International School Brunei.
ISB was the main reason we came to Brunei. It was a free private education with an international experience. Moreover, they were introducing the International Baccalaureate the year that we arrived.
From the beginning ISB was an outstanding success for all of our children. Roger did a six month foundation course from January to June. Sergio and Julie were both ‘held back’ a year because of the difference in the academic calendar in Australia.
Later on, as it transpired, this turned out to be a mistake as it meant that they were older than other students. I think this led to them being less satisfied with the school in their later years as they outgrew it, mentally.
Roger did very well in his IB and was ‘Dux’ of his year. An outstanding achievement.
Due to the kindness of our friends, he thenwent to Thailand for six months to work for a teacher recruitment company.
He then went to Melbourne University. When he was in Brunei, he had a charming girlfriend.
Serge and Julie got a lot out of ISB in the area of extracurricular activities. Julie was the lead in the musical ‘West side story” and Serge had a major part. They both were General Secretaries’ in the Borneo Global Issues conference.
The academic side of things was very satisfactory too for them.
However, as the years progressed and they grew up they became less than satisfied with Brunei. They wanted to go and see the world. Maria and I became less satisfied too, not so much with the school as with Brunei itself.
Life was so easy, and perhaps we had all had become spoiled: travel by car everywhere, no walking, an ‘Amah’ to wash the dishes, clothes and cook our food, cheap food and DVD’s.
It was an easy existence –and, in retrospect, not the best preparation for life in the real world for the children.
Roger leaving Cornell only confirmed our suspicions that life in Brunei was not necessarily the best preparation for the real world.
As Serge and Julie became unhappy, we started to think about moving back to Australia.
Maktab Sains
By 2005 I had had enough of Menglait.
Although it was much better than the school in the water village, there was a sameness about it that was ultimately soul-destroying. For all the charm of the students, there were some things about it which were negative by any standard.
For one thing, the classrooms were uninhabitable. Neither man nor beast could function in them: they were filthy, hot and airless; and the noise of the fans and the traffic made it necessary for the teacher to shout in order to be heard.
Most teachers couldn’t be bothered to shout and simply wrote instructions on the board for the tasks to be carried out. All this made it a dismal environment for students and teachers. And all this in a country with vast resources of oil.
More importantly, the English curriculum was beyond the vast majority of students. It was the same curriculum I had studied in the UK as a boy. As a result, only about one percent of the students could get a credit in English. A credit was the minimum standard required to enter the University.(Grade A-C).
The rest of the students were basically destined to become petrol pump attendants and car park kiosk staff.
The local staff were quite friendly and the CfBT staff could be variable. My debating colleague was a soul mate. Sparks sometimes flew between us but the chemistry was generally so good that we had a laugh most of the time.
But it wasn't enough
In desperation, I applied for a transfer.
To my surprise I was given one almost immediately to Maktab Sains.
This was a ‘Gamechanger’ for me. I knew the teaching would be good. This turned out to be the case and the staff also turned out to be friendly and fairly open.. This was largely due to the Principal , who, although fairly conservative by western standards, was approachable and a kind-hearted person.
After a few months, and having mastered the teaching I quickly decided I needed another project to do to develop myself professionally and to help me get another job after Brunei. I started thinking about doing an Action Research project for a doctoral dissertation.
I looked online for Universities and came up with a variety of cheap ones who turned out to be “Diploma Mills”.
I finally came across a more reputable one which seemed affordable. I enrolled in 2005 to do an Action Research Study. In the end , although it was technically called a 'educational doctorate' it was in my opinion, only the equivalent of another Masters degree. This would be my 4th Masters degree.
The beauty of this was that I could do it without seeking permission from the school or the Ministry of Education. In the end I was able to enlist the passive support of the Principal.
This was all I wanted . I did not want her active support because active support could easily turn into interference. I wanted to control my own action research.
Debating
One of the highlights at MS was the debating. This time I was on my own without my colleagues. But, the students were outstanding, the best in the country. I had a great time coaching them and we won the senior competition one year. It was so easy to coach these students. They did all the work! but, when the Principal met me afterwards, she referred me as 'The Emperor'. I didn't complain! Debating had a high status in the school culture
the academic teaching was great at Maktab sains. the students were an absolute delight. I was able to try out lots of ideas with them. One of the noteworthy things about the Malay culture is the love of music, so i decided to try working with the 'Phantom of the opera'. It was a huge success and the students loved it. I would do vocabulary work with it. In fact, it was such a success that the students decided to include a sketch form 'the phantom of the opera in the opera ' in their end of year review in front of the whole school. It was also a great success and was greeted with rapturous applause. Unfortunately, for me, the new principal , who was very conservative, did not like it. I think it might have been one of the reasons why, a year later she put me on the shit list.
One of the most annoying things about teaching in Brunei was how teachers were expected to provide their own equipment and teaching aids. I’m not sure if this is just part of the culture or whether it is simply a consequence of incompetence. At MS I bought my own marker pens for the whiteboard, my own writing pens and pencils, paid for my own photocopies (about 100 dollars a year); my own Television, Video cassette player, DVD player, DVD’s, electrical extensions and adapters, audio-cassette player, laptop computer, computer paper and fans. I even paid 150 dollars to have the air-conditioner fixed in my classroom as the school would not pay to have it fixed. It was the best 150 dollars I invested the whole year!
In a school with dozens of computers the Internet was not available for staff use.
Many of the classrooms had plugs and sockets and fans which did not work. Many of the airconditioners in the classrooms had broken down and no attempt was ever made to repair them. There seemed to be a belief that a hot sweaty stinking classroom was good for a student’s character.
Chronic teacher shortage
There was also a chronic teacher shortage. The English Department at Maktab Sains-the premier college in the nation- was always two, sometimes three staff down.
This was tolerable in the first two years when the Principal was an approachable person and expectations of our workload were reasonable. We agreed to cover as much as we could when we were able to. The students at Maktab Sains were able to be left unsupervised anyway. But with the arrival of another Principal, it became a problem as she insisted on every class being covered and she brought us back in the afternoons to do it.
I believe the real reason there was a teacher shortage was because the Ministry didn’t care. In fact, I was convinced it was not just negligence or incompetence on the part of the Ministry, it was even more than this: it was a deliberate policy to increase teacher loads covertly.
Lack of communication was the hallmark of all administrations in Bruneian schools. The second Principal at MS was a shocker in this respect.
She arrived in the first week of February and was obliged, against her own instincts, by public demand to have a short ten minute meeting of staff to explain how she was going to take the school to ‘higher level’.
That was the only staff meeting she had all year. Not that I liked staff meetings. But it was typical of her that she believed that it was not necessary to communicate even formally with her staff. Everything was done by written Memo. She did not speak, even informally to most staff –only to her gang of attack dogs-who carried out her dirty work for her –enforcing her many new measures designed to change the school from being a flagship school of innovation into a nunnery.
She did not speak to the students either. The only communication was to have formal assemblies at which she talked invariably about graffiti in the toilets-a thing which had been unknown at Maktab Sains before her arrival.
She treated the school like it was a piece of her own personal property and the people in it like kindergarten children. In fact she invited the Director of Prisons to address our scholarship students before they went to the UK! What an inspiration for young people! ore on that , later.
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