A precious instance of student agency

21/07/2021 

 

Last week, we had our dreaded MYP Audit. Through two weeks’ worth of blood, sweat, and mostly, tears we did manage to put on a good enough show. But putting aside whether we get authorized or not, the main takeaway was the insight we got into the IB program from actual IB professionals. 

One of the main points was that the auditors didn’t really see instances of student agency in classrooms. Now, student agency is a main IB principle. IB is all about empowering students- I mean learners (my bad), encouraging them to take charge of their own learning and blazing their own differentiated trails through the jungle of their academic careers. 

Let’s be honest, generally the way we teach doesn’t leave a lot of room for students to take control. Because hey, they’re kids: they can’t control themselves, much alone a daunting curriculum and the delicate balance of ephemeral elements that make a class. Hence the obvious solution is to teach with an iron board-marker, the teacher ruling over their own micro fascist state.

But that’s not the IB way. We have to give into the chaos. 

Fast-forward a week. Friday. Year 8, Language & Literature. 

 “Guys. We have to do the play.”

Cue the crescendo of anguished tweens wailing in absolute defiance in the face of utter tyranny. To be fair, their anguish isn’t entirely without cause. This cursed adaptation of Poe had been in the works for months with many an infuriating hiatus derailing any shred of momentum that we had been able to rally. But hey, when the boss says jump…

“SIR, NO.”

“We will protest.”

“I’ll burn the school down.”

“Do we have to do the play? We can do anything else please!”

“Guys let's sit-in on the basketball court.”

“But they’ll take away our field trip!”

“You got a match?”

You get the gist. 

On this particular Friday, I wasn’t really vibing with this display of cutesy rebellion and angst. It was a stressful enough day with nihilistic highschoolers and painfully bureaucratic accountants. The cacophony was getting a bit too much and me, generally being a nice person, instead of making a memorable example of a poor soul in my righteous fury, simply said: 

“Y’all let me know when you’re ready to do this, I’ll be outside.”

And I walked out, emailing yet another document to complete the ritual and satiate the Accounting demon’s thirst for paperwork. 

Couple minutes pass, and someone does come to get me. 

I return to a class of sullen faces, the air heavy with dejection. Chairs are dragged to the center of the room to begin rehearsals, their actions teetering on the edge of insolence and borderline insubordination. This is supposed to be a whole class thing but we are a divided lot. The “too-cool-for-you” crowd keeps on doing their thing, and the “please-don’t-notice-mes” still stick to their corner. 

Rehearsal starts with many a bickering and monotonous delivery. And I’m just not having it today.

“You know what? Pick two people to be directors of this play. I’ll be outside.”

Second walkout in the same class? New personal best. 

Five-ish minutes later I walked back in, having concluded my blood pact to get a cheque approved (don't even ask)  and overall very much near tears over the multiple stabbing turns this Friday seemed to be taking.

But I am greeted with something honestly spectacular. 

Two students, A (new girl, just joined, god bless her) and IM stand at the helm. A very obedient crew of actors perform their lines with as much rusty passion as they can muster. The rest of the class dutifully fulfill their role of extras, adding that perfectly timed oomph.

Picking my jaw up, I ninja-move to the back to observe this miracle: true student agency in action. Learners taking charge of their learning, assigning roles, actually working towards an objective. They said it couldn’t be done, a myth! And yet here I stood, recording on my phone to quell the naysayers. 

School in the time of COVID.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the summer vacation from HELL.

Where usually we would be trying to relax and catch up on thrilling turkish teleplays, waiting for our lives to restart come August, we are now catching up on those teleplays, while being quite annoyed about the whole global pandemic thing.

Seriously though, stay at home.

One of the things that was drastically affected by the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown was school.

Being termed as snotty germ factories more so than usual, governments all over the world cancelled school, sending everyone scrambling to the comforting arms of the internet.

I have felt that online schooling, or using the internet as a primary means of education, was an inevitability. The internet is supposed to be the “great equaliser” removing the cost of the physical infrastructure required to run a school, like buildings, desks, chairs etc. and providing easy access to literally all of the information and knowledge you could ever need. You know, like an actual school.

