Menglait
Four weeks later I was back in Brisbane still lying awake at night. It was the day before my first day at the new school. I repeated a mantra to myself “Stay in the Present” in the middle of the night in order to get myself to stop worrying about the next day. It was a mantra I repeated to myself on many future occasions before I restarted the school year.
Menglait was a regular town school. Physically, it was a shambles but some things about it were significantly better than Lumapas. First and foremost, I had some upper secondary classes so the kids could actually understand a fair amount of what I said. Second, the administration , although not particularly welcoming was not hostile, as in Lumapas, and had a good relationship with the English Department. Thirdly, the Head of Department was an expat and was efficient , considering she was working within the constraints of the context. (In Lumapas, the local H.O.D was ineffectual and so the Expats tried to take over. The result was a free-for- all.)
Being HOD at Menglait
In some ways I thought Menglait was therapeutic after Lumapas, although I would have to stress –this was relative! The students were easier to handle and the administration-although not exactly welcoming , were not as hostile as they were at the water village.
I had to work out how to survive in the classroom and staffroom. This was not a straightforward task but as it turned out it was just about do-able. By the end of my second year I was quite well-regarded in the school – unfortunately, sufficiently well-regarded to be asked to be Head of Department-which was a most unwelcome development.
Being H.O.D. in Brunei was not regarded as a promotion because it meant more work and responsibility –but no autonomy to make policy or decisions, and no money!
HOD’s were glorified administrators, implementing the policies of the Principal.
Basically HOD’s were routinely used to do the dirty work for senior administrators and keep their noses clean. There was nothing given to the HOD in return. The very worst thing about being HOD was being closer to the senior administration and this meant you were a constantly in their sights to take the blame in the ‘Blame game’.
I did not want the job but had it foisted upon me by the previous HOD who was an interesting character who was actually a very good H.O.D. for my first two years at Menglait. She was calm and considerate, fair and professional - even if a little stand-offish on a personal level-as all English people are.
Both her children were diabetic and she had had a very tough struggle looking after them. In my second year at Menglait her eldest boy, a contemporary of my eldest son, was a senior student in the International School , after being in the school from Kindergarten.
He fell from grace spectacularly after he was caught stealing a mobile phone and attempting to sell it. The result was suspension from the school at a critical period –just several months before his final exams. He was allowed to take his exams but not was not re-admitted to classes.
I felt the judgement was unduly harsh and I urged the HOD to fight it with the Board of Directors. She did not do this feeling it was pointless. She may have been right, but she was left feeling embittered towards the school. So, it was a traumatic year for that family and at the end of it, she, understandibly, wanted to offload the HOD responsibility, which she did rather clumsily to me.
Other candidates didn’t want it either, and, as I was sort of next in line I very reluctantly agreed to take it on. But, I had no choice really. The actual job didn’t perhaps turn out to be as bad as I had thought but it definitely increased my stress levels. One of the main reasons for this, ironically was the ex hod herself.
To my surprise she changed from being a benign HOD to a stroppy and uncooperative member of Department. I remember things we had arguments about. One was oral examinations. Every year the school had to supply two ‘O’ level oral examiners. This was a very onerous task which took place after school in the afternoons over a period of two to three weeks. It was poorly paid and very tedious as well. Everyone hated it.
I tried to instigate a system whereby I thought everyone would take their turn. But Jan was having none of this. She point blank refused to do it. This meant that somebody else had to do it of course. She insisted, and she had her way. I lost a lot of respect for her after that.
Later on we had more confrontations .On one famous occasion she screamed at me in public. She was in the wrong and I had actually been trying to act in her interests. There was nothing I could say or do to mollify her.
“The chainsaw”
Aside from my Ex HoD,, the staff at Menglait were a mixed bag. Most kept to themselves but in the first year before I became HOD there was one very loud Australian woman, who was a problem for me right from the start. She shouted, rather than talked, in that loud Aussie voice seemingly oblivious to all around her except the person at whom she was shouting.
She repeatedly intruded on and occupied the private space of everyone around her. Murphy’s law had decided that I was the one who was to sit directly opposite her at a workbench so I could not escape. Her voice had a high-pitched metallic whine-and I duly nicknamed her ‘the chainsaw’.
