Microteaching part 2
Gonna pen my thoughts down before I plan my lesson plan for next week. And nope, I shall keep the cards closely to my chest. Since the 'students' are capable of springing surprises, I should spring a couple of surprises on them too. =X
Planning a fieldwork lesson ain't easy. Like the FSP, I am finding it quite tedious to think through all the risk assessments and do a recee around the campus to find something 'teachable' for the students. There is the safety aspect that I have to consider. I also have to put myself through mentally what my 'students' would be capable of when they are in the field. I am referring to the misbehaviours that they will spring on me. After going through all the possible scenarios (which bugged me for the entire weekend and I even dreamt of that), I realised that the issue of trust between the teacher and her students takes centre-stage when one is considering whether to take students for fieldwork or not. This trust issue lies in whether the teacher trusts the students to behave themselves. Like, will they create mischieve with weather measurement tools? If they damage the instruments, who will take the bulk of the responsibility? IMO, the issue of whether the students can learn independently can sometimes be taken for granted or overrided by this TRUST that teachers place a high priority on. This is especially so when my prospective 'students' next week could be springing some nasty surprises on me. Am expecting the opposite too where they don't do anything at all.
This brings me to the next point of reiterating what I said in my earlier post about who is going to benefit from fieldwork/fieldtrips. Really, if teachers expects, or rather had experiences with 'terrible' (sorry for the 'Timmism', but I am trying to be politically correct over here) students in the classroom, what would give them the incentive to plan lessons outside the classroom? In a way, this works in a self-prophetic manner. Teachers expecting the worst of the students, thus portraying an unenthusiastic attitude towards them; and the latter behaving in their worst manners as a form of rebellion. A vicious cycle results. Teachers will rely on teacher-talk to teach instead since this is the only thing that they are in control of. Should we blame them totally? Sure, what this institution is attempting to do is to churn out batch after batch of idealistic, enthusiastic teachers who are 'politically correct'. But in reality, teachers do have to conquer and struggle with their fears too. Not an easy thing to do. Writing academic papers in the comfort of one's office is comparatively easy to that. Definitely.
Oh, then there is this whole frustrating struggle with finding topics that are suitable for doing fieldwork within the school compound. Assuming that the teacher has somewhat overcome her trust issue and compromises by trying to plan a mini field work in school (students will be easily managed in school because of the space constraints and supportive environment), what topics can she choose?
1) Weather and climate. Sketching of clouds and predicting the weather is definitely out since that is taken out of the syllabus. No weather instruments can be used for fear of students not being able to take care of them. Not a feasible topic to do in school until the teacher is totally comfortable.
2) Vegetation. Unless the school is in the middle of nowhere in a tropical forest, the probability in attempting to do fieldwork in the school is zilch. You would not want to confuse students by getting them to 'pretend' that some area in the school with trees is a forested area.
3) Weathering and river. Unless your school is near a river (or canal in our case), huh?????
4) Natural resources. What natural resources in our schools? (Please don't tell me that the weather is a natural resource cos we know that natural resources in our syllabus meant something else.)
5) Tourism. Nada.
6) Urban settlement. Ok, if you want students to try to describe the morphology of the school compound. But that will need the extra effort to tie this back to the syllabus which covers the morphology of CBD area in Singapore. Students may get confused and we could be in hot soup. I will give this topic two and a half to three stars on the probability of being able to do some fieldwork in the school compound.
7) Geography of Food. What the hell is that?????????? Er... interview the aunties, uncles and maciks in the school canteen? Hm... sure!!
8) Industrialisation. Not going to waste my energy and saliva...
See? If teachers are really earnest in planning fieldwork, they would have to do it outside the school compound. How many fieldtrips can they organise in a year? Assuming that the school has 4 classes of Sec 1 and 4 classes of Sec 2, 3 classes of Sec 3, 3 classes of Sec 4 and 1 class of Sec 5 (this is considered a small school already), add the number of classes up which will give you 15 classes taking Geography. Take 15 multiply by 40 students in each class which will give us 600 students. If we want to plan fieldtrips for all the topics above... =X Not gonna say anymore.
Yes, this is an extremely pessismistic scenario that I am painting. Alas, that's me, I always like to expect the worst so that I can be ever ready to deal with any scenario that comes my way.