We saw this rising trend with initiatives like Khan Academy, UDemy, EdX, Coursera, Masterclass along with pretty much all major universities offering online versions of their courses as well.

Seeing this trickle down to the Highschool level was something i felt would have been commonplace in say 5 to 10 years. However, COVID accelerated that timeframe to a matter of days, as schools all over the world jumped online trying to transition as seamlessly as possible.

Now in Pakistan, as is usually the case between those who are privileged and those who are not, this move split students across the country into two major categories: those who did transition to online schooling and those who could not.

According to different sources, Internet penetration in Pakistan is around 35% of the total population. Meaning that only 1 in 3 people has ready access to the internet. So we can’t really consider online schooling as a one-size-fits-all solution when the infrastructure needed to access that learning is in such limited number of hands

As such, the government did launch a commendable initiative in the form of Television based learning, which has a significantly higher penetration rate. But again due to the passive nature of the medium, it is a temporary stop-gap solution at best.

Since I teach at an extremely privileged school, let's talk more about the online schooling aspect.

I feel as teachers we had to adapt really quickly and as is usually the case with new technology, there are growing pains. It takes some getting used to the new format and medium of instruction, with all the parental pressure for perfection not making things any easier.

In the last couple of months I saw that there was either a tendency to go for very lecturey-late night-talkshow-host-monologuey lessons (like meself, I do like to babble), or to go for a much more assignment-heavy strategy. Honestly speaking i don't think either of the two strategies are ideal; we just ended up translating our strongest teaching styles into these online classrooms.

I think most of us teachers would agree that the most important thing that has been missing so far is that level of social connection we would have with students when we would occupy the same physical space.

By its very nature, that is something really hard to effectively translate online. When someone is speaking to you over the phone or even through video, as compared to in person, our attention tends to slip. And I think going forward focusing on this element would be crucial. Trying to make our lectures and assignments as interactive as possible, so that there is a conversation going on and it's not just passive learning.

Which brings me to the other side of the equation: the students.

To say that it has been challenging for y’all would be a disservice and a gross understatement. Suddenly adapting to a new mode of learning amidst a global crisis and the mental and emotional strain that comes with that, is incredibly hard. Having that shared physical space was important and had a tremendous impact on how we absorbed and analysed information and it really feels like online schooling is but a shadow of its former corporeal self.

That being said, I think there is a key realisation that we all need to come and it's that, this isn't going away any time soon.

There is no deadline on the virus as of yet and most experts agree that this will take at least months to solve. Even if schools are opened when things seem better, there is quite the possibility that they just might be closed again if the virus behaves differently.

For better or for worse, online schooling is here to stay, What we have to do is come to terms with that fact and realise that we will not be getting this time back. It falls on us to adapt to these changes and make the most of them.

As students who have spent their lives in a strictly regimented academic program, this might feel like uncharted territory. Suddenly, there is no authority figure monitoring your every move, keeping you on track. You are not surrounded by like-minded peers who are also striving for the same goals as you. Learning has suddenly become quite a lonely experience.

And it is in this state that it becomes imperative to take responsibility for whatever it is we are doing. It is in fact in these times of crises that we find ourselves maturing a lot faster. We have to learn skills that will help us overcome these challenges, chief among these being self discipline.

Without the proverbial danda guiding our actions, it will fall on all of us to give ourselves that motivation to keep going and accomplishing. For that we’ll need a lot of awareness and reflection as to why we are doing the things we are doing and finding those ambitions and reasons.

So engage as openly and extensively as you can with online learning and think of the fortunate circumstances that have allowed you this unique experience. And what you can do for those who were not so fortunate.

If this crisis has taught us anything it's that humans have the fundamental capacity to adapt and overcome. We are definitely all in this together and InshAllah we will get through this together as well.

Reflections on education in Pakistan.

No words are minced when it's said that education in Pakistan is among the worst in the world. Pakistan has the highest number of out of school children. Various reports peg the exact number differently, based on different indicators used for measuring. The number ranges from between an unimaginable 25 million children (i), 12 million children (ii) to 5.4 million children (iii). However, the one statistic that has a consensus, and put these frankly ridiculous numbers into perspective is this:

About half of all children in Pakistan are out of school.

