Good morning, teacher

I had my first experience observing a NZ school yesterday. I have observed schools before but that was in Malaysia. In NZ, the school is different, the system is different, and so, getting to see for myself how teaching and learning is done in here was really exciting. I always knew the way they teach and learn in NZ is different from Malaysia-I just didn’t know how different it was.

First of all, I LOVE the huge classrooms! When I think about my classrooms when I was in school back then, I remembered it to be small, hot and crowded. But the school that I went to yesterday, the classrooms are huge. They are big that you can even put couches at one corner for the children to just chill. The desks are not arranged facing the blackboard, like it is in Malaysia. The children have more mobility in class; they can choose to do their work on the couch or at their desk or with a friend from the other side of the classroom. I think if Malaysian schools were like this, all you will get is a noisy classroom with no work done. The particular classroom that I was assigned to even has a flat screen TV for educational purposes which I think is really cool. The walls are decorated so beautifully with their artworks and essays and I think if I had a class like that back then, I would really look forward to go to school everyday. It’s cheerful, spacious and fun-it just feels like home.

The student-teacher relationship was also very interesting. I remembered being terribly scared of some of my teachers that I didn’t look forward to go to school back then. Sometimes, I even wished for the teachers to be sick so that I won’t have to go through ‘hell’. But the classroom that I was assigned to, the children seem to love the teacher a lot. She is fun and energetic, and always have these cool activities to keep the mood up. Even though she was not strict, they still respect her as a teacher. She still holds the power.

The way the lessons are taught however, were a bit weird. Over here, one teacher is assigned to one classroom and that teacher is in charge of everything; Math, English, Arts and even P.E! And not all the children were taught at the same phase as everyone else in the class. They basically learn at their own phase. One student could be doing page 400 while another one could still be at page 350. In some lessons, different groups would be doing different things. During literacy yesterday, there were about 5 different groups doing 5 different things! I have no idea how the teacher keeps up with what they are learning, but it seems to be working! The particular class that I was in seems to be really good at math! They have this warm up session where they have to answer 20 math questions in under 2 minutes and the fastest person who gets it all correct, wins. The record yesterday was 41 seconds for adding and subtracting, and 34 seconds for multiplication and division.

So, yeah, that was basically what I saw yesterday. I’m really glad that we were given a chance to experience seeing how schools work over here. It’s very different from Malaysia, but I think the Malaysian education system has a lot of good points too. If not, I don’t think I will even be here in NZ right now if the education system failed me. :-p

What I must remember myself when I become a teacher:

1. To set classroom expectations from the first day of class.

2. To be as fun and exciting as I can.

3. To make the classroom as comfortable as possible (this is going to be hard considering I will be sharing the classroom with at least 5 other teachers)

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Later that night, my girls and I had a small potluck! It’s been ages since our last potluck so it was really nice to get together like that again. Last night’s potluck was the biggest we’ve had so far. We ate 5 ½ pot of rice, 4 different lauks (Shufaiha made Kari udang, Jo made rendang ikan?, Zaty made sambal ikan bilis and I made bebola daging masak kicap) and Che Nazira made the delicious custard pudding. We finished everything last night!