Tales of a Travelling Teacher: Part III

By Denise Lai, BA, BSocSc (Hons), MEd

Day 1
Joyce and I arrive in Jakarta at approximately 2pm in the afternoon. We are whizzed away to rest and change for the evening. Traffic conditions are unpleasant and it is 6pm by the time we meet up with Luci. We have dinner together and exchange notes and updates on Wee Care Singapore. Luci asks for, and about, many of her previous students by name. It is obvious that she misses them.

During dinner, we make plans for the next morning, then bid each other a warm good-night. Although she does not live too far away from where we are based, it will take her approximately 90 minutes to get home. Traffic congestion on Jakarta roads does not improve till after midnight, I am told.

Day 2
We set off early in the morning, because it will take us approximately an-hour-and-a-half to travel to Kota Wisata, a satellite town only 30 kilometres away, on the outskirts of Jakarta. During the ride, we talk some more, mostly on the economics of our project, and I try and take in the sights and sounds of this city at the same time, some 17 million people strong. Luci is cheerful, as we seek to eliminate zeros whilst mentally calculating the Singapore dollar equivalent for the average cost of Indonesian housing, products and services. I get lost as the numbers hit the billions and trillions!

We arrive at the school where I am scheduled to give a talk in the afternoon on “Developmental Problems and How To Manage Them.” The principal and teachers are cordial, and we are taken on a tour of their facilities. The environment is clean and neat, though relatively sparse.

As the visit progresses, I discover that the school’s curriculum and learning ethos is based – completely - on an American home-schooling programme, developed and implemented by the principal on the basis that it sets high moral and academic standards. I become more and more perturbed by the lack of toys and resources in the pre-school classrooms, and the seeming inattention given to the role of "hands-on" and play experiences amongst the kindergarten teachers. Indeed, the children appear to be working through paper & pencil folders with an unnerving persistence.

I am almost relieved when one teacher turns to me during my walkabout and asks whether puzzles are truly not useful in early childhood education. “Of course they are,” I reply quickly. Inwardly, I wonder how much each of the teachers really knows, and whether they have been properly trained and equipped for their task as educators.

I ask Luci to tell the preschoolers a story, and she begins with some of her favourite rhymes and songs, such as "Down By The Banks of the Hanky-Panky." The other teachers look on at her teaching style with admiration, and whispers of "She’s good!" can be heard.

Later, whilst we wait for the participants to arrive for the workshop, she has the children screaming, shrieking and running around with glee in the mini-playground on the first floor. "I was playing Catch with them," she explains whilst pushing stray strands of hair away from her wet face, when she joins us eventually in the hall. I nod knowingly with a certain degree of pride. After all, childhood must surely be the time for being spontaneous and free.

The parents and teachers from other schools finally arrive for the workshop, and I begin the training session with a brief outline of Common Developmental Problems, and How to Identify Them accurately.

Most of the teachers and parents present care for children with Autism, and the questions that arise inadvertently revolve around the management of autistic symptoms. Whilst I am glad that many of the participants in the audience have, more or less, basic foundational knowledge about the syndrome, they lack sufficient applied know-how and experience of how to analyse and manage recurrent behaviour-problems, as well as how to address the concerns that can crop up when special needs’ children are integrated into mainstream classes.

"I have a student who is constantly hitting other children," one teacher complains in Bahasa, "I have tried everything, but nothing has worked."

"Wouldn’t you say that autistic children need therapy more than they need to go to school?" another teacher blurts out. Later, I find out that she is a shadow-teacher for a boy whose mother is also in the audience!

This same mother shares her side of the story a few minutes later. "My son is very intelligent. But the therapists here in this country are so bad. They keep going through the same lessons again and again and again. 6 months later, and they are still teaching him the same things! I was wasting my money, so I stopped therapy. How do you teach Social Skills? That is what he needs now. Is it okay to teach him Art and Music?"

I do my best to alleviate her fears and concerns, with the main goal of equipping these parents and teachers with the intermediate levels of knowledge that they will need to take the children in their care towards inclusion into society, if not normalization from the developmental deficits they are experiencing.

All seems to be going well, until another mother who sits close to where I am standing begins to pour out her frustrations in a rapid torrent of words.

"I am actually a medical doctor," she begins, "but I gave up my career to look after my son. The quality of therapists here is bad. These people are not really therapists. They are copying methods that they have seen. And then more people copy from these copy-cats. And they charge parents a lot of money. Please, I hope people like you will do something. Please come and help us."

I am lost for what to say that could be at all helpful or sufficiently sympathetic. Years of labouring on behalf of parents with special children have taught me that their burden is far heavier than what we could adequately imagine, describe, or empathise with.

And before I can really think of a suitable response to her anguish, I am reminded that my flight back to Singapore will depart soon, and that it will take a good 2 hours to travel to the airport. The workshop, scheduled to last for only 2 hours, has exceeded its time by a full hour.

I bid all of the parents and teachers a hasty good-bye, pack my equipment and jump into the car. It is sad to say “good-bye” to Luci (yet again) when we drop her off along a busy road so that she can make the dusty and noisy journey back to her home. But I say a little prayer as Joyce and I chat quietly all through dinner and on our budget flight back to clean and efficient Singapore. A prayer that turns into conviction perhaps, that more children should be helped, even if it means travelling a little longer… and a lot further.

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For more information on the Bright Starts Programme for ages 2-4yo, please visit our website at www.weecare.com.sg.