Practicum: things you’ll never learn in NIE.

It has been three weeks since practicum began, and I can honestly say that I am feeling a growing attachment to the school that I have been posted to. Yet this sense of attachment is plastered with feelings of attrition – with the entire experience of interaction constantly challenging my beliefs, my values, and what I really set out to be.

The problem with pedagogical theory is that most of these are but scientific know-how meant to somewhat explain the behavior of a class of students. Ironically, which is almost similar to what Economics at ‘A’ levels is like. However, the distinction between the two lies in the fact that Economics makes more logical sense than pedagogy – it’s easier to define a rational and maximizing person when it comes to talking about money and profits, but when one tries to create a Homo Discipulus to fit the assumptions that the Economic Man seem to be able to, the difficulty rises exponentially.

Prior to these three weeks, I faced practicum with excitement – I still do, actually, but what constitutes excitement is completely different. Excitement used to come in the form that our days at NIE were coming to an end, and assignments were ending, and that we were finally going to be posted to schools to really teach. Conversations will soon veer from what was once endless complaints about impending deadlines to that of how students raised interesting and baffling conceptual questions, how the new school environment is, how we were going to meet each class with fresh-faced jubilation.

Excitement now, in contrast, comes in the form of being able to interact with the students – the emotions and the feelings that one invests from the moment he or she steps into the class and announces that this is where everyone will be for the next ten weeks, where everyone is headed for the next ten weeks, where everyone will eventually end after the next ten weeks. Vested in these, however, lie the students – the very people whom we build our plans upon, build our assumptions upon.

Yet we build the assumptions based on what we think is right, what pedagogical theory says is right. It can’t differ to much, can it? We think to ourselves before we embark on the typological process of putting our thoughts down into a document template – or should I say, that’s what we convince ourselves to believe. The problem comes when we step into class, and we then discover that hey, nothing is really working out right here.

Why?

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My school would be something that the commoner would call an “average” school. So we can extend that notion to everything else and therefore the students, are by extension, “average” as well. However, it doesn’t take a mathematician to tell you that statistics lie, and that the mathematical notion of “averages” is but a overly simplified way of normalizing a bunch of very dynamic individuals.

Students are dynamic individuals – we crown and label them by these spectrum of so-called “ability levels” according to what pedagogical theory says and hopes we employ, but we fail to realize that this dynamic nature of each and every student means that the notion of “average” is but an easy way out of planning a lesson.

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These three weeks have been rough – the last week especially. After one of those lessons, I had a conversation about teaching with K – you see, I love these conversations about teaching and students, and it helps when you feel down and out that a colleague (who may not be in the know) talks to you about how we can make things better.

Undeniably, the short conversation forced us to rethink our strategies for the students – K is more experienced than I am, mind you – but the theme of the conversation was simple: assumptions that we make need to be constantly re-evaluated, re-made, re-applied. So must our teaching, so must our pedagogy – if we even believed in them in the first place.

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G raised a lot of valid points in his briefing to us – we’re service providers, we may be the best providers of the subject, but can our methods ensure that the students have received the service successfully?

Dedication is one thing, care is one thing, being a master of content is another – but what if these are none of which the students want? Where do we go from there? What else can we do?

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I can’t help but evaluate my own lessons with trepidation – because I am not a student, I am not that dynamic individual whom I set out to teach, educate, and inspire. I am but a product of an age-old education system undergoing transformation. So what can I do to make things better? How else can I change and evolve my processes to make things relevant?

Change. Let this be a constant reminder to myself – we are the gatekeepers to the learning of these dynamic individuals, and it’s time to figure out how to let more of them in.