How Your Child Can Benefit from the Inclusive Nature of the IB Programmes?
Recently, I was surprised to hear that a down-syndrome kid named Isha, got a “Academic Distinction Award” in an international school in Malaysia.
So, I met with Ms.Li Hsian who is the mom of Isha and she told me “when her kid realised nobody hurts her, she began to change” “this is ingrained in the school system” which makes me confused again. Then I asked a student in the school who experienced work with another down-syndrome student, she said “ it was challenging …but I enjoyed it! “
Later on, I had an opportunity to talk with the principal , Dr Vincent Chian, the Principal at Fairview KL. Here is the secret.
Everyone knows current education doesn’t work, but why?
— I was surprised to know Isha’s story and discuss it with some of your parents and children. What is going on in your school?
Everyone knows current education doesn’t work, but why?
Lot of education systems start from exclusivity and conformity.
We can’t start from the end point. We need to start from the core problem first.
Let’s try for example. Everybody fills in a piece of paper that’s whether you are good or bad. The reality is some people are really bad at the paper. Some people are really great with numbers. Some people are really great with talking, acting, and music. Just a whole bunch of human beings there.
Current education system can’t accommodate these things. Teachers are too ingrained in the system and we used to vested interest .
“I have produced As for the last twenty years of my life and I am not going to learn new systems and teach new systems, because I am good at my system already. If you start changing the system, I am going to leave the school and go to the system I know. “
But usually the narrative of many teachers and top of that, parents don’t understand any other system except this one. “If you judge my child in a different way that I was judged as a child, I don’t understand. That scares me and I don’t want to subscribe to this!”
“Being not scared” is more important than doing the right things.
Doing things comfortably is often more important for parents. We all know we need change. Many many videos on the internet have already said that the current education system does not prepare our children for their future work. Everybody knows this. But at the same time, parents still subscribe to the old system and they say , this is the narrative, well I know we have to change, but I just pay for the best school in the old system, and hope for the best! I don’t dare to move to a different system. Because I am afraid of it. Unfortunately, parents are too afraid to stop using the bicycle.
So the first problem is we can’t break our conformity. It is very sad.
— So, what happens if parents accept this change?
Once the parents manage to break this out, “OK, I accept the current way that children are good or bad …I want to try something new.” The moment he can say that, and do it, then let’s talk about what is happening in the school.
There is a process, when we do assessments, you call it an exam I guess? Assessments come in forms of many grades..one of them is the paper and pen. That is only one. The other forms could be standing in front of the class and sharing what you know and talking about it, another could be creating a poster or a website.
But you see, assessment in IB in Fairview, they mimic their life. When you go to work, doing lots of work, they aren’t going to ask you to fill the exam, they never do, the boss wants you to present your idea with other people. Our traditional system only does one thing. This allows children to have different strengths. Because some special needs people can do a lot of things but they can’t write.
This is one of the big hurdles of all special needs. Why do you force everybody to do just one thing? That’s one way we can help become inclusive.
And the other way is called Differentiated education. When we treat children differently based on their needs, now in the class, that’s really difficult skills. Very hard.
In order to do this you must know each child very well
To know their strengths are, to know what the weaknesses are, and interests. So one example is I know Isha likes Arts, I know Ali likes Unicorns maybe….and Jon likes tanks, I am teaching maths, Isha likes pony….ok? three ponies and six ponies are how many ponies…Jon, three tanks plus 6 tanks are how many tanks…that’s a very basic way.
Differentiated is based on how well you know each child. Of course we can go much more complicated that…but the basic core…it’s knowing what each child wants or really loves…or their strength rather than every child learns the exact same way. That is a really outdated technique. That’s called differentiations. I share 2 things. One is assessment, second one is differentiations.
Most teachers don’t learn, they stop leaning after university but keep asking kids to learn everyday!
— But how do you conduct many students in a class?
Well, there is some truth in this statement. If the class goes beyond 20, 22 maybe, it starts getting difficult to remember each child, usually the magic number. Some people even insist on 15. As a teacher it gets tough. It is very hard to remember 40 students’ interests.
We got to train practice and learn…Sadly a lot of teachers
Worst part of the education system…Most teachers don’t learn .
They stop learning after university but keep asking kids to learn everyday. Very hypocritical act! It is terrible.
I didn’t used to be a teacher, I used to be a doctor, medical doctor. As a doctor we are familiar with continuous professional education. Everyday you must read two journals. If you don’t read two journals, you won’t be able to update your medical information. And all doctors know you must keep on learning. In education.