After a couple of weeks , I knew I would have to move away. So, I identified a workspace in another staffroom and one day, when no-one was looking, I just picked up my things and transferred to another room. I couldn’t wait for a longer time because the longer I waited the more obvious it looked that I was moving away from her!
She eventually fell out with management later in the year and and was asked to leave. She went to the Middle East.
Even though Menglait was better than the water village-there was still a tangible sense of insecurity hanging in the atmosphere of the school regarding one’s job which I was never able to get used to. This is something that is impossible to explain to those who have not lived through it. In vain have I tried to explain to my family and friends in UK and Australia about this insecurity.
I have had little success.
It was this tangible insecurity which led me to eschew buying a house and getting a mortgage in Australia. I reasoned that I did not want to be saddled with a mortgage when I might lose my job at any time.
This is why we never bought a house when were in Brunei.
The locus of power was difficult to locate but after about a year or two it became clearer that power appeared to be held mostly by the Principal, an aggressive inspectorate, a few important ‘others’ on the staff, among some parents, and/or even some students. Most of these people derived their power by being related to the Royal family in some way. Put simply, one didn’t know what the appraisal process was. One day as happened to me eventually at another school, not Menglait, one's supervisor would simply come up to you and say
“You need to know this, I was at a meeting of Ministry officials yesterday discussing contract renewals and your name is on the ‘veto’ list”
No reasons would be given either to the teacher , or to the CFBT supervisor.
The veto or ‘shitlist’ was the list of teachers not recommended for renewal of contract by the Principal of the school.
How you had come to be on this list may or may not have been obvious. In some cases( but not in mine) there would have been a major incident of some sort involving a student or administrator. In other cases the reason was couched in a vague euphemism such as ‘attitude’. In other cases ( as in mine), no reason at all was given. Let us be clear: This was a Mao Tse Dong, Kim Il sung style of leadership. The only difference between Brunei and China and North Korea was that Bruneian incompetence ensured that the totalitararian style could never really be as effective in Brunei.
And it was this inefficiency that made professional life bearable for most of us. The supervisor from Cfbt had little or no say in getting your name on or off the ‘Shitlist”
He/she may in some cases have been able to assist in it’s removal-but it was by no means guaranteed even in cases where the teacher had clearly not committed a hanging offence.
The local staff were pretty easy to deal with as long as you didn’t expect much of them. There was one who was a little difficult from time to time and this was because she was related to the Royal Family. . She rarely openly defied me at Menglait, but she did show ‘attitude’ on one or two occasions. She was eventually poached from us by Maktab Sains- the elite school. She didn’t last at M.S. . She had problems in her marriage which led to her leaving Maktab Sains under a cloud.
I had a very good supervisors at Menglait. He had a very good attitude and he was very supportive of us all as teachers. He was practical and constructive and pragmatic. I felt he would go in to bat for me, if need be. I can’t say this about all of the other CfBT supervisors I had while in Brunei. I found it best to operate from the premise that they would not go in to bat for me. This prevented disappointment. Mine gave me good advice and I listened to it on more than one occasion.
The local administration at Mengalit had, as in all Bruneian schools a very top-down approach. The first principal was lazy and waiting for a couple of years before retiring.
In a way this was good for us –he was not anxious to implement the latest Ministry initiative in order to make a name for himself. After he got to know us expats he eased off and let us do our own thing. He didn't make policy either, he just implemented Ministry directives. He simply delegated everything to his senior staff and read the newspaper in his office. Although gruff at first he became quite personable towards the end-and he had a sense of humour.
In the Bruneian system, life for the staff was easier under such a Principal. We were indeed the envy of many other schools. I remember at one famous end of year staff meeting –it was mandatory to have at least one staff meeting per term our Prinicpal spent the entire meeting reading out loud word for word everyone’s duties according to the staff handbook –verbatim- for the following year-and all in Malay too!
Still, it was a shortish meeting –about an hour if I remember correctly-and everyone had a good chat as he was doing it. So everyone was satisfied. He retired in 2002 - a great loss to the Bruneian educational scene!
No comments:
Post a Comment