Steve and Pam Wise

Former student Edmund Mok is back in Malaysia after his first year in Engineering at the University of Toronto. He and I went for lunch today so I could pick his brain about what the year was like for him. Here are his insights into that year, which I post here for my students who will shortly be headed to Canada for their first year.

Canada is a great country (I could have told him that!) and Toronto is a great city for university. There is a lot of variety in a very short distance. Spadina Road is fantastic; you can get almost any kind of food in the world there. The libraries are amazing; they are everywhere and there is a huge number of books available. Even the architecture is worth looking at. He loved the parks and intends to get a bicycle on his return for second year so he can see more of the city.

The climate is really not a problem. You quickly get used to it. The first snowfall was an incredible experience. The whole landscape is transformed.

Residence is definitely the way to go. There are a lot of problems with setting up on your own: phone, internet, TV, electricity bills, cooking and transportation. All of that is taken care of in residence. He was at New College and had twenty Malaysian friends, mostly from CPU on his floor and the adjacent floor. They would travel together and just hang out.

Having study buddies in your course of study is really important to success at university. The work load is huge and it is almost all assignment based, like it was at CPU. He felt that the Canadian program really helped him to prepare for what he has done this year.

The allowance that his sponsor provided was enough for him to set aside money for his return fare to Malaysia this summer. A lot of students spent it all on things, and couldn’t get home for the summer. It is really worth it to save up for the airfare.

Living in a foreign country has taught him a lot about himself; his strengths and weakness. He has matured a lot over the year and is looking forward to the second year now that he has a better handle of what is takes to live in Canada. It has been a great experience.

The highlight of the year was renting a bus so he and twenty friends could travel to Niagara in the spring and see the Falls. The only regret was that the Maid of the Mist, a boat that goes right up under the Falls, wasn’t running that day. He intends to go back next year.

It was great seeing Edmund again. I enjoyed his company and am encouraged to think that our program has helped students like him to seize the future and make their way in the world. Yes, I do need a salary to pay the rent and support my wife’s ministry, but my student’s success means so much more to me than the money I receive for doing this job. It is one of my great joys in life.

At the end of the term our students have to demonstrate what they have learned in a final project that is worth about a third of their overall mark. Understandably there is some anxiety about this project. In English they have to read two novels and three supplementary texts, cite nine secondary sources and use proper MLA format in writing a two thousand word essay. Then they have to present the result of all this work to their class, and defend it from questions from their peers and teacher. None of them have had to do any of this before they got to our program, and it is a huge mountain of new material to climb in just one year.

It is a credit to how effective this program is, and the drive of our students to master the curriculum that they do as well as I have seen over the last two weeks. The novels have ranged from Chinua Achebe to V.S. Naipaul, from Dickens to Dostoevsky and have a wide range of topics from archetypical heroes to the problems of racism in modern societies. Presentations must be accompanied by slide shows illustrating the topic and then the student must demonstrate competence by answering questions from the class, some of which can get quite pointed.

For two weeks I get to sit back and listen to my students teach, and assess their work. For the most part I have been very impressed. I don’t have a single student who was unable to present, and given the weight of this project, that means that I will probably see every student pass my course; a great relief to me as I hate to see students fail. Given that English is the second and in some cases the third language these kids have had to learn, that in itself is a huge accomplishment. I am extraordinarily proud of their efforts, and trust that the whole experience, from essay outline to presentation, will prove to have been useful in their future academic careers.

That means Happy Teacher’s Day in Bahasa. I heard a lot of it in the hallways in our school yesterday. So did other staff; in fact the lunch room tables were loaded with goodies of all kinds. Students that I taught last semester gave me flowers and cards, and one of my classes, the one pictured here, brought me an enormous cake and insisted on taking a class picture. We were all delighted to take a moment to celebrate our progress as a class together.

I really do enjoy teaching in Asia. I like the curriculum; the opportunity to finally give expression to my life-long love of literature and subtleties of the English language. I like the climate and the opportunities to see a part of the world I had previously only read about. I like being able to support my wife’s important ministry in Cambodia and South-East Asia. But mostly I like the kids.

