The 10-Year School Trip

Taiwan strongly identifies as a democratic nation, and in the public sphere people applaud their free elections and right to open dialogue. In schools, however, I was struck by how my own understanding of independent thought found tension in the structures and practices designed to prioritize the collective and tradition. I will never forget the day my Grade 7 class told me their Mandarin exam results would be posted in the hallway later that afternoon, their names ranked from highest to lowest for all to see.

Paul, a warm-hearted, cheeky chappie, said, “I’m always in last place. My writing is terrible. Winston will be top of the list. He always is.”

I looked at Winston.

“It’s true,” he shrugged without a hint of pride.

Rightly or wrongly, my 29-year-old self asked the class, “But how do you feel about it?”

More shrugging and murmurs of, “This has been the way for five thousand years,” a phrase I would come to hear regularly.

I recall a time I was in a restaurant practicing Mandarin with a Taiwanese friend. A man came over to our table and said, “If you speak Chinese badly, please don’t speak it in public.” I chewed on that for quite some time. My students were given the same message on repeat, ‘You Must Do It Well’. Whenever I’d ask my class to practice a new speaking skill, they would lower their heads in the hope I would simply move on to the next grammar lesson. In time, they explained to me the concept of ‘losing face’. I realized that all my big talk about being brave and making mistakes as an avenue to deep learning simply did not translate.

Paul once said, “You’re kind, Ms. Mailley, and we respect you. But about this, you don’t know anything.”

The class had stared at me with wide eyes and mouths waiting to see how much trouble Paul was in. I told him that he was right. Gasp! How, I thought to myself, are these kids supposed to attend university in Canada or the US without establishing a practice of inquiry and risk taking?

In England, we had to follow unit and term plans to the letter, test the children regularly, and ensure our display boards rivaled those in national art galleries. As a passport-carrying UK citizen, let me say, this did not surprise me. How things look is an important aspect of British culture. During my time at a primary school in Limehouse, East London, I noticed two big-ticket issues:

1. A curriculum that centers on the national rather than the local left my students feeling alienated from the content and skills we were mandated to work on.
2. 90% of my students came from Bangladeshi families and the curriculum was clearly written with middle-class white families in mind.

I remember my Year 5 students saying to me, “Miss, we’re no’ English. We’re Bengali.”

I said, “Yes, but you were born and raised in England.”

They replied, “So wha’, Miss. They don’t care nuttin’ ‘bout us, innit.”

The students weren’t referring to their dedicated teachers, teaching assistants and administrators. They were talking about the education system and society at large. My heart still hurts when I think about those amazing kids. 

In 2016, I came home to a redesigned curriculum which gave educators more agency, focused on the local level, and honoured diversity and inclusion. As I was no longer teaching to a test or set of prescribed learning outcomes, I could give my students the time they needed to inquire, explore and discover. I was invigorated! However, it quickly became evident that the aims of the redesigned curriculum were not well understood by many parents or the wider public. Today, parents and caregivers continue to ask me, “Where does my son rank in the class?” or “Her report card says proficient. Is that an A or a B?” These types of questions indicate a philosophical divide which demands our attention. How can we go beyond meet-the-teacher and three-way conferences to help families learn more about the purpose of education in British Columbian schools?

I now realize that parents and caregivers need to experience what student-centered, competency-based learning looks like and feels like for themselves. While sending home curriculum overviews and holding information events have been informative, inviting families into my classroom to learn with their children has been transformative. Through a series of “Family Fetes” (i.e., in-class learning together sessions), I am currently working to strengthen home-school bonds, build greater trust and find as much common ground as possible. At our most recent fete, a mum from Afghanistan smiled the entire time while sketching with her daughter. She later told me, “I loved art class so much when I was young, until they took it away.” I am reminded time and again how opening my classroom door to families is a reciprocal act of learning. For ten years I taught in school systems that valued competition and compliance. Educators in British Columbia have the rare opportunity to teach children how to live in community, to understand their special gifts and to find their way back to themselves. If we are going to raise healthy, confident kids who are able to solve complex problems in the future, we need to include and engage families in this vital process.