If you ask any teachers who go to any international schools, ask them what did you learn last week, most of them will tell you that I didn’t read anything new. They wait for workshops to be sent by the schools or special workshops in order to learn. The reality is, learning is as simple as opening a book and reading. That’s all you need to do.
Teachers need to learn. And sadly in most schools, they don’t. In our school, every teacher is on the training program. Formal training, and informal training. Every teacher is either on a bachelor program, post graduate diploma education masters or PHD program. They are all training on some kind of program.
Most people are not doing that. This is crazy.
All the teachers are on some kind of training like in a university environment. Now we have a University College Fairview that’s why we can do this.
Informal part. Even if I train using the formal things, some people are good at A but need B, some people are good at B and need A. If we only apply for one side of a big training program, sometime people come and say “ I already know this” I don’t want A I want more B. So everybody has different needs. That’s where the informal training comes in.
So every week, we have mini training programs to address the training needs of that group of teachers. Every week there is a customized program. Every 6 months changes, what are we, what do we need more training on. This training means are guided by what we called our classroom observations. So every 6 month, every teacher in the school is observed by a senior once or twice. Based on that observation ….oh, this teacher is not good at A, that one also A, oh that one is AB and D…ok everybody, we need a lot of A…lets focus on A now because B and D is only one person needed. So we created a customized training program for the next semester just for A.
— I guess most teachers must be busy. How can they handle it?
In our school we really believe that teaching is a serious profession. It is not a relaxing job..it is not a job for a holiday.
In Many schools teachers come to Malaysia just to earn some money and go on holidays…A lot of teachers like that. We always tell these teachers not to come. Don’t come to my school. This is not the right place for you. If you wanna come here, you need to be prepared for the next five years. You can grow very fast. But you’re also gonna work very hard. And you are not ready for that, don’t come here. So somewhere else and have a party but not here. So all our teachers need to have the right mindset. So when we do interviews we select teachers serious about education.
— — So do they want to change themselves?
If you are serious, we can help you. If you are not serious, go somewhere else .So what happened is we have a group of teachers, they want to learn. Everybody in the room wants to learn. It makes a difference from a school only some teachers want to learn. Here everybody is learning.
— — Do they have enough time to learn?
Time is a matter of priority! Very often we are spending time on doing things like…well. Not very productive. Like watching Netflix for the whole weekend. Lot of people do that. Whole week we are very specific about it. I think they are fine. There is a lot of time lost to doing things that don’t really help us that much.
So what we say about time is…you can go to many places and relax and waste time. But here you need to manage your time very well but focus hard. This is not a place for relaxing. You grow and you can relax when you are good. But you are not relaxing when you are not good yet.
Most schools focus on teaching students. We focus on teaching teachers . That makes a big difference. You know the speed and acceleration . So we went up a ladder one step instead of focusing on the students only we need to improve the teachers. We need to know how to train the teachers better. Because if the teachers are better, the students will be fine…no problem. But if you don’t focus on teachers, You will be always fighting back to improve the teaching and confirm the students.
All the 6 fairview do the same thing. 18 years already. Pretty sure there are few schools with universities.
This is the special part of the university. Most universities teach teachers how to teach. Just do that they teach the British way of teaching or American way of teaching…Ours way of teaching is IB way of teaching. So our students graduate from our programs, let’s say post graduation diploma education, this very common, PGDE, So normal university say Kyoko, PGDE, (IB). And we are one of 30 places in the world that will give this.
Not in Malaysia but in Japan, yes. Tamagawa,Tsukuba...
— — -But…how about the resources? Must pay for the tuition fee?
Let’s say you work with me …I am gonna pay you but in addition, you will be sponsored to take this program. When I sponsored the program last for 3 years, but I am gonna bomb you additional two years after that. Pay off the scholarship
So we guarantee teachers ability…and quality as a result of that.
There is “One right answer problem”
— Do you think this teacher’s training system affects no bullies and open mindedness ?
There is one right answer problem.
In a typical exam, If you don’t write the correct answer, you get zero points. There is no such thing as half points. Can you see the problem called dichotomy? I think either right or wrong.
Now when you teach kids, growing up there is always right and wrong, they don’t learn how to see the grey. There is black or white but really most things in life are not black or white and somewhere between twins. When we assess our children, in the exams, we don’t say,” what is the right answer?’’