Asians have not forgotten the importance of family and respect for their elders, including their teachers. Over time this translates into self-respect, for as these kids work hard to please their families and teachers, they grow in competence and ability and see themselves becoming the people they themselves want to be. That joy of accomplishment can be seen on these young faces in the picture.

I have just finished marking their final essay for the term on a thesis they will have to present to their peers and then defend for thirty minutes. They are understandably nervous about the challenge. But I have read their essays, and they have nothing to worry about. This is excellent work, by any standard. Instead of satisfying the requirement that they provide support from nine secondary sources in addition to the two novels they have been asked to compare, many of them have far exceeded that requirement. I have one student who has over twenty citational references from an astonishingly wide range of disciplines.

Marking seventy of these essays is tedious and time-consuming and has occupied every waking minute outside of the classroom for the last week. But it has also been very encouraging to see the growth in research and writing ability that these students display in their work. We only get them for a year in our program, and that year is crucial in their success in university in Canada. It is hard work for all of us. But the students’ genuine respect and appreciation for all that we do for them as teachers is a great encouragement to us to keeping on doing our best for them. It was for me a very Happy Teacher’s Day! Thanks to all my students for making it so.

March Break, or Reading Week, has been a staple of the teaching calender for as long as I can remember. It was originally planned, as far as I can tell, as an opportunity for teachers to do some marking of student work and some reflection on the direction their courses were taking while giving students an opportunity to do the reading that is fundamental to intellectual success.

Of course, people being who they are, much of this week – including my own plans, I might add – has been focussed on getting away for a week’s holiday. Teachers in Canada are fond of heading somewhere south, the Caribbean or Florida, to get a break from the long Canadian winters. Considering that teachers already get some of the longest holidays in the professional world, this has been a matter of some resentment among the non-teaching population.

This past week instead of going away I spent the week executing the original intention of this break: I marked student work and did some planning. I have to say that I found the whole exercise refreshing and rewarding. I got to sleep at a reasonable hour each night in my own comfortable bed and got up to work early as I normally do. I did a reasonable amount of marking each day, 10 eassys (five hours) and 10 journals (two hours), and have just finshed early this morning. I am not tired and I am not frustrated. I had plenty of time to read and watch the news, and time to visit and chat with my wife and plan our little holiday to England this summer.

Normally I try to do this while I am teaching, marking until late in the evening or spending every waking moment in a marking marathon on weekends. By taking advantage of this week to mark I have greatly increased my enjoyment of this necessary task, and greatly reduced my stress. I have almost certainly done a better and fairer job of marking, as I have had the time to reflect and recheck my comments and my marks.

I have also had the leisure to truly appreciate the fine work that some of my students are doing. I spend a lot of time preparing my classes for writing. This essay has probably taken close to an hour in counselling for each student, prior to their submission, going over each detail of their outlines and drafts and providing individual as well as class instruction on MLA format, thesis selection and argument structure.

The results of this effort have been extremely rewarding. I have students with a two page bibliography for a 2000 word essay, all fully in-text cited and fully relevant to their arguments. I have marked essays that could be submitted for proof of competence in an application for a Master’s program in English. I have read some junk too, it is to be said, but the majority of these students have written essays that have been a joy and delight to read; it certainly was not a wasted week!

I have also had the time to share some laughter and some fun with Pam with whom I have just celebrated thirty three years of marriage. I find her company to be all the rest I need these days, and rejoice that a loving God has brought us together to be partners and encouragers on this voyage of discovery called life. God has richly blessed us this week with so many answers to prayer. I trust that your March Break has been as rewarding and as fruitful.

One of my students caught me strumming before class began. I don’t do as much of this as I would like. We do have a lot of material to cover in this course and I do not wish to waste my students’ precious time. But perhaps before the term is over I might do a couple of songs.

