How flexible is your schema?
I'm in the middle of a training series with Cambodian teachers, and next time we'll be talking about Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development. A constructivist, Piaget argued that rather than passively receiving and regurgitating new knowledge, people organize information and experiences into a series of schemata (kinda like mind maps) on various topics. We have a schema for how to act and what will happen. (Dentist: bright lights, open mouth, bad news, that little vacuum that sucks out excess liquid.) We have a schema for everyone we know, including ourselves. (Colleague: neat freak, vegetarian, chatty, tech phobic.)
As we approach each new data point or situation, we interpret it based on an existing schema, trying to assimilate the new into what we already know. If we can't, we need to accommodate the new by revising or refining our schema. Young kids have very flexible schemata that they're constantly adapting. (Not every four-legged animal is a doggie? Okay, got it.) In adulthood, it's tempting to let our schemata fossilize, especially the well-established ones. We often reject new data that doesn't easily fit into our preconceptions. A kind word from a new neighbor might balance out or negate a nasty first impression, but a kind word from a boss with whom you have a long history of conflict may be ignored or viewed with cynicism. Constructivism helps explain why people who experience the same situation, like a mass shooting or a pandemic, can interpret it in sharply contrasting ways to confirm their prior beliefs.
I've hesitated to blog much about teacher training, even though it's a big passion, because I still have so much to learn. Between my language limitations, the cultural barriers, and our widely divergent prior experiences, I feel clueless a lot of the time. It's like trying to negotiate a peace treaty with only one-syllable words; to make my points, I have to rely a lot on pictures and hands-on activities that may be very unfamiliar to teachers, and I don't always understand their points during discussions.
Studying Piaget and creating this handout for next week clarified more deeply to me that the most important part of my job as a teacher trainer may not be to present data, but to uncover schemata. Teachers are far from blank slates. They show up filled with views about the nature of education, about individual students, about themselves, about American and Cambodian culture. Some of these views make them receptive to me and the content I share; some do not. Some views help them engage their students; some do not. Some overlap with American perspectives; some do not. Teachers are a diverse group whose attitudes have been shaped to varying degrees by Cambodian traditional values, international voices, and their own experiences. Understanding these attitudes is critical to my ability to resonate with them and provide helpful resources. Here are five statements I've heard from teachers that could impact our trainings:
1. If parents don't value education, neither will their children.
In one session, I asked participants to step into the middle of the circle if they agreed. Everyone moved forward for the above statement, with just one adding a qualifier: "It's possible their children will be different, but 90% of the time they're not." Certainly this belief has supporters in the US too, and many factors other than the teacher contribute to a child's motivation and achievement. However, automatically blaming the child and parents makes teachers feel that it's out of their hands. In fact, there's a lot teachers can do to improve or adapt their approach to better serve students. (Especially that group of private school teachers, of whom only about 1/4 have received any formal training as teachers. But even graduates of the government teacher training school have room for growth.)
Many teachers here face immense pressure to march on through a packed and challenging national curriculum, with their pace dictated not by students' comprehension but by the standardized tests. Many schools give teachers no planning time, so they literally show up to class having barely looked at the lesson. In one or two of the lessons I observed, the teacher spent the first 15 minutes copying the lesson from the sole textbook onto the board. He spent the next 15 minutes telling students to copy it into their notebooks, and they spent the last 15 minutes trying to answer the textbook's question about said lesson. No wonder many students struggle to understand or stay motivated!
2. Every class has two main groups: students who understand the lesson, and "slow" or "weak" learners.
Several teachers have asked me what to do about these weak learners, as if the same students are always weak in every lesson. I'm glad they're concerned and trying to address those who don't instantly grasp the content. In that same internship, I met a teacher who had simply given up on them. When I guest taught for his 10th grade English class, he told me, "The kids in the back don't know anything and don't care. I focus on the front two rows." I don't think he's alone. And he was right: after four years of English teachers with low expectations, some of these kids hadn't even brought their notebooks along and seemed shocked that I expected them to pay attention when they were completely lost.
I've often heard a similar attitude from parents: "My child is good at Khmer but bad at math," or "My daughter is smart but my son is slow," as if academic achievement is a fixed state that nobody can influence. This belief has major ramifications since dropping out is so common, especially in rural areas; I heard that about half of Cambodian children leave school by the end of grade 6. If your kid isn't smart and can't keep up in class, why would you continue sacrificing to send all those school fees when the child could stay home and help on the farm?
3. If kids are not writing, they're not learning.
OK, to be fair, I'm not sure I've heard teachers say this. But many have seemed hesitant to depart too far from the "teacher lectures - students write notes or answer questions" lesson format, for fear of both wasted time and behavior issues. Teachers enjoy participating in creative activities during seminars, like projects, discussions, games, and skits, but don't promise to use them in their own classes. And I've seen it in other ways. For example, I recently observed a grade 1 class recently with this lesson format:
1. Teacher writes key words on the board for students to copy into their notebooks
2. Students copy a paragraph using these key words into their notebooks (I missed the beginning of the lesson - the teacher or a student may have first read the story aloud)
3. Teacher gives students a spelling quiz on these key words
I asked the teacher, "Do students know the meaning of these words? Would they recognize them in a conversation?" "Um, I'm not sure. Do you think they should understand them?" The words were grouped thematically, not by spelling rules: the paragraph was entitled "Things I like about my town," and contained key words like peaceful, market, and river. But the teacher didn't attempt to engage the students in discussing or reflecting on its ideas, let alone creating their own list of their town's advantages.
