Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Firstly, I want to applaud all the people who spoke up in a very stressful situation, and who were also courageous enough to own your reflections. You did not have to, because the promise was that your reflections would be kept anonymous. I am sorry I did not honour that promise as I thought it would help us to come closer to a solution if I aired some of your concerns. But as Wei Kim pointed out, perhaps it was not the right time to do so today. I am also grateful that many of you were willing to share your reflections, because I know you believe that this will help the situation to move forward.
Until reading all of your reflections, I must say I honestly did not know there was so much stress and unhappiness in the class. I need to make it clear that I did not take action because of complaints from students. Hearing from Wei Kim and some others just confirmed that it was time for me to do something about a situation that I had found very unhealthy for quite a while, based on feedback from teachers and largely from my own assessment as well.
I chose to take such drastic action today for the following reasons:
1) After my experience last year, where a minority of students in my form class made it difficult for the majority to excel, I do not want to a see a repeat of the same situation. As a teacher I feel I have let my students down by not stepping in to protect those who want to learn. However, I will say this: at the end of the day, regardless of what is happening in class, people who want to study and put in the effort will achieve the results they deserve. The hardworking ones who remained "silent," focused and persevered made it to JC, MI and the polytechnic courses of their desire. Those who chose to waste their time were disappointed with their results. The tragic part was that some of the really weak students who tried their very best but could not learn in a noisy environment really suffered. That is what I want to prevent.
2) Similarly, after my experience last year, I am of the opinion that it is difficult for people to change their behaviour in a short time. It is not that I don't have faith that people can change, but it takes years for real change to occur. Unfortunately, time is not on our side. I guess last year, I had the experience of putting a lot of time and effort into monitoring a minority of students regarding their behaviour, and I saw very little progress, even when they came to collect their O level results. This really broke my heart and spirit. I know this is a different class, and you are all different individuals. But at this point, I feel I have done my best as a form teacher to work with those who are making it difficult for others to learn. It is now more important for me to focus my attention on those who want to learn.
3) Finally, as an educator, I want to make it clear that there is no reason why bullying, whether physical, verbal or emotional, should be tolerated. Our classroom should be a safe place for everyone. Maybe some of you have put up with such situations for years, or you have seen teachers just put up with the situation for years, but I refuse to let this continue any longer. If you cannot stand up for yourself now in a reasonable way, what will you do when you go out into society? If you cannot learn to be considerate towards the needs of others and work with them, how will you keep a job or even start a family in future? If we cannot learn to overcome our differences and work to make our classroom safe for everyone, what hope is there for the world?
Miss Ruby
PS Can someone please fix the scrolling tagboard?! And the spelling errors?! :P
