been quite a journey! I just came back from Thailand two days ago working at a school and am starting the Tutoría network in a school in the town of Phitsanulok. Been challenged and amazed at the opportunities and the support that you all have been – thank you. With help from all of you (and thank you Eu-Wen for website help!) the FiftyFold website‘s up. (and check out the Redes de Tutoría one too)  🙂 From having Dr Gabriel here at the Eagles Leadership Conference or and running two sessions for teachers in Singapore and the Curriculum Planning and Development Division here to having the Art students at Shuqun tutor the Deputy Director General of Education, it’s been a lot of fun being in Tutoría with a whole bunch of people.

The Cámaras and Buenos in Singapore!

In Singapore we celebrate Teachers’ Day this month and it’s been a pretty special. Other than beginning work in Thailand with a group of teachers in a little town called Phitsanulok, celebrating with the teachers at Shuqun Secondary on our last round of Tutoría in Singapore, two funny things happened.

First, on Aug 23 Shuqun played host to the Cluster board meeting and guess what? ACJC is in the same cluster. AC. So Mrs Chan, my principal at ACJC came along and was tutored by one of my students at Shuqun. It seemed like my education world had gone full cycle.

Mrs Chan being tutored at Shuqun Secondary

Aug 23 brought to life the cycle of learning and teaching and teaching and learning for me. That unbroken chain of life-long learning that we all talk about, not just as a skill, but as a way to live, became a reality. If we could get that in our classrooms, in our schools, across continents, that teachers learn from students, policy-makers learn from teachers and I mean really learn – we’d have a global learning community that keeps getting stronger.

On September 20, the students at Shuqun (the school I’m working with in Singapore) are going to tutor their parents at our Normal Technical (NT) Showcase night, and on Oct 3, they are going to tutor and share the art of tutoring and their content skills to other teachers at Shuqun. I can feel this cycle continuing and slowly growing and taking shape, spilling out from classroom to community.

Tutoring at Shuqun

The second thing that made this month special was a note from Wen Fong, a Secondary 1 student in my classroom. He was initially rebellious in class but when he was given the opportunity to tutor in class, he began to show more interest for Math. I chose him to be one of the students to tutor the principals at the Cluster meeting.

The day before we tutored on Aug 23, he painstakingly hand-wrote out his entire teaching guide, filled with his own questions and anticipated responses in a thick 5 page document. He prepared his Tema on understanding the circumference of circles. He kept it in his file like a precious document and proudly brought it out when he began tutoring. “I bring it everywhere”, he tells me, “everyday to school, just in case.” Tutoring and sharing knowledge has become a lifestyle, a way of living and it’s that in Wen Fong that I can’t wait to see more in more students in Singapore.

On Teachers’ Day, he wrote to me

“Happy teacher day Miss Meixi, for teaching me a lot of skills for math and teach me how to example to others when I was teaching and let me join a lot of activity for teaching Student, Teachers and Principle.

THANKS YOU Miss Meixi for all the help to let me love math sooooo much and I got the dare to teach friends, teacher and other peoples.

Miss Meixi have a nice day for today and have fun during holiday… XD.

From your student, Wen Fong”

Best note ever.

That note will stay with me for a long while, especially when it’s a lot easier to give up and stop trying to make change. Sometimes it feels like there are so many obstacles against us: I still don’t know how to fund my work or how to strategize in the most wise or productive way.

Then notes like these from Wen Fong remind me of a saying from South Africa: There is only one way of eating an elephant: One piece at a time.

Eating an Elephant

Building the network of learners in Southeast Asia, changing the way we conceive of the classroom, train teachers and interact between schools a lot. Changing the role of schools in the community is also going to take time. But when I see students like Wen Fong rise up to the call, grow in passion, service and self-confidence as a person and be a leader in his school and community because of the academic work at school, my passion is renewed and my calling refreshed. We’re eating the elephant one piece at a time.

Thank you for joining me in this journey. I wouldn’t have had the courage to carry on without a lot of you. Please let me know what’s going on with you too!! So,

To all of you who have been my teachers in school and life in many more ways than one, Happy Teachers Day.

Love,

Meixi

Our Hands

More photos from March here! y ¡en Español aquí!

Washing the sheets!

