A Glimpse Into Daily Life

I know, I know, I am missing about 2 weeks worth of details. Due to the fact that my computer decided to inconviently die out there has been few updates. I wsih I could go back and give you every juicy detail of my past days but I am way too busy (and lazy) to do so. Instead I thought I would post my short weekly observations I have to turn into my MSU professor. Hope this gives you glimpse into what I have been experiencing! This is from the week of July 21 – July 25, 2008. Enjoy!

Monday

Like last week, this week at school began with the school wide assembly. The agenda was repeating itself until the emcee teacher changed her tone and began speaking in English. In a berating tone, the speaker harshly reminded the students they needed to have their long hair pulled back and fingernails must be clean and cut short. Some of the students, I noticed, began to self-consciously look at their hands and stick them in their pockets or behind their back. I was really curious as to what significance this had. Later I was able to ask my host mother the reason for such reprimand. Apparently the school has strict rules about student hygiene; girls with hair longer than their shoulder must pull it back in a ponytail and all students have to have clean nails. I also learned there could be consequences for not fulfilling these requirements. What these consequences are, I am still unsure.
In terms of school for today, I was able to co-teach the Year 2 English class. The teacher, Puan Anis, and I did a wrap-up review of the garden unit they had been working on. For the lesson, I had the students volunteer to come out of their seats (WHOA, I know!) and come to the board. They then were able to move pictures of insects and plants I had made to make a class garden on the board. The lesson, followed by a writing and drawing activity, went fairly smoothly. I was fairly pleased with myself until Puan Anis said, “Did you use permanent marker on the whiteboard?” I was so embarrassed and had to spend the remainder of the class trying to erase my mistake.
After school my host mom took Sam, Courtney, and I to a grocery store. The plan was on Wednesday we would make an American dinner for our families. It was really interesting seeing the similarities and differences from their grocery stores to ours. One strange thing: in order to use a cart you had to trade in a ringgit for a token to release a cart from the chained holding area. I was planning to make macaroni and cheese but for some reason cheddar cheese was impossible to find. The other girls also found some of their ingredients were missing from the store, simple things we expect to be in a grocery store. And one thing I really find strange is milk comes in boxes, not refrigerated until they opened at home. I would also like to mention this does not taste like real milk either. Overall though, most products were much, much cheaper compared to the price they would be at home. My host mom mentioned though, compared to monthly incomes of my Malaysian families, grocery shopping could be a costly event.

Tuesday
Today in English class the students began a food unit. For their final activity they wrote out and brought ingredients to make sardine sandwiches. They had to follow the simple directions written in English to actually make the sandwich. Since they were making their typical lunchtime sandwich, I brought ingredients to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Surprisingly, the students were wary to try the American version of a typical sandwich. Those who did try though, really enjoyed them. I was able to parallel their ingredients and directions for making the sandwich on the board, adding to their English learning.
Science class today started out with Puan Yong showing me how she had planned the lesson for the day, the book and textbook their were working out of, and the directions to a simple group activity they would be doing at the end of class. This was really helpful for me to see how she had planned and laid out the lesson since this is an area in teaching I struggle with. The class took an interesting turn about half way through; one of the girls in class threw up at her table. I attempted not to laugh when the teacher said, “I think she isn’t feeling well.” It is comforting to know simple class disruptions like such happen everywhere in the world. The way in which it was handled though shocked me a bit. After the student was taken out of the class with her classmate, the teacher then had to handle the situation herself. She took out her “hand phone” (cell) from her bag, walked to the back of the class and proceeded to call the girl’s parents herself. About 5 minutes later, her phone rang and she proceeded to answer it directly in front of the class. This would never happen at home. Teachers using their cell phones in the middle of teaching would be absolutely not accepted. It was interesting to see this take place, but it also made me wonder what type of emergency action plans or first aid training the teachers in Malaysia have.
For our extracurricular outing at UPSI, we learned to play one of the sports played by Malaysian women, netball. While this game is reserved for females, it was interesting to see the one male on our trip, Eric, get into his element and dominate on the court! This game is very similar to basketball without any backboards, physical contact, and no dribbling is involved. It was a bit complicated at first. I played defense and the girl I was supposed to be covering was pretty much an expert at this game. Also, it should be mentioned I typically have little athletic ability when it comes to games requiring lots of coordination. While it was challenging to play against the Malay girls, I actually enjoyed myself and marked down another cultural experience in my mental notebook.

