Jump to Comments
Ms Thana and me in my comot tudung..*ngee
When I got back at work, I was summoned (he he..big word there) to attend a 3-day course for teachers at Klang. While I hate the idea of going away and sleeping at some seedy hotel (there were men lining up for hookers at some room on my floor at night. It was an eye opener on the Malaysian brothel scene!) the thought of going away from the familiar work scene and learning something new did entice me. I was thrilled to meet up a former senior of mine who presented a paper on classroom practices – Ms Thana. I remembered my lecturers mentioned her research to me and actually read it up in the library. Although she’s not a professor just yet, I admired her dedications of documenting her classroom practices and made it available for others to see. I’m sure there are plenty of commited teachers out there who toiled in and out of their classrooms but nobody bothered to recognise them – myself included, so the effort of putting up various speakers to present their achievement looks great to me. Here is an outlet to discuss on what works and what doesn’t and how do we innovate on that. Sure there are plenty of complaints but it builds us to be better presenters and learners. However towards the end of the course, I was dissapointed by the organiser’s remark on our complaints –
“you know that you’re here on sponsored stay – everything is free so there shouldn’t be any complaints.”
To me, just because you don’t see the money coming out of our pockets at that very instant, doesn’t mean that things are free. We were there on taxpayers’ money to improve ourselves as civil servants and contribute to society. Therefore if things doesn’t run smoothly with plenty of hiccups, complaints should be sufficient to improve the event later – whether in terms of accommodation, program schedule, etc. I believe that the better of us knew that these kind of remarks is the current attitude of the top civil servants administrators – conducting courses as a means of CHOGM (refer to title). I left a bit disgusted at that attitude, but overall, I feel rejuvenated to reflect on my classroom practices and improve on that. Well, thanks to people like Ms Thana who shows that you don’t have to prove to the public that you’re great. The real yardstick is your students’ marked achievement in their exams. Oh yeah, I don’t think the government did a CHOGM on me coz I left with lots of inspiration and knowledge.
This is purely my views on people, places and subjects I encounter. Comments and feedback are appreciated. It helps add into my social-study! :) Have fun here.
