Why Exams are Important Pt 2

So I get a message from Jordan's teacher yesterday.

She's been doodling a lot in class. Even when the teacher is teaching.

She's always been a doodler. She draws everywhere. Any time she gets her hands on scraps of paper, she'll doodle.

Sometimes, the doodling is effective because it helps her understand concepts better. Sometimes, it's just doodling for doodling sake.

Just a quick glance at her things all over the house, I found a variety of different sorts of doodles on everything from scrap paper to school test papers.

Hence, an annoyed school teacher.

To be fair, if I were the teacher, I'd be annoyed too since it's easy to assume that the child isn't paying attention when there is doodling. My own students do it as well.

Admirably, she admitted openly to the teacher that she doodles when she is bored (they've been going through exam paper after exam paper) and when she finds things hard to understand (that's how she unpacks things).

I also try and suggest to the teacher that instead of fully banning her from doing it and understanding that this is something that she does to process and to decompress, why not let her doodle as a form of note taking. To channel it into something the teacher can accept.

She seems to be open to that idea and I'm grateful.

Then, in the evening, I read about Nike's Chief of Design and how he doodles. All. The. Time. Part of me wants to send that article on to the teacher but the other part of me knows that's just being snarky. But it would be cool if her doodling allowed her to become chief of design, somewhere.

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Why exams are important

It's exam time. Again.

And that's usually when creativity flourishes most. When there is real work to be done, the mind wanders and interesting ideas and creations surface. It isn't really necessity that was the mother of invention. I think, more possibly, boredom.

One day, Evan comes out of school with his finger encased in paper. He says it's a dragon's talon. His friend made it for him. And he asks if I can find out how to make them. We YouTube it, I learn it, I pass on the information to him and promptly forget how to do it. He goes on to make 10 talons; he has to make 10, after all he has 10 fingers and makes a couple more in case he chips a nail. He's become a grand master of it.

It's a thing in class now. They're all little dragons that have started to spout talons. Poor teachers. The only things I cautioned him against was to NOT do it during teaching or work time and please use rough paper rather than buying a clean sketch pad from the book store for this.

The annoying thing is that there are talons all over the house and he refuses to throw it out. He puts them them on to claw menacingly at Muffin when his brother annoys him.

Then, there was this.

It's a creature. Not enough legs to be an insect or an arachnid but enough to be an Evan creation. It's made out of staples, magnets and an eraser. All things you find on the study table especially when you're parked there for extended periods of time.

He tells me it's science. He uses the magnet because that's how you get the staples to hold on. The eraser is important because that's how you anchor the staples and it's what forms the body.

Ingenious though extremely annoying because of the high wastage of staples and the random staples lying around waiting to impale the random, unaware adult.

He's proud of his creations and he brings them to school to show his friends. Honestly, these are probably going to be the things he will remember learning in primary school, not so much the fanciful and impractical Chinese phrases that he's had to memorise by the boat load. 

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Small Business Enterprise

Jordan's exams are over. The semi-pall that has shrouded our house for the last few weeks has lifted. Somewhat.

Somewhat because Evan's exams aren't over yet. But it isn't stopping them from celebrating.

For Evan, any opportunity to play is a good thing. For Muffin, he is celebrating the fact that his play mates are free to play with him and he doesn't have to do work just so that his siblings don't complain that he is too free.

First order of business, was to literally, set up a business. Or rather 3 businesses.

Each kid decided on a business they were about to start.

Each kid came up with a business model including pricing, opening hours and rules and regulations.

Jordan set up a music school that promised that anyone could be a musician.
Evan set up a photo studio with his business partner, Eevee. 
Muffin was setting up a spa. He was CEO. Jordan was the massage therapist.

Working hours took into consideration school hours. Obviously, they weren't giving up their day jobs for this.

Their family benefits were great.  We got discounts and there were always freebies for those hapless enough to engage their services.

 

So we came home to signs on their door last night declaring their businesses closed for the day and early this morning, the sign had changed.

 

We found out that they subscribed to the belief that the 'early bird catches the worm' because they were all up at six this morning, voluntarily, for a business meeting before their businesses opened for the day.

Unfortunately, they didn't take factor in the size of their consumer base so there wasn't a lot of business to go around.

That didn't fuss them much. They closed early and went to the park.

 Their jobs certainly afforded them a great amount of work-life balance.

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Not supposed to

I know I am not supposed to get angry.

I know I am not supposed to yell.

I know I am not supposed to bang on the table.

I know I am not supposed to feel like I want to cane.

But

I do get angry.

I do yell to the point that it echoes round the block.

I do slam the table, so hard I have a bone bruise on my finger.

I do want to cane.

Then

I feel the tears.

I feel the frustration.

I feel the pain.

I feel the distress.


These aren't useful emotions; they don't equip me to do anything useful or to help JED in the ways that they need it. But much as I would like to say that I am the master of my emotions, I am not. So, on days when I really just lose it, I am thankful that Packrat is there to even the keel.

I know what I need to do.

I know I need to stop rescuing.

I know I need to let failing be the teacher.

I know I need to allow natural consequences to follow.


I just need the guts.

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No Need MBTI

The next few posts will be exam-related because it's October and we have two kids prepping for it. November, however, I promise will be full of glee.