Wednesday
Today was a fairly typical day at school with little happening in the way of me teaching. I did get to spend about 35 minutes planning with the math teacher I work with. Sitting down and talking out what needed to be covered in the next two days was really helpful for me. I liked to see how she thinks out the day’s activities and writes the actual lesson plans. The format so strikingly similar to the way we write formal plans at homes. The headings we used were objective, outcomes, and activities. While I think these are really good things to include in lesson planning, I pretty much copied this directly from the teacher guidebook. I asked if this is typically how she plans lessons and she replied to the affirmative. This frustrates me a bit because all the book does is provide a guide how to teach from the text and assign problems from the workbook. There is little to no variation to these plans. I cannot understand how the students, or even the teachers, can function without extreme boredom in this type of a situation.

The highlight of this day was the American dinner prepared by Courtney, Sam, Renee, Meredith, and I. We started cooking in my house around 4:30pm. It was so exciting and comforting to feel like I was doing something to thank my family and the others for hosting us. Everyone there tried all that was made and really loved all the food. At one point I was sitting in the kitchen talking with my host mom and some of the other guests and I just felt so at home. I had that overwhelming feeling of content and it was a pleasant moment. I had been feeling a bit homesick and this truly made me feel right at home.

Aidil and Aira perform a song before everyone goes home! (Country Roads by John Denver)

Thursday

Slight disaster would be a good way to describe school today. I was all set to pair teach the Year 2 students; I had prepared half of the lesson, my mentor teacher the other half. Since the class today was an hour and a half long, there had to be a lot of content and activities accomplished to fill the time appropriately. Unbeknownst to me the teacher had let school early since she is very pregnant and has been feeling ill. So instead of having 90 minutes worth of lesson, I had 45. Plus, there was no teacher to help me translate to Malay the words and directions the students most likely would not understand. Needless to say, this class did not go well. At first the 40 students were fairly well behaved, but when I began teaching and assigning the agreed upon work from their workbooks classroom management became practically impossible. I felt like I was in a horrible subbing position. I struggled through the examples, having the students answer me in their broken English, and helping them with their work. When I decided to hand out bookmarks to the students who were working quietly at their seats for a reward, the students barely held it together. My reward plan backfired and the students began yelling, “I didn’t get one!” Typically when a teacher is gone, a fellow teacher will be the relief. Unfortunately there was not a teacher scheduled to come for relief until 12pm, one hour after I had struggled through the class alone. I walked out of the class with a headache and a feeling of failure. I take it very personal when lessons do not go well and I feel like the students struggled with the material. This was not only frustrating to me but I was physically drained from the experience.
The afternoon at home was more pleasant, and as usual made me feel more relaxed and comfortable. After taking a short nap, I went for a walk with Ainol. Every time I walk down the street I am stared down. It makes me wonder if it is because I am clearly a white American or if it because women typically do not leave their homes without a male escort. While Ainol is male, he is only eight. I also spent a fair amount of time talking with my host mom and sister about religion. They told me a lot about Islam and their basic belief system. I was also able to share a lot about my views on Christianity and religion in general. Having these types of eye-opening and informational chats are something I looked forward to before coming here. I appreciate learning about others ways of life and what drives them to behave in the ways that they do. The more I learn about Islam, I am learning many aspects of it correspond with Christianity. Findings like that bring me to the question: If religions are so alike, why is it that is usually the underlying reason for war in the world?

Friday
At UPSI today we had a group/class discussion on how our experiences at school are going. It was nice to share daily events, hear what is working/not working for others and gain perspective on how I can improve my teaching techniques here in this unique environment. Kurnia and Sri gave us many things to think about; using classroom management styles that use little or no words, drawing pictures to go with directions, playing games that allow each student to have a turn rather than losing control of the whole group. I really enjoy hearing and learning new teaching strategies from other teachers. Plus, these sessions allow me time to share challenges, triumphs, and lessons learned to better equip me in Malaysia as well as at home.