This one is from a friend and colleague, Corrina Austin, whose blog (http://corrinaaustin.wordpress.com/) keeps me connected to life that I once knew and loved:

Trilliums

Something in the wind, or a glance from the sun
…and in unison, they lift their expectant faces,
pure and white,
this congregation of grandiflorum

I cannot hear it, but their song lifts
into the air
a secret chant, a sigh of strings
an ache of vibrato
disguised as stillness

Later in bed, watching the moon rise
I think of them out there,
trembling in dew-fall,
still waiting
their faces glowing holy in the moonlight.

Cambodia is a moral vacuum. Ruthlessly colonized by the French, who drained the country of its resources and basically brought nothing to the country in return, bombed back to the dark ages by the Americans, who were seeking to cut off the supply route to South Vietnam during that bloody war, decimated by the Khmer Rouge who obliterated the intelligentsia, wiping out an entire generation, and dominated by the Vietnamese who now control the country through a puppet ruler; it is no wonder that they have little idea of how to function as families, as communities and as a society.

What Pam and her organization are seeking to do is to bring moral education, admittedly with a Christian focus, to the people of the villages of Cambodia through health care evangelism, using the existing organizations in the country in a focused and cooperative way. In a couple of weeks both of us will return to Phnom Penh during the Chinese New Year holiday to take part in further training of these health care workers. I am looking forward to providing some teaching first hand as opposed to my usual role of being part of the support network so that I can better understand the issues and the personalities involved in her ministry.

In my own workplace I see the importance of these moral values every day. Asian students, at least those who have not been devastated by generations of war and abuse, are invariably polite, civil and kind. Manners and social graces are important components of their culture, and I must say that my time spent teaching in Asia has benefitted from this aspect of their culture which my students bring to class. Civility breeds respect; incivility contempt. But civility does more than ensure that a respectful tone and atmosphere permeate my classes. It also facilitates inquiry and discussion as students become aware that their questions will be met with not with scorn, but with polite interest and a desire to further their understanding. Inquiry and discussion facilitate understanding and develop confidence in the learning process. Eventually this brings about maturity, as students begin to own the learning process for themselves and begin to develop their own strands of intellectual and social growth.

I wrote recently about the desire of some teachers and administrators to control the process of education through anger and intimidation. It has been my observation that this control is not only detrimental to personal relationships, it is detrimental to the learning process as well. Fear may work to impart facts and even skills, but it fails impart the understanding necessary for future growth, and undermines the self-confidence that is necessary to undergo present difficulties for future gains, which is an essential quality for those who are considering a university education. Kindness and civility do not in themselves lead to advances in education. But they do mold the character that makes this level of education possible. And they do affect a society that can look with hope toward a future when the education of the youth will become a valuable component of that nation’s fabric.

Civility and kindness; such simple virtues, it would seem; so unconnected to the success of a nation; and yet upon examination, how fundamental to that nation’s progress. It is also most pleasant, and most encouraging to my own attitude and teaching effectiveness to be treated with such civility and kindness by my students for the efforts I make on their behalf. To all my students in Malaysia who are reading this, my most appreciative thanks.

Being a teacher is not for the fainthearted. The hours can be incredibly long, the stress crushing, the endless marking mind-numbing. But every once in while you get a little encouragement. I got this a couple of months ago, and thought I would post it. I hope its author, now at the University of Toronto, won’t mind.

Dear Sir:

Regards,

The Canadian Pre-University program is an excellent one: student-focused, skills-driven, staffed by some of the most educated Western university trained professionals working in Asia. Unfortunately it is virtually unknown, not only by Asians, but by Canadians as well who treat their own vastly superior educational product with a great yawn of indifference.

That’s our loss as Canadians, and mine too, as I would love to work in the next CPU program in Cambodia, for example. Except there isn’t one. In fact outside of this program I would be hard pressed to find something like it. Most of the other programs in Asia are very much content-driven, with all the deadening, dreary accumulation of facts ingested merely to be regurgitated at exam time that such a curriculum implies.

The closest thing to what we do in Canada is the IB program. It has a similar focus on skills and is similarly student-focused. If I ever do move on from CPU it would likely be to an IB school. Not that I want to move. But in teaching, as in most careers, it doesn’t pay to put all your eggs in one basket. So this weekend I took some training in the IB program, so if we reach the place where we have to move on, I will now have the qualifications to do so.

