Lee: I think, in an international school, parents misunderstand, or confuse, the mission and vision of a school, the programme offered, and what they want from it. In Hong Kong, parents are very much concerned with grades and getting to an Ivy League university. But we are in an IB, holistic, inquiry-based environment that’s meant to be focused on the whole person. They have bought into the school that offers that programme, and yet they undervalue advisory, pastoral systems, social-emotional learning, house systems…
Gina: Whole child development.
Lee: Whole child development. They focus on just that one part. A teacher who tries to teach creatively may be seen as less experienced or less desirable because they’re not teaching to the test. If I was hiring, I’d be looking for someone who goes beyond the test.
Gina: I had a conversation with somebody on an IB course about this same thing. He’d replaced a teacher who taught in a very inquiry-based way. He said that because he teaches to the test, the kids loved him straight away because they didn’t have to do the thinking. It was kind of more what we’d call, I guess, spoon-feeding.
I think parents think we’re maybe doing it at the expense of their kids’ grades because they don’t see it automatically. But I guess we’re creating lifelong learners, aren’t we? Kids that can think.
Lee: Yes.
Gina: But I think what we might misunderstand about parents is that they genuinely want what they really, really believe is best for their child. They might not be right with that, but I think that’s where it comes from.
Lee: I think that’s what both parties want. But they have different experiences and different interests. That’s where you have the disconnect. Parents know the end result they’re aiming for, whereas we’re often looking towards the process. The process is almost less important.
Gina: A really great teacher knows when to move between inquiry and direct instruction, and can pick up on what’s best to do at different times with different content.
Lee: Another thing they misunderstand is grading. How grades are created, GPA versus best fit. They might see the first grade of the year and kick off.
Gina: Not all subjects are equal in that. Some kids make those trajectory improvements as they move through the course. In languages, that first grade can be much lower than the later grades will be.
Lee: We are very much philosophically driven, even if we don’t realise it. Teachers who are looking towards the end goal can sometimes miss all the good stuff in between that develops the skills useful for after secondary school.
Gina: What I’d want parents to understand is that we also really want what’s best for their kid. I wonder what they’d want us to understand more.
Lee: About their kid. They want us to understand their individual child. A good teacher will understand the class, but also the individuals within it. That’s all they really want.
Gina: Yeah.
A note about this Brain Fart
Every Friday morning, Lee and I spin a wheel, get a question about education and have a ramble about it. No preparation, no carefully constructed argument, just whatever pops into our heads before we’ve properly woken up.
This conversation was recorded, transcribed and lightly smoothed using AI. The opinions, examples, disagreements and occasional nonsense are entirely ours. The punctuation has probably had more attention than the thinking.
It’s a Brain Fart. Just one with slightly better grammar.
Discover more from Edu'Flections
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.