Hello Family and Friends. This will probably be my last post of 2012. Tonight at about 8:30, my roommate Lynsey and I will get on our Turkish Airlines flight back to the states. (Well, our flight to Singapore, then Istanbul, then Chicago, and then we will part ways and I will catch another flight to Minneapolis.) With the time change factored in, I will be back just before midnight on the 16th.
I had meant to update a little about some of the other fun things I've done in the past couple months since going to Thailand: visiting the beautiful Thousand Islands for a weekend (which involved swimming, snorkeling, and seeing a monitor lizard) and going to Singapore a different weekend with our Singaporean friend Mildred. Singapore is fun, but ever so clean, modern, efficient, and sleek. Basically it's what would happen if Ikea was turned into a country. We went to the Botanical Gardens, Chinatown, saw the Merlion and hung out on a beatuiful beach in November on Santosa island. There was also a Thanksgiving buffet meal at a swanky hotel in Jakarta where the champagne flowed freely and fun was had by all. Good times. Well, there's you mini update anyway. I don't have the time or energy for a longer explanation. After crying my eyes out while watching CNN this morning, I am already feeling drained. It's useless to put it out of our minds entirely, but Lynsey and I are listening to the comforting sounds of Paul, John, George, and Ringo so that we can move on and think about other things.
Nevertheless, I would like to write a little bit about what it's actually like teaching in Jakarta. In a word, it's different. I realize now that when I signed up for this whole overseas teaching thing, I was rather naive about the fact that not only would the country be different, the student would be different, the culture would be different, but also the school itself and the school culture could be very different. When I student taught in Belgium, the school operated on Western educational principals which I was already familiar with and there wasn't much I needed to learn or transition to, other than learning the IB standards.
Bina Bangsa is quite different from the Western schools I have taught at. It uses the Singaporean method (albeit a little out of date, because they don't progress as much or as often as Singapore actually does) and now I actually know what that means. I can't say I'm always a big fan of the educational philosophies that underpin how the system works, but it is what it is and it's my job to learn and adapt to them. What I mean by that is, for instance, for the past couple of years I have been molding a philosophy of education in which I believe that hands-on experiences are important, projects and holistic learning are essential, tests are not so important compared to integration into the so-called "real-world." It's all on my educational website if you're really that interested in reading it. At this school (and in the Singaporean system to a degree) tests are all-important and competition is the key. So, as I say, it's very different.
We had parent-teacher conference yesterday. Almost every parent wants to know what rank their child is in the class. Quoi? I can't imagine an American parent ever asking that. American parents might want to know if their child is doing okay and developing okay compared to other children the same age, but never would they want to know what their child's "rank" in class is based on total percentage of grades. It was easy to deal with that question however: "I'm sorry, I don't rank the students." There, taken care of, and also true. Many of the parents - most, I would say - are true Tiger Moms and Dads. This is not a stereotype, it's just true. I had one parent say, "I'm not so concerned about grades so much as that my son is developing creativity and social skills," and my jaw about hit the floor because it's just a rare thing to hear expressed here. Wish all parents could be like her. I was shocked to hear another grandparent express concern that her grandson's English-language accent was lacking and that he sounded too much like an Indonesian person. Um, he is an Indonesian person. But I promised her nonetheless that I would listen to hear if there was anything amiss with his pronunciation. Anyway, the vast majority of parents are very nice people, very friendly to the teachers, but also demanding that their children's percentages just go up, up, up. A lot of the students have tuition teachers for extra classwork after school just for this reason. Unfortunately, time left for just being a kid is little.
Here's just a little bit more about what the students are like here in West Jakarta.
Here are some adjectives that describes the average student at my school: privileged, nannied, wealthy, Jakartan, 75-99% fluent in English, rotund, sheltered, Chinese-Indonesian, trilingual, motivated, interrupting-all-the-time, good natured, normal kids.
The first three (privileged, nannied, and wealthy) are due to the fact that it's a private school. The wealthy Chinese-Indonesian business class of Jakarta (which is about 99% of our demographics) like to spend their money and don't blink an eye at expenses. Almost every single student has a nanny who takes care of them at home and a driver to bring them to school. Some families have a driver for each child! (It's an odd role reversal that it's the teachers who take the school buses to work and the students who arrive in cars.) Unfortunately however, the influence of having nannies can bring about some negative consequences for the kids (at least in my opinion.) First of all, nannies tend to replace parents without actually acting in a parenting role. Some parents don't live at home (some are even on different islands or in different countries) and some don't interact much with their children. For example, a friend of mine had to pull aside a student to address a behavior problem one day. Asking about home life, she asked the girl if she saw her parents everyday, to which she nodded. When asked if she talks to her parents everyday, the poor girl burst into tears. I don't know how common this sort of parent-child relationship is, because I'm sure it doesn't describe all the families at our school, but it is a reality for many kids.
