Met with Mr Ang today.. Went to meeting drained, left the meeting energised! Meeting with inspiring people always have a way to energise people!
He develop a program that aims to help "naughty" students to be be more interested in school. A 3 day 2 nights camp where the new teachers are placed together with the students and go through everything with them, experiencing the teachers as real humans, giving them a lot of choices but at the same time teaching the students cause and consequences.
Students and teachers leave the camp knowing one another better and building deeper rapport. This helps in the classroom management where teachers learn not to react to students who does not cooperate. They also learn to withold their judgment and seek to understand. Each students who gets the individual treatment feels appreciated that they are unique individuals and eventually get through to school.
He is open to share about the not so successful areas too. Firstly some teachers jsut go through the motion of the camp, therefore they dont get changed. Secondly, not all students chosen are willing to go for the camp, therefore they miss the opportunity to be changed.
Mr. Ang was willing to share his dreams and vision, his theories, his strategies and also his failures. Some grey areas that he is still figuring out, he was willing to share with Roger and myself. Thank God for giving such humble into position of authority.
His sharing affirmed what I was doing. I was rather disappointed at work today but felt affirmed at the end of his sharing. I know that I treat each child rather different and give a lot of grace to some children particularly. I know that my team members are having difficulty with my style and they are also trying hard to understand me. I guess they hope I can have a clearer standard so that we can all stand on the same line and be united. I hope for the same. I hope they can have a greater grey area. I hope that they can have greater flexibilty in handling different children. I know that standards need to be set otherwise children will get confused and also compare. But that is not a golden rule to be applied in all circumstances! Because you also set different contracts with different children within the boundary of rules. When kids are feeling low and they need a quiet place to settle their issue, do you tell them NO? These are the issues we deal with. Little subtle issues and day to day interactions with children that needs constant clarifications.
Many things to learn in working in a team...
And I also learn many other things and I am so excited now I want to join the camp and learn so that I may bring it back and share with my team members, and excite them enuff to want to run the camp for the children.
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