There are numerous excellent reports detailing the extent of the education crisis. The Government as well as international relief organisations are spending significantly across multitudes of programs in honestly an admirable effort to eradicate these issues. Most of the reports you will come across will be about statistics and dollars, challenges and risks, goals being met and not met. What I feel is not highlighted enough, is the on-the-ground reality of how the community reacts to these issues and the projects implemented to counter them.

Recently, as part of the assessment of the Department for International Development (DFID) funded Punjab Education Sector Project (PESP) and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education Sector Project (KESP), the largest education projects in the world, I traveled to the districts of Charsaddah and Lahore. 

It is DFiD's aim to build more than 20,000 classrooms across the nation by 2015 (iv). In regards to this project, I visited three government schools each in Charsaddah and Lahore and interacted with their respective communities. And in a word, the response I experienced has me hopeful for the future.

It is all too common to bash the Government, or the system, and focus on the negatives and the problems plaguing our societies, rather than on progress and the, granted relatively small, achievements. This trip, to areas ranging from rural to urban, poor to rich, filled me with optimism because of one common factor: the level of community participation.

As part of the project, leaders are sought from among the community to form a committee, which is to oversee the project's operations in their neighborhood's schools. A salient feature is to increase  awareness of the importance of education, and as a member of the project team put it very nicely: to make the community own their schools and the responsibilities to their children.

I believe that the idea here is beautiful; to encourage the community to take ownership of its own assets, to be aware of their social responsibilities, to feel protective of their children and to think in their best interests; all these result in a stronger, more cohesive, more productive, safer community. The people are aware that the children are their future and that a good sound education is exactly what is needed to make that future brighter. 

At one school in Charsaddah, the committee was made up exclusively of elder community members. Their sons had initially been nominated for the posts, but they took over because they could give the time they thought the project deserved: they visit the school every single day, from morning till dusk. The school has had one classroom for 23 years, where more than a hundred students study, sometimes having lessons in the playground due to lack of space. One of the committee members excitedly told me how the community had themselves funded construction of a new classroom, and of a new water well for the students. After the project's completion, this school will have at least four classrooms.

Keeping in mind that this was quite a poor rural community, their level of zeal and dedication is truly inspirational. The community banding together, taking responsibility, and tackling a prevailing social issue is exactly what gets things done and brings progress to society.

I found the same level of admirable and heart-warming participation in urban Lahore.

At the renowned Kinnaird High School, a 150 years old institution, I had the pleasure of meeting with the president of the Parent Teacher Council, with a history of more than 50 years. Representing more than three thousand parents, she had taken the mantle of president after her own mother. She had galvanized parents to take an active part in the educational affairs of their children, a feat which she impressed was no easy task. She said that parents of private school going children are inherently active regarding their children's education, considering that it is a significant investment on their part. The same cannot be said for government schools, where parental involvement is unfortunately a rarity. Changing the attitude and mind-set of parents in this environment is all the more impressive.

It is heartening to see that awareness of one of the most fundamental rights, the right to education, is spreading. These ideas will take root when they start from the bottom up, from the communities themselves. We all need to take a step back, and realise our responsibility in promoting education and building a better brighter future. Following in the example of these incredible people, there is a need, now more than ever in these times of growing distances and distrust, to unite for a common noble goal. And what goal is nobler than striving for a parha likha Pakistan.


References:
i :  25 Million Broken Promises, a report by Alif Ailaan
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/alifailaan/pages/540/attachments/original/1415950791/25_million_broken_promises_-_Summary-lowres.pdf?1415950791
ii : UK/Pakistan: Education April 2014, by Foreign & Commonwealth Office, UK
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukpakistan-education-april-2014/ukpakistan-education-april-2014
iii : Financing Education in Pakistan, a Country Case Study for the Oslo Summit on Education for Development
http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/pakista.pdf
iv : DFID Pakistan
https://www.gov.uk/government/world/organisations/dfid-pakistan