I must say I found the courses of study initially off-putting. The restrictions of what books and authors you are allowed to pursue struck me as constrained. But as I made my way through the workshop, I found myself coming to understand the program in a more sympathetic light, and by the conclusion of the workshop had begun to see its rationale more clearly and more enthusiastically. The opportunity to establish a network of teachers throughout the region with similar educational programs and objectives is an encouraging one.

The icing on the cake for the weekend was the opportunity to meet with a former student and his new girlfriend who are now working as educational consultants to students from the Middle East seeking to get further education in Malaysia. As I have mentioned before, this country is an educational hub in South-East Asia, and Anoosh and Ari are seeking to tap into that market and provide a much needed liason service to negotiate visas, scholarships and admissions for prospective students. It was great to see admitedly one of my favourite students again, and to share an outstanding meal and get caught up on each other’s news. A wonderfully fulfilling weekend, that has left me totally exhausted. Fortunately there are only three days this week before the mid-semester break which we plan to spend in Cambodia on a working holiday.

Ok, I admit that I do feel a little guilty posting this one. Gone to Bali for the weekend? How many people in this world get to say that in their lifetime? Like many things in our decision to come to Asia, working for a company that sends their employees on weekend team-building excursions to places like Borneo and Bali was an unexpected perk. However, that is what this company does, and since they were paying the freight, I didn’t mind hauling my weary body off to Indonesia for some free R&R.

The Hard Rock Hotel is situated on what must be the largest bit of prime real estate in this part of the world. The resort is enormous, and it is right downtown in Kotu Beach, one of the great beaches in the world, and a surfing magnet. Yes I did want to try surfing again, but I waited for the friends I was travelling with to come down for breakfast and missed the morning lesson. No lessons in the afternoon, as by then it was low tide and the surf is not good when the water is that far out.

But I did get some body surfing in on a boogie board and had a hard time getting out of the water as I was having too much fun. I was also getting a little too much sun, so I had to quit. In the afternoon I stretched out in one of the cabanas around the enormous pool and read and napped til supper time. For dinner we all went out to a seafood restaurant down the road for roasted crab and broiled shrimp. We also were treated to a formal Balinese dance while we watched the sun go down and listen to the awesome surf thunder into shore.

Taylor’s provided a a tour guide and buses for our stay. On one shopping trip we stopped at a coffee factory where I sat sipping my brew trying to make sense of this odd poster in front of me. There were Jack Nicholson’s and Morgan Freeman’s septinginarian faces grinning at me from their Bucket List movie with a picture of fruit bats and some script in Bahasa. Then it clicked: oh yeah, this was the coffee that was processed through the digestive tract of bats and civit cats before being roasted and ground for consumption! I didn’t finish what I was drinking!! I must admit it was exceptionally good coffee, it is just the thought that is so off-putting.

Our passage through the intricacies of Indonesian customs was also handled by Taylor’s, vastly simplifying the process. Three of my buddies, who had gone off for a last minute jaunt and had to make their own way through check-in, got booted from the flight under the excuse that it was overbooked. Their seats remained empty while I worried and fretted all the way to Jakarta. Apparently this is a fairly frequent scam. Garuda offers a financial compensation in such cases and a rerouting on the next available flight. Airport officials hose the airline by telling people who have a seat that the plane is overbooked. Then they have the unsuspecting tourist sign a release turning the compensation money over to the corrupt officials. This time the scam didn’t work as one of the teachers knew Bahasa and these guys talked quite openly about what they were doing. As a result my friends got the next flight and the money. Fortunately for them we had a three hour layover in Jakarta, so they caught up with us for the last leg back to KL.

In was a long day to get home, but I had brought some marking with me, and I finished it all at the last layover, so the time wasn’t wasted. I am tired though, after getting only four hours sleep last night and working all day today. But I feel great, and really enjoyed the trip. The music at the hotel was outstanding, and so was the room and the food. I went to Bali for the weekend and stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel. How neat is that!