I woke up this morning to the noise of dogs barking outside, almost killing two piglets that somehow wandered loose. We ran down to try to get our dogs off them, yelling at Goliath and Tiger with a broom in one hand and a rock in the other. Mounting donkeys and making fresh cheese to seeing the tree house built by some of my students by the watering hole where we bring the cows, it’s another day in Presa de Maravillas. It’s good to be back.

I’ve been out of the community for a full week, and living with Maestra Alma in the city of Zacatecas because Gabriel Cámara was here from Sunday to Thursday. What a week. We travelled to Pinos, to San Ramón, Villa de Cos, being at schools and being with those committed to bringing a change in education here in México. And each day left me more and more inspired by the work here, by the people and students here. Whenever I think about student movements, I think of protests, of marches, and I get excited by the student agency and activism that they are showing against an authority or policy but here I’m discovering a new kind of activism, a new kind of social movement, a movement of the academics.

I’m discovering that the depth of academic knowledge through the human part of education is what directs and guides this movement. Through a real learning experience, students are pushing the work in 1) them as people, it gives them the confidence to carry on, to dream, 2) their own classes, encouraging other students 3) having the confidence to share the work with other schools and teachers, even in other states 4) in their homes, and inspiring their parents, and 5) in their lives, as students tell me how they dream of bettering their community through being educated. It’s so simple, yet so profound.

On Tuesday, I saw this social movement with incredible clarity. We had a teacher training session with about 143 supervisors, teacher-coaches, principals, and teachers who came from the region called Pinos. Instead of bringing foreign speakers or bringing the Secretary of Education or some other big shot to do the teacher training, guess what they brought? An army of 53 students from surrounding schools, ready to tutor. Each student was paired up with about two teachers, principals or school supervisors and from 9am – 1pm, we worked and worked and worked. Every trio took up a spot in the beautiful cultural center in Pinos, completely immersed in the tutoría. The students woke up at 5am just to travel for about two hours to get to Pinos and we only got home around 6pm. But on the bus back, they were so satisfied with their work – both students and teachers – that that energy carried us through.

The teacher training session in Pinos

The movement extends beyond just events. On Wednesday, March 7, in San Ramón, I met Max a recent graduate from the telesecundaria in San Ramón, where Maestra Sara Moran teaches. And an idea that filled my heart with such joy was Gabriel’s idea that we need to create teacher-coaches who are students trained in tutorial relationships. Can you imagine recent graduates from the secondary school, these experts in the tutorial, training teachers and bettering the practice of education one teacher, one school at the time. That’s the student movement I’m talking about. It’s grounded in the academics, the very reason why we created schools- and fights the system with a march that builds up the people – the students and teachers and anyone who comes close to it – from within. It’s an exponential equation and the force just keeps getting stronger as we share it.

I still don’t understand how this can on one hand, can be so incredibly radical in so many other parts of the world, but seem so normal in Zacatecas. Here we’re not even talking about just teachers. The state of Zacatecas believed enough in those 53 students to be the ones giving the teacher academic training, and gave them a real opportunity to be part of building better teachers, better schools across the state.

As Gabriel said in his speech during the conference on Monday, also in Pinos, “We cannot change the economic situations, we can’t change the histories of a child, but what we have in our hands are their lives, and that is a lot.” What an opportunity. We do have those students in our hands, not just the “good” ones, but all kinds of students, student whose fathers are alcoholics, students whose mothers have already abandoned them, students who find no hope except in the safety of the school, students like the ones here who see members of organized crime hiding in the bushes, drug dealers n the street, students who have disabilities, students who even if they say they given up on school, still want to learn – and each can be a tutor. I’m living this here.

Gabriel giving tutoría en San Ramón, Villa de Cos

A few weeks ago I was depressed and down trodden by the hopeless and at times, despair I would feel listening to some of the stories of the women here or of some of my students and all I could ask was how do we even start to create a change? I wasn’t even going to be here for a long time- there’s only so much I could do. But being with the team and being with Gabriel made me remember that I was part of a team; a team of excellent academic authorities, a team of dedicated teachers who want a change and are willing to change themselves, and most of all, a team of students across the state ready to change schools from the inside out.

That’s what we have in our hands.

Our students