Some of the women made great things from coconut palm leaves. It was very like working with harakeke (flax)
The woman on the right is my "counterpart" Ms Thuy
Tuan (my interpreter) thought it was funny to take this picture of me in part of the workshop that had gone completely wrong. He said this is what Robyn looks like when it is a disaster! The sandwich in front of me is the one that made me sick. Yummy!
One of the fans on the back wall came to bits and was scattered all over the back of the room while I was talking- fortunately nobody was killed. Do you like the special chairs?
Warning – in this blog I blather on and on about my teaching tribulations – stop reading now if you do not have a high boredom threshold!!!
On Monday and Tuesday I taught my first three workshop sessions at our first three day gathering for a ‘core group’ of teachers, principals and academics who will be supporting the development of other teachers in the future. My workshops could aptly be described as like the proverbial curate’s egg -“good in parts”. I had worked hard on them, trying to ensure that they were much more interactive and practical than my conference presentations but unfortunately my inexperience in Vietnamese culture and education methods, as well as the difficulties of presenting through an interpreter, resulted in some significant problems.
My first workshop was on the adults’ role in creativity. I was reasonably pleased with some aspects of this one. The teachers were responsive to some of the ideas and particpated well in most of the activities. On Tuesday I presented workshops on Multiple Intelligences and Scaffolding which were a bit of a disaster. Despite my misgivings I had been directed to present these two theory heavy workshops in one three hour session. I had too much content and rushed to finish the first one so I could cram in the second – a bad decision! I think that I totally confused many of the participants. I was very disappointed in myself and quite despondent afterwards.
There is always an element of dissonance between what I think I am teaching and what is actually being received by the participants, but in this situation, compounded by cultural differences in philosophy and experience, as well as translation difficulties, this became extreme. I fear that at times I was talking absolute gibberish. Not having the ability to participate effectively in the discussions, to listen in to conversations between groups of students or to pick up the nuances of their verbal and non-verbal communication drives me crazy. Sometimes, when the participants’ responses make it apparent that vital concepts have been misunderstood it seems impossible to find a path to clarity. At this stage I am not at all confident that my contributions have even achieved a level of neutral impact – I am concerned that by causing confusion or misunderstanding of the core concepts they may have actually been detrimental for the participants. I need to discover ways to handle this aspect better.
One of my disappointments is that I receive absolutely no feedback from my counterpart. At no point after my presentations has she offered any comment whatsoever. Efforts to find out how she feels about them have been largely unproductive. I have a horrible feeling that this might be a case of “if you can’t think of something nice to say then don’t say anything at all” but perhaps I am being paranoid. This lack of comment is disconcerting and at times isolating. It certainly has not helped my feelings of confidence of contributed to any sense of partnership. I sorely miss my Wintec colleagues who care enough about our programme and each other to provide useful comments and suggestions.
During the workshops I tried a range of strategies to get the participants actively involved. Some of these were quite successful. They were responsive to activities that involved video and photographs, structured group discussions, role plays, quizzes, creative movement activities and to some extent, ones that involved individual writing but anything that required informal discussion in pairs or with the whole group failed miserably. They seem very resistant to anything where they are required to speak off the cuff preferring instead to have time to prepare written answers. When reporting back on these they are confident and effusive, sometimes to the point of verbosity – when they have the microphone they are not going to give it up for anyone! This can create real problems. As one woman spoke on and on Tuan was whispering to me that she was talking "rubbish about a completely different topic" but it was impossible for me to break into her stream or to use elements of it to bring it back to the subject.
Humor is another problem. My attempts at jokes and asides, translated through Tuan were met with blank silence but I did get some laughs by acting the goat during role plays and creative movement activities. I don’t think (I hope!) that they were hostile to me but I do think that they find me strange and at times incomprehensible. Apparently past workshops have consisted almost entirely of “chalk and talk” methods where the leader reads lengthy sections of directives from the curriculum so I guess that it is not surprising that they found some of my style challenging and unfathomable.
Sometimes my work here feels like a process of ‘Chinese whispers’. The message that I am trying to convey comes back to me a in a way that I can identify some of the content but the meaning has changed so much that it is unrecognizable. For example I supported my counterpart in the development of her workshop on questioning. She presented some interesting material on questioning techniques and, with encouragement from me, included some active learning elements. During the workshop she appeared to be successfully challenging the predominant teaching practice here in which teachers almost exclusively use teacher directed question and answer sessions to test children’s knowledge. She spoke of things such as using questions to encourage children to explore ideas, analyze and think creatively. I was therefore very surprised when during participants reports back from their activities it became apparent that not only had the students almost universally ignored the theory that she had presented, reverting to their familiar directive approach, but that she herself was supporting their beliefs. For example a teacher in a video clip was asking children questions about flowers. One of the questions was “what is your favorite flower?” to which the children answered “red ones” and “blue ones”. This was sharply criticized. Apparently she should have corrected the children and told them they must answer with the name of the flower. At this point I felt despairing. It seems that despite all of our discussions the material that she presented was only rhetoric. When it came to application in practice the traditional methods of teacher controlled, preplanned and directed lessons was strongly upheld.
My role here is to “assist not insist”. I am aiming to expose the teachers to new ideas and to provoke discussion and debate but I am not sure whether I will ultimately be in successful. It seems that the concepts I bring with me are so foreign that they are inaccessible. It feels like when the ideas I speak of are filtered through their experiences and beliefs the resulting understanding is changed unrecognizably. Perhaps someone else with different skills than me would be more successful but at this stage I feel somewhat out-of-my-depth and unsure on how to proceed. I am to repeat these workshops six more times so hopefully I will be able to make them more successful but I am struggling to feel optimistic about the possibility.
I have for a long time intellectually known that knowledge is socially constructed but living here as an “outsider” I am having the opportunity to experience this in a very real way. I am acutely aware that all I believe is a construction of ideas that fits within my culture. I knew when I came here that I would learn far more than I would teach – this is proving to be very true. Despite all of my misgivings and worries I am still very glad that I came. Living and working in a culture that is so different from those in New Zealand brings rewards that could not be gained in any other way. I do believe that it will make me more aware and stronger.
On top of all that I have contracted a nasty stomach bug (probably related to the warm luncheon meat sandwiches that I felt obliged to eat at the workshop yesterday) that has kept me home close to the bathroom all day today but I am recovering quickly. I am sorry to write such a long rave about my tribulations with teaching but, in the absence of people to talk with, it gives me a place to reflect on my experiences. I also aim for this to be a real account of the ups and downs of living this life rather than just a cheerful travelogue but I promise to write a more interesting entry about my recent travels with Donna soon. It was great having her here for a couple of days.
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