Anyway, it's the exams and we've realised how the twins are different in how they take on the challenges of revision and the actual stress of taking the exams. We try very hard not to be the stressors for the exams. But they don't actually need us to be the stressors because they pick it up subliminally from school.

So the night before their composition papers, the emotions were running on high. Jordan was trying to pull a Hermione and cram all sorts of things into her head. She had copious notes copied into a book and when I declared it was time for a hard stop, she sneaked in two more bits of information into her notebook and stuffed it into her school bag surreptitiously, hoping that I didn't see it.

Evan, on the other hand, grew quieter and more agitated by the minute. He kept worrying but his worry was the 'walk round in circles' sort of worrying which eventually culminated in him hyperventilating in fear that he was about to fail his exams.

We had to pull everything we had out of our metaphorical bag of tricks, convincing him that he wasn't going to fail and if he did then he just needed to figure out why. We promised him that no one got kicked out of school for failing exams. It took him a long while to settle down especially with the sister chiming in about how many things she had tried to remember and that was what he ought to have done. Eventually, he fell asleep and both Packrat and I commented about how the twins were different as an eggplant and a bag of nails when it came to how they faced challenges.

 I recalled that years before we had kids, over late night prata and Milo Dinosaurs, together with our friends, we  came up with a matrix that described people's behaviour as an interaction of how motivated they were versus how anxious they tended to be. Over the years, Packrat and I have desperately tried to recall it that matrix that we had drawn on a paper napkin.

The next morning, after the meltdowns, I could't suddenly see it in my mind. And this was what I came up with that I think approximated what we did all those years ago.

Low Anxiety, High Motivation- Zai/ Steady (Unfazed and gets things done)
Low Anxiety, Low Motivation- Bo Chup (Lazy and unfazed)

High Anxiety, High Motivation- Mugger Toad (High Achiever)
High Anxiety, Low Motivation- Gan Cheong Spider (Runs around like a headless chicken but not actually doing anything)

So there.

My twins, both high anxiety but differing on levels of motivation. I had thought that I would use the melt down Evan had to point out to him, when he was calmer, how he could avoid such a situation again.

Unfortunately, with the terror of the first paper past, he was back to just being Bo Chup and nothing I could say could inject into him a sense of urgency.

 But that wasn't my epiphany this time. I had already known my children to be like that. The achievement and accomplishment in this case was figuring out this matrix.

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Great Expectations

The exams are looming and that brings out the tiger mom in me no matter how much I try to squish it back in. The twins have only finished the essay papers for both languages and that itself brought epiphanies to me.

The most glaring one. 

I expect too much of my twins. 

Not in terms of grades though. 

It's partially an occupational hazard. When my livelihood is dependent on teaching pre-university students to think critically, I suppose that it is inevitable that some of that spills over into what I do with the twins. 

It doesn't feature as much in the actual content papers because honestly, some of that is beyond me, even as an adult and a teacher. It does rear its ugly when it comes to composition. It isn't about the phrases and whatever rubbish they are often encouraged to memorise and regurgitate. It's to do with the ideas. 

An example. 

A composition about helping. A picture of an old man selling magazines. 

Jordan's take.

Old man is poor. Needs to sell magazines for a living. 

Nothing wrong with that. But I prod on. 

Could there be anything else wrong with the old man that might require him to sell magazines? 

Jordan: 

Erm... He's sad. He needs money. 

Evan:

He likes reading magazines. He can read them and then sell them. 

I wanted to lead them to talk about people who might be disabled and what led them to that point as well as what their struggles were. I asked them about the old lady who sold tissue paper at the MRT station near us. She always had a walking frame with her. I asked them if they noticed the walking frame. I asked them why was it that the old lady had to sell tissue paper and wasn't doing anything else. 

She stuck to it. The old lady was poor. Needed money. 

Evan wondered what it was like to have a walking frame. 

Smoke started to slowly escape my ears. 

I asked them how else we could  help people apart from giving them money. Jordan offered to give them food. Evan thought very hard and wondered what toys they could give away. 

I realised that their answers were fine. But just not the direction I wanted them to be moving toward. 

I gave up.

Eventually, I showed them the video of 6 year old Alex who wrote to President Obama. Both of them were interested in what had happened that caused Alex to write the letter. I pointed out to both of them that helping could come in this form too. And that little children could help in big ways too and that little Alex had written to the most influential person he could think of to ask for help and that was being helpful as well. 

But on hindsight, I wondered if it was too much to expect my 9 year olds to think of it beyond what they see and to draw connections to things around them. I wondered if my being disappointed that they couldn't draw these connections was an unreasonable expectation. 

I guess, for the purposes of their compositions, their answers were sufficient to get by.

But for them, as people, it's definitely insufficient. I think that was why I was distressed. I see all these young adults who have such beautiful transcripts but without a heart or thought about the world they live in and it makes me angry. I fear that it's the transference of that frustration that manifests when the twins give me trite, textbook answers. 

Then I wondered if by wanting them to think about ideas in such a way , was I telling them how to think. That truly frightened me. What if I was squashing them into the exact box that I hoped they would think out of, unintentionally? 

So I stopped and I left them with Packrat and went out. I wasn't doing anyone favours. Them or myself. 

I come home to this. Of all the things that I talked Jordan through that afternoon, she remembered one thing. She made her letters bigger and clearer and she co-wrote a joke with Evan about Obama for me.

So, without these great expectations, my 9 yos are pretty great and funny and I have to remember that.

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