Maybe in mathematical questions you want to see the right answer, but usually we ask them “what do you think?”
You don’t say what is the right answer? Some factual question.
Kids are not trained for the one right answer so not being scared. This is a very important step because many public school and IGCSE children grow up and look for the right answer. They don’t dare say anything…they are always looking for the right answer.. no open mindedness . There is just one right answer! That’s the fourth problem we have. We don’t get this because we have no right answers. Assess “what’s your opinion. That is the first part. The second part, in class, we have a lot of discussions. Where the teacher basically said here the problem, what do you think? Talking in your groups and sharing what you think. And the objective of that, and the way to succeed at the task, you should have a good discussion. Not to come to a right answer. If you want to learn how to talk, you automatically listen.
The point of talking is not to be right. The point of talking and discussing is just to hear and absorb all the opinions together. This is completely different from other international and public schools where you only discuss who is more right, me or you.
You know like the debating club. Debating club is so bad because they fight each other to get the one right answer. There is no right answer. It is always me right, you wrong or you right and I wrong so one of us has to die. This is a terrible win-lose mentality.
Teaching the “International Mindedness”
— -So is it open mindedness?
Open Mindedness is receiving other people’s opinions and considering other people may be right. This comes to my third point. We have a concept that we must have in our classes called “International Mindedness” that the definition of this is the other with different opinions may also be right .
And this we teach the kids again and again…and again.
You may be right, but he may also be right. This is very hard even many adults don’t understand. How can both of us be right? One of us must be wrong…This is the basis of open mindedness. We teach all of our kids from 5 years old to 18. Again and again and again. ….In the classroom, not outside, so the teachers design lesson plans, this is the rule.
Teachers, every week, you must have some kind of moments where you can talk about international mindedness in your class. I don’t care what you teach. You could be teaching math , arts, science, English..but I don’t care, but you must have some moment, where you give the kids the opportunity to digest International Mindedness, so the biology teacher could say hey guys, today we are learning about I don’t know….smoking, this is a classic one.
“This smoking is bad, let’s just talk about this. There is a village in Indonesia where their whole income is based on the cigarette factory…you said smoking is bad , they will have no money and starve to death. Another city, where 90 percent people smoke and the lung cancer rate is through the roof, is a big question for all of you kids. Discuss!! “
And tell me your thoughts .That’s a classic moment …we want to teach our kids that there is no right answer here. There are simply our opinions. And this is a very powerful moment the kids realise you know what?
He is not right, he is not right, I am not right , we are all right..you know your own way. They accept what he says and choose my own right and not impose on him. This is a big part of the open mindedness well.
You can see step one is the cuticulam structure. And the principals that we use encourage open-mindedness..not black and white thinking. The activities we do in the class …encourage open-mindedness and not black and white
And then values of inside the lesson design we got moments build in to encourage open-mindedness. In all about classes so you stay kids open-minded, I can tell you exactly why they are.
Because it is not an accident.
It is quite scary for a lot of parents because suddenly the kids are talking back to them. Hahahaha
— — How do you train your parents?
Sadly, parents are much more difficult than teachers and children. Kids will learn fast, but parents are very hard. We do run a lot of parent forums so we invite parents to come and talk about what we are doing in a class and we run exercises with them…but I admit I don’t think that effective. Because parents are not ready to learn this. The best we can teach is…teach the children. Some of them really get it. But the vast majority have a lot of trouble trying to understand it.
— Even in Malaysia?
Absolutely. You know they say it takes 2 generations to change their mindsets. …it is true.
From the Discipline system to “restorative discipline.”
— — How do you cope with bullying? Isha’s mom told me that she seldom gets bullied in school.
Bullying is the specific thing we deal with. In most schools they have a discipline system.
It is kind of like public police. If you do something wrong, there is a consequence. If you kill somebody there is a death penalty. If you rob somebody there is jail time, but the concept is wrong doing consequences. And they work all the concepts called negative reinforcement. which means we are so scared of the consequences that you don’t want to do it anymore. This works to a degree..to help suppress the problem . But it doesn’t solve the problem . So what we practice is…. Something called restorative discipline.
So the key is like this. You are playing football. And you kicked the ball and the ball broke your neighbour’s glass. The window. Punitive discipline which was old style…they did come to you and spank you. Or the neighbour comes to you and shouts at you. This is called punitive discipline.