I know a foreigner who started a bilingual preschool and fights hard to battle this "writing = learning" myth among teachers and parents. Many parents are convinced their 3-year-old should be writing English letters and numbers daily. Otherwise, their tuition is wasted. She has to educate them on the value of age-appropriate play as a crucial foundation for many subsequent skills. She also has a chart that reads "Listening - Speaking - Reading - Writing" with an arrow from left to right. She explains that skills develop in this order in our native language for a good reason. Especially for young children, they should develop in the same order in a second language. Children don't need their first exposure to English to focus on writing; play can incorporate lots of songs and speech, building children's listening and speaking skills.
I also saw this struggle among my colleagues when I was a classroom teacher. The Khmer curriculum focused heavily on reading and writing, which made a lot of sense for the nearly half of the student body who spoke Khmer at home. For the other half, learning how to spell "tomato" in the world's longest alphabet before they knew how to pronounce it or ask for it at the market was not exactly motivating. Eventually native and non-native speakers were split into different Khmer classes, but difficulties persisted. It seemed that every year of elementary school, students were spending months trying to relearn the alphabet while often lacking confidence to speak any Khmer in daily life. Foreign parents often requested a greater emphasis on listening and speaking, but this was so far from teachers' experiences as learners that several teachers never successfully switched.
4. Fear is a necessary component in classroom management.
I always start my presentation on classroom management by saying it needs to be founded on love. We love students, therefore we want them to be safe in our classroom and to be equipped with positive habits for a bright future, therefore we correct. We shouldn't discipline students out of anger, impatience, a need for control, or fear that they'll make us look bad. No participant has ever disagreed with me on this. (Not that Cambodians are prone to openly disagree with someone teaching them!)
Their real attitudes are more complex, though. The American who initially created this classroom management presentation says he often saw Cambodian teachers overly focused on consequences for misbehavior. "How far can we go to make students behave?" They underestimated the value of classroom structures, guided practice, encouragement, etc. to promote positive behaviors. Correction should be a last resort, and the goal is to use the gentlest possible means that brings about change, not the heaviest punishment allowed under school policy.
This conversation reminded me of the battle I used to have with student trash. Each period, a new group of students entered my classroom, and as they emptied their water bottles or received old homeworks back, they'd put them on the shelf under each desk. Once there, the trash was out of sight, out of mind for them and me, as hard as I tried to remind them to check desks on their way out. Every few days, I'd make a class empty the desks, and they'd comply but protest that it wasn't their trash. One day, the principal announced that since many desks were old and in poor condition, he was replacing them all... with shelf-free desks. One simple change in classroom materials eliminated the trash problem instantly without nagging or punishment.
With my current group, we read an article on cultivating emotional maturity. It emphasized the power of "love bonds" over "fear bonds" to motivate and sustain an individual's healing and growth. I was hoping it would motivate my teachers to choose love bonds with students, affirming and acting on their care for students while seeking freedom from selfish motives. Instead, they surprised me by commenting that they thought fear was critical. "Yes, we love our students, but fear is the best motivator for them to behave." They told me that in the decade or so since corporal punishment was banned in schools, student behavior and achievement have declined noticeably. I've heard similar statements from several other Cambodians. Some participants even said they've given students a small whack on the hand on occasion, which they distinguished from the harsher beatings that used to be acceptable in school. I suggested a couple alternatives, but having taught mostly upper-class high school students, my experiences are sooo far removed from theirs as they work with low-income children in grades 1-9. (These trainees admitted they hadn't yet finished reading the article, so I'm hoping it will nudge them to reconsider some of their assumptions.)
Their statements mirrored the #1 comment I hear from parents and guardians toward naughty kids: "[I'm going to] hit you now." Last week, I even heard a grandma threaten a 2-year-old that I would hit him if he didn't stop his tantrum! Actual hitting is rare, so I'm skeptical about the efficacy of this empty threat. But I think for parents and teachers who grew up with corporal punishment as an ever-present possibility, it's scary losing the main behavior tool you know.
5. Classroom management is easy in America because American children are well-behaved.
(Funny, some Americans have told me the opposite stereotype about Asian children!) I think this belief is an extension of the perception that everyone in America is as healthy, wealthy, and happy as they look in Hollywood movies. During my internship in 2016, teachers were tempted to dismiss a video clip on classroom management in an American school with a largely low-income, minority student body. They told me that US strategies weren't adequate for the behavioral challenges among their Cambodian students. I had to explain to the teachers that far from their assumptions, some US schools have resorted to metal detectors to keep students' weapons out! Students who arrive at school with excellent home support, motivation, self-discipline, and social skills are the exception, not the norm, in every country. But I'm not surprised that if they hold this view and try a new technique, they'd get discouraged and give up on the technique before it's had a chance to make a difference.
I've spent so little time thus far observing Cambodian teachers' classes and listening to them talk about school. I hope I can change that in the coming year as schools slowly resume. I'd like more data points and experiences to challenge and refine my own schemata of how Cambodian teachers think and act. But the little bit I've heard has reminded me that we come at this shared topic, education, from widely divergent angles. I'm not sure teachers are applying much from my trainings yet. It's not because they lack intelligence, and in most cases I don't think they lack motivation either. (Or time, while they await approval to reopen the school.) I think it's more that our schemata don't align enough for my trainings to motivate a change in their behavior. I'm hopeful that as I grow to better understand each participant and his/her felt needs, I can tailor my instruction and help motivate them to try new things.
My goal is not to make them American teachers who think and act just like I do. My goal is to help them become the teachers they were created to be, teachers who will resonate with their students far better than I could as an outsider. Where they're already doing well, I don't want to get in the way. But where their beliefs are hindering growth among teachers and students, I want to challenge assumptions. Until I figure out how to do that, all these teacher training presentations are more beneficial to me (practice makes progress!) than to the participants. While I may not have changed anyone's mind yet, at least I'm getting somewhere with discovering their current views.