The nannies also tend to baby the kids, because that's what they're paid to do. A friend who coaches the after-school swimming activity walked into the girls' dressing room one day to tell a girl she needed to hurry up because her older sister was waiting for her. The reason it was taking so long? The nanny was dressing the girl - who was a 4th grader! Apparently nannies also used to literally spoon feed students at recess and lunch up until 3rd grade, and put the students' backpacks on the lifts so that they could pick them up on whatever floor they were going to. Both of the last two practices are now gone, although I frequently have to stop my P5 kids (P5 = 5th grade, P4 = 4th grade, etc. P stands for "Primary,") from putting their bags in the lift. They claim the bags are too heavy. I give them two options. Take some things out so it's not so heavy, or just deal with it and carry your heavy bag downstairs.
Many of the students are also sheltered. They go on vacation, but they tend to go to resorts and play their iPads, not go mingle and explore. They have trouble relating to real-life adventures. (Sad, really...) I also say rotund, although that applies to maybe 1/3 or 1/2 of the students. It's not their fault obviously. The most popular foods are fried noodles, rice, and chicken. I rarely see students eating fruit or veg at lunch or recess time. In fact, my P4 students looked completely disgusted one day when they saw me eating a carrot, raw of all horrors! Vegetables are always fried or cooked.
Now, to talk about their good qualities, they are generally a very motivated bunch. They want to do well in school. I can say that pretty much across the board about all of my students. Part of it is that they have pressure from parents, but there is also a culture of wanting to do well. And the fact that almost all of them can speak English, Chinese, and Indonesian is very impressive (granted to varying abilites.) They are also very sweet kids, generally speaking. They like their teachers and respect them. If their behaviour is out of line they will usually change it when told why. I have mischievous kids, and demanding kids, but I don't have any that deliberately try to sabotage class activities or be destructive.
Where I struggle with my students is in getting them to wait their turns, or using imagination and critical thinking. The fact that they receive constant one-on-one attention from their nannies at home means they often (scratch that - regularly) fail to understand that there are many of them and only one of me, and I most likely cannot help them the instant they want it. Female teachers are addressed as "Miss" and male teachers are addressed as "Sir." (I go by Ms. Danna here, like in Belgium.) If I've given the students something to do, at about that time when the majority are finishing the task, it's a barrage of "Miss!" "Miss!" "Miss!" "Miss!" "Miss!" and they will shove papers in my face, demanding that I check their work that instant. Of course I tell them to back off and wait their turn, but it took me a while to come up with the slogan that I plan on repeating until they understand: "I hear you. Wait your turn." They are bad interrupters too. Again, they want instant attention. I had to lecture my P5s the other day that unless it's a true emergency - unless they are bleeding profusely - they must wait because I will probably be done saying whatever I am saying in a few moments. I try to thank people for raising their hands too. Again, I don't necessarily blame the students. They are used to having the instant attention. I just need to make it very clear that they must wait their turns and why.
That's about it for the students. I have relatively small classes. My P4 Science class is 15 students, P4 English is 24 students, and P5 English is 23. (That last one is also my form class, or homeroom.) It wasn't hard to learn names because out of all those students I mentioned above, only one has a Chinese name, the rest have Western names, although sometimes with surprising pronunciation of familiar names.
There's a lot more I could write about. The fact that we have Heads of Department, who must clear everything. (Aaah!! Micromanagement!) and also level representatives. I am the level rep for P4 Science so I write the tests and at least two worksheets per unit for all four P4 classes. As I say, it's just very different. Everything from the fact that we have no permanent classrooms and move to the different classes while the students stay put, to the way tests and report cards are done. Not to mention, beyond the mechanics of how the school day unfolds, the cultural basis behind what is done and why. Which, if you want to know about that, is better done in a conversation than a blog post.
That's it for now. I may - may - write more if I am stuck on a long layover with wifi access. Hopefully that will not be the case in Istanbul however, because of the chance to take a free tour of the city via Turkish Airlines that Lynsey and I will definitely check out. I sure hope that works out! I want to see the Hagia Sophia!
Well, I'll be home in something between 24 and 48 hours! Can't wait to spend Christmas with my family and friends. And see snow on the ground and wrap up in sweater! I miss that here in Indonesia. There is no sense of "coziness" that you get with a proper winter. But soon enough I'll be back in Minnesota and there will be lots of coziness I hope. It's been an incredible 6 months. Here's to the end of an interesting, eventful year!
