Helping Asians Help Themselves
The Goducate Children’s Home in Cambodia expanded its staff strength recently with the arrival of three new Filipino staff members – teachers Sheila and Gene, and Will, an agriculturist.
The three arrived at the Home at the end of August. They had about a week to settle down before the start of the new academic year on 10th Sept. Sheila and Gene are trained in the US home based learning system which the children at the Home are enrolled in.
The Philippines Nutrition Day in July was observed not only by the Goducate Literacy Center in Lalao (Aug 3 blog) but also by the other Goducate Literacy Centers in Laguna province—namely, at Mabacan and Talahiban. The students at Mabacan were joined by those attending the newly opened centers at Ulik and Burol.
All three centers followed a similar program that included, among other items, a parade of the students, accompanied by their parents and carrying baskets of fruit and vegetables, a competition among parent-child teams for the best slogan about vegetables, and a cookery contest for parents. At Mabacan, for instance, the winning slogan, was , “Kumain ng Gully para humaba ang iyong buhay” (“Always eat vegetables, so that your life will become longer”).
The idea of the Nutrition Day program was not just to teach children and their parents something about nutrition. It was also intended to encourage parents and their children to work together as a team. The Nutrition Day event is not the only one at which such teamwork is encouraged. Regular activities are held through the year to foster such cooperation.
I and a colleague from the Facilitators Network of Singapore (FNS) visited a sample of the Goducate Learning Centers in Sabah to assess the teaching practices there in order to see how we might be able to help them. We observed classes ranging from level 1 to level 4.
The community being helped by Goducate here are Filipinos from the southern Philippines who came over to escape the civil strife, unemployment, and poverty they were facing in their home country. As undocumented aliens (stateless people), their children are not entitled to state education. Goducate has been training the more educated of the mothers there how to teach the children literacy and numeracy and primary school lessons.
To our pleasant surprise we observed that a Philippines curriculum was well established and standardised across the centers. The dedication and enthusiasm of the mothers who were doubling up as teachers was striking. Instead of dampening their spirits, the poor environment they live and teach in, often swampy or flooded, together with their limited resources, strengthened their resolve to do their “best” for their students. The teachers not only displayed a high level of involvement but also a measure of accountability and a high degree of motivation, as demonstrated by their passion to constantly upgrade themselves in order to benefit their students.
A few students who have “graduated” from the learning centers have become main or assistant teachers. This engenders a sense of community within the centers. Some other students still studying at the centers at a higher class level are helping as assistant teachers in the lower classes. This gives them a sense of responsibility and experience, and also teaches them about giving back to society. Having assistant teachers allows all students to get sufficient attention, especially in class sizes of greater than 10-15 students.
However, there was minimum interaction between the teachers and students, with teachers feeding information to students but very little discussion about the topic being taught. There was not much encouragement for students who answered correctly or finished a task on time, nor was there group sharing.
We had informal conversations and interviews with the teachers and assistant teachers. We also conducted focus groups. We asked questions pertaining to the highlights and lowlights of teaching, and how to become a good teacher. The teachers were very forthcoming and cooperative. The various answers that we received, consistent among which was a need for training to become a better teacher, will help us at FNS to prepare a program that will enable them to become facilitative and interactive teachers.
Guest writer Parul, Volunteer from Singapore