Reality With Equality

After a break of 3 years I shall finally be reverting to my passion of teaching and learning. I was fortunate to land a job in an absolutely new School environment. The management hired me as an English Language teacher for Grades 4 and 5 and as the Language Co-ordinator.

I spent a week with them to get myself Oriented with the system and routines. I was pleasantly surprised at being greeted by the students with my name though I had interacted with them through a demo lesson almost a month and a half back. Their smiles welcomed me with warmth and I felt a strong sense of belonging already.

Having taught English for almost 10 years, I felt I only needed to get myself acquainted with The American Curriculum which is again a fresh concept to me. Well, quite honestly what is a book to a teacher? The challenge is always to create a story around the content and concept to facilitate the learning process. But I believe there will be surprises thrown my way this coming academic year!

I attended an English Workshop at the school through the week and as always it was a great adrenaline rush! It challenged all my prior concepts on teaching language, methodology, possibilities and doubts. I was seated with fellow language teachers and luckily the programme being discussed was to be implemented the coming year and so the term, “Balanced Literacy Programme” was new to all.

The philosophy behind the programme should touch the heart of every True Educationist. Every classroom, especially one composed of Non-native speakers, consists of different levels of objectives. One of the teacher declared she had six different levels in her class with regards to Reading and Writing. To meet the needs of all these levels was a task for her and planning six different lessons an impossibility and an accepted failure at application too.

The Balanced Literacy Programme aims at creating different learning centres within the classroom and creating homogeneous student groups. All students within a group reflect the same levels of understanding and work towards achieving the same language targets together. The year begins with homogeneity and the desired plan is to build them into heterogeneous groups as the levels improve.

The idea comes across beautifully but I do wonder if the concept would be smooth and workable. It is possible to create four distinct Language Skill Centres within the classroom but how would these centres function independently as the teacher would skip from one group to another. Would the writers be comfortable with their thoughts while the readers would recite their lines aloud? Could the grammar activities be carried out without teacher intervention? More importantly, could the students benefit more from their peers than the teacher?

I raised a few of my concerns.

“Anything that’s new, takes a little time to seep in. It’s not just adopting something new but also letting go of something old and familiar.” 

The Supervisor encouraged all the questions understanding the natural reaction of most teachers towards the need for such a change.

“There’s been a huge debate after a recent evaluation of many Private Schools whereby it was reported that almost every child was oblivious of his/her growth and role in the educative process. These were brilliant students and it was eye opening to observe their absence of reasoning and logic.”

“The second glaring discrepancy to meet the eye was the presence of many different student levels within the classroom resulting in lack of 100% engagement through a singular lesson. The Knowledge and Human Department Authority issued their expected criteria to schools to fill in these two very important learning pits.”

“It takes about a month for this programme to settle in. The centres remain for a week and student groups rotate every day to a new centre. The assignments are all computer generated and it’s a more Scientifically graded programme.”

“The Programme allows a certain healthy noise level to persist within the class walls. Students share ideas and problems to find solutions and are far more aware of their growth and learning. The objectives are written by them and ticked off upon attainment.”

Looking at the programme from the very definition, there is a balance that can be envisioned rightfully. To me, anything that promises Reality with Equality is welcomed with much excitement.

So what if I hold a few reservations. The opportunity to try out something new that might actually work around to bring justice within a system is definitely worth an honest attempt!