Planning a fieldwork lesson ain't easy. Like the FSP, I am finding it quite tedious to think through all the risk assessments and do a recee around the campus to find something 'teachable' for the students. There is the safety aspect that I have to consider. I also have to put myself through mentally what my 'students' would be capable of when they are in the field. I am referring to the misbehaviours that they will spring on me. After going through all the possible scenarios (which bugged me for the entire weekend and I even dreamt of that), I realised that the issue of trust between the teacher and her students takes centre-stage when one is considering whether to take students for fieldwork or not. This trust issue lies in whether the teacher trusts the students to behave themselves. Like, will they create mischieve with weather measurement tools? If they damage the instruments, who will take the bulk of the responsibility? IMO, the issue of whether the students can learn independently can sometimes be taken for granted or overrided by this TRUST that teachers place a high priority on. This is especially so when my prospective 'students' next week could be springing some nasty surprises on me. Am expecting the opposite too where they don't do anything at all.
This brings me to the next point of reiterating what I said in my earlier post about who is going to benefit from fieldwork/fieldtrips. Really, if teachers expects, or rather had experiences with 'terrible' (sorry for the 'Timmism', but I am trying to be politically correct over here) students in the classroom, what would give them the incentive to plan lessons outside the classroom? In a way, this works in a self-prophetic manner. Teachers expecting the worst of the students, thus portraying an unenthusiastic attitude towards them; and the latter behaving in their worst manners as a form of rebellion. A vicious cycle results. Teachers will rely on teacher-talk to teach instead since this is the only thing that they are in control of. Should we blame them totally? Sure, what this institution is attempting to do is to churn out batch after batch of idealistic, enthusiastic teachers who are 'politically correct'. But in reality, teachers do have to conquer and struggle with their fears too. Not an easy thing to do. Writing academic papers in the comfort of one's office is comparatively easy to that. Definitely.
Oh, then there is this whole frustrating struggle with finding topics that are suitable for doing fieldwork within the school compound. Assuming that the teacher has somewhat overcome her trust issue and compromises by trying to plan a mini field work in school (students will be easily managed in school because of the space constraints and supportive environment), what topics can she choose?
1) Weather and climate. Sketching of clouds and predicting the weather is definitely out since that is taken out of the syllabus. No weather instruments can be used for fear of students not being able to take care of them. Not a feasible topic to do in school until the teacher is totally comfortable.
2) Vegetation. Unless the school is in the middle of nowhere in a tropical forest, the probability in attempting to do fieldwork in the school is zilch. You would not want to confuse students by getting them to 'pretend' that some area in the school with trees is a forested area.
3) Weathering and river. Unless your school is near a river (or canal in our case), huh?????
4) Natural resources. What natural resources in our schools? (Please don't tell me that the weather is a natural resource cos we know that natural resources in our syllabus meant something else.)
5) Tourism. Nada.
6) Urban settlement. Ok, if you want students to try to describe the morphology of the school compound. But that will need the extra effort to tie this back to the syllabus which covers the morphology of CBD area in Singapore. Students may get confused and we could be in hot soup. I will give this topic two and a half to three stars on the probability of being able to do some fieldwork in the school compound.
7) Geography of Food. What the hell is that?????????? Er... interview the aunties, uncles and maciks in the school canteen? Hm... sure!!
8) Industrialisation. Not going to waste my energy and saliva...
See? If teachers are really earnest in planning fieldwork, they would have to do it outside the school compound. How many fieldtrips can they organise in a year? Assuming that the school has 4 classes of Sec 1 and 4 classes of Sec 2, 3 classes of Sec 3, 3 classes of Sec 4 and 1 class of Sec 5 (this is considered a small school already), add the number of classes up which will give you 15 classes taking Geography. Take 15 multiply by 40 students in each class which will give us 600 students. If we want to plan fieldtrips for all the topics above... =X Not gonna say anymore.
Yes, this is an extremely pessismistic scenario that I am painting. Alas, that's me, I always like to expect the worst so that I can be ever ready to deal with any scenario that comes my way.
posted by The neo-Geographer at Monday, November 13, 2006
1 Comments:
there is a half-way house between trips within the school compound, and trips of such magnitude that they can only be organised once or twice a year :-)
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