There are negative consequences and they hope that the negative consequences will stop you from doing that again. But really you go off, after they finish that what stops you from doing it again? If you are not scared of your death, if you really don’t care about your neighbour, you just do it again.
“I don’t care, shout at you…but I really don’t care. Spank me some more. I don’t care.”
This unfortunately happens to a lot of seasonal criminals. They just don’t care about the consequences anymore. This happens to the kids as well. You keep on shouting and after you keep shouting even louder, and it is never ending. Never stop. We say, ok , forget about the consequences, let’s talk about fixing the problem.
You broke your neighbour’s glass, I want you to sit down with your neighbour and ask a couple of questions in front of your neighbour. What was going through your mind when you did it? Did you feel scared when you did it? Tell me..What harm did you do to the person? What harm did you do ? And to who? You can say, I harmed the neighbour because I scared him. He was drinking tea in his house and he got scared all of sudden. I also harmed the neighbour because I broke something of his. I also harmed the neighbour’s daughter because she was upstairs and she was frightened .I hurt my dad because he was embarrassed. I harmed another neighbour because the other neighbour scared me too!
So I asked that question many many times, and then the last question is what can you do to restore the damage that you have cost? I don’t want you to just do something bad. You cause the problem, you fix it. And it is very important for children to fix their own problems. And for the other person, to say thank you. I accept your apology. This is the concept focused on not only action, but the relationships in society that’s why it is called restoration. Restorative. It focuses on restoring the damage of relationships. So you have to sort this out. You need to fix the damage you cost. You need to go one by one. Slowly. This results vary in the number of actions. It is not like normal punishment. Steal one caning…punch two caning…this is the very simple way.
It is very scary actually.
I had a kid in a class and he took the chair and threw it out of the class. Nobody got hurt, but everybody got scared. So what we did. We sit everybody in the class in a circle. We set him outside of the circle. Facing the wall. We asked each person in the class…what harm was done to you? I was scared because maybe he will come to me next. I was really worried because he broke the chair and that was my head…by the time when they were around the whole class, the child , the boy who threw the chair, was crying. He could not take it and he said …this is the worst punishment I have ever seen. Now that you know how they feel, you need to fix the damage.
Kids are not stupid. We need to treat them like adults. So they become adults.
— They didn’t blame him, right?
Yes. They don’t need to say you are bad. They just said how I felt. I don’t need to judge you. And the boy said I should not have made them feel like that. He doesn’t say I am bad, and if he said that I said “no, you didn’t do the bad thing but you made people feel that bad. You are not bad. There is a big difference. Don’t do that. We are not gonna label you, but you did something wasn’t right. How do you think you restore the damage? So he asked the class, what can I do to make it up to all of you. And a couple of people suggest and eventually they say you are going to be a class monitor for 3 weeks. So that he helped people line up, make sure the people write the board, clean the rubbish on the floor and put the chairs up the 3weeks he did it. And at the end of the 3 weeks he apologised to the class again. And he has never done anything close to that ever said. It completely transformed him. Did I spank him? Or shout at him? Or scold him? Or suspend him?
No, I don’t have to do anything.
But he did it all by himself. He knew what he had to do . Kids are not stupid. We need to treat them like adults. So they become adults. If you treat them like kids, they will never become adults. This is the big core for restorative discipline.
A bully is not a bully because he is a mean person. Very often the bully is hurting, and he wants other people to hurt to understand he was hurt. At the moment he sees that he is hurting other people, everything changes. He can’t bully anymore.
Good teachers don’t come from only some countries. Good teachers are from EVERYWHERE .
— -Most ideas seem new to me.
All of the ideas I shared with you are not my ideas. They are in the public domain.
You can go to the internet and find every one of them.all of these keywords you can just google search it. And any teacher can find them. It is so easy.
Sadly most people sell education. On the basis of two things..1 of them is really bad. The first one is really bad. Look at my building. It is so big and so pretty.
Second one is really bad. Look at how many white teachers I have.
It is easier to sell both things..don’t explain how we teach cas takes time to understand that but we know what is right so we gonna do that. We don’t care about these things. Lot of my teachers are not white teachers. 6 percent. Many schools are 90 percent. But I don’t believe that’s right. Good teachers don’t come from only some countries. Good teachers are from EVERYWHERE .
Because I have training programs in the school as well…If my teachers come from Malaysia and can’t speak English, I will train them. They go to English class too.
— — Thank you very much!
