by Brenda Tan
RECENTLY, my Facebook friends were reposting an article, “Not too late to say ‘thank you’ to a caring teacher”. The article had resonated with my teacher and parent friends because the writer highlighted a much taken for granted aspect of teaching – teachers going the extra mile in unmeasured ways to instil values such as discipline and right learning attitudes in our children.
The article’s thrust was that parents and students could encourage the teachers’ efforts with a simple “thank you” during the school year, and not just on Teacher’s Day.
Interestingly, that article spawned ST Forum letters about respecting teachers and teachers’ part in inculcating respect. It left me curious – what does appreciating teachers have to do with them inculcating respect?
The initial article cited difficult parents as being a major frustration in teaching, which resulted in the sprouting of a letter urging parents to respect teachers as “important people that shape your children’s future.” In response, another letter came up which implored teachers to be “exemplary models of respectful behaviour”.
Having been a teacher, I agree that difficult parents can take the joy out of teaching.
Singapore teachers have the challenge of teaching up to 40 pupils in a class (not counting teaching multiple classes at different levels). That’s 40 diverse personalities with 40 different family backgrounds and 40 different learning needs. When teaching such diversity, the teaching professional is usually equipped with various methods to ensure that despite the number, learning can take place.
Our teachers undergo teacher training at the National Institute of Education (NIE), before starting out as teachers, as well as in-service, in order to hone their craft and stay relevant to changes in the pedagogical landscape – such as using computer technology to teach.
Apart from formal training, teachers are grouped by subject or level in schools to facilitate information sharing and to highlight best practices for topics in the curriculum. Within these collaborative circles, older teachers would also naturally mentor younger ones (because teachers teach, even when they are not in class) beyond the nuts and bolts of the curriculum, sharing tips and personal experiences in organising the classroom, marking scripts efficiently, and dealing with difficult students and parents.
Personally, I am deeply in debt to my senior colleagues who taught me more about the practical aspects of teaching in a Singapore classroom that are not covered by pedagogical theory in NIE. These older teachers not only enabled me to cope, but to flourish in my profession as a teacher.
Thus, like any professional, teachers have an intrinsic professional pride in their work. In this case, a teacher’s personal KPI is in seeing their students do well holistically in the social environment of the classroom and school.
Therefore, it is highly frustrating when parents undermine the teachers’ authority or when they excuse their children instead of complying with teachers’ requests. Most parents don’t realise that their non-compliance isn’t something that’s affecting just their child, but it affects the entire classroom dynamics which the teacher has to take into consideration and work around. Multiply that non-compliance with a handful of other parents, and suddenly, having to cater for these differing compliance levels results in a logistical nightmare.
This professional frustration is akin to when clients dismiss their lawyers’ professional advice, or when patients disregard their doctors’ directions, simply because they are educated, Google-savvy, and “know better”.
I’m not discounting that there are times parents do know better than teachers.
Clearly, parents have the advantage over teachers in knowing their own child’s background and learning patterns, especially in our school system where most teachers have only less than one year to get to know their class of 40, before they are promoted to another class with a different teacher. Parents also know better the capabilities and capacities of their child, even though this may be challenged by teachers who, having spent more time with children of a particular age, probably understand them in that phase of life better.
For example, I knew that when my eldest son who was promoted to a Higher Chinese class in primary two had only obtained his good grades the year before because he had studied for the test, not because he had a mastery of the language. His language teacher disagreed. She insisted that he understood her perfectly, and believed it was only “a matter of time” before he showed the corresponding competency in his schoolwork. Sadly, all we saw was our son becoming miserable about going to school, that in the end we opted to homeschool him.
Then again, when I was teaching a primary two class, one of my students developed a habit of deliberately taking her friends’ erasers and surreptitiously throwing it away. When I alerted her father about it, he got angry at me. He said his daughter never lies and would never do such a thing – even when I had been monitoring the situation after tearful complaints from her friends and had caught her red-handed. Within a week after meeting the father, he transferred his daughter to another school.
Then again, there are teachers who do the bare minimum of teaching, expecting parents to hire tutors for their students to catch up with the class. My son’s teacher taught by assigning worksheets and expecting her students to figure it out themselves. When the students did badly, they were “lazy” or “needed tuition”. It was frustrating talking to her at the Meet-The-Parent sessions, where I ended up feeling angry on my son’s behalf, yet having to encourage my son to spend more time on that subject and seek help from his friends when he was in doubt. His result for that subject that year was dismal, but thankfully, he had better teachers later.
With a secondary four son and two younger kids in primary school, I have had my fair share of the many unsung-hero teachers and the one or two go-hire-a-tutor teachers, just as I’m sure most parents would have experienced.
So why then the call to “respect teachers” and the reminder for “teachers to inculcate respect” on top of their teaching duties, as if respect for teachers is lacking or that teachers aren’t doing enough to inculcate respect?
Personally, I don’t subscribe to the idea that respect must only be given to a special group of individuals or that respect must be earned. For me, respect simply means to give courtesy and consideration for that other person. I like how the Inuit tribe greet each other with a word that translates into “I see you”. To me that’s basically what respect is – to recognise and give attention to the other person, without judging if that person is worthy of simple courtesy.
Therefore, I believe that the responsibility to inculcate respect is not the duty of a teacher nor the parent per se, but that of the village in that wonderful African quote: “It takes a village to raise a child”. Respect ought to be the cultural norm and social lubricant in how we treat one another, regardless of our age, status or background. In fact, it ought to be the value that underpins our “one united people, regardless of race, language, or religion” ethos, and give us new lens to re-see (re+spect) one another in our community life.
The idea that respect must be earned or given to special groups may be due to the confusion people have concerning respect and regard. Regard has to do with an admiration of a quality that another person has that one may aspire to, usually a quality that the person has earned. And where there’s regard, we give honour or special consideration to them.
Hence, it follows that the first letter-writer wishes to encourage parents and students to respect teachers, to honour their professional expertise, and the second letter-writer raises questions about teacher competency and the need for teachers to ‘inculcate respect’, to remind that this honour is ‘earned’ by their a continual professional development and to impart this idea by example.
Technically, neither writers are wrong in wanting more consideration for the teaching profession by both parents and teachers.
Parents do need to re-see how we are supporting our children’s teachers, whether they are the “unsung heroes” or otherwise. Teachers also need to re-see whether their communications hinder or encourage collaboration with parents, even as they continue to hone their teachercraft.
Respect, when freely given, allows us to have a refreshed look at where we each come from and how better to support each other for the larger work, whether we are parents or teachers – or even school-bus drivers, canteen operators, school cleaners, or other parents in the school. In doing so, we create a positive and nurturing environment that benefits those in the middle – our children.
But in the classroom, when both teachers and parents have mutual trust in their partnership, that is where our children feel most secure, knowing that their loyalty to their teachers and parents are not torn, and that the key adults in their lives all seek the best for them.
To me, that’s how we as a village ought to demonstrate respect so that our children can be raised as a gracious adult.
Featured image The Sick Classroom by Nge Lay by Flickr user Jnzl’s Public Domain Photos, CC 1.0
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