Futuros desarrollos

Classroom visits were a key part of my reconnaissance. The first couple of visits were uneventful and even dull at times. I would just sit among the students and observe the routine classroom events unobtrusively. However, nearly once every week during my visits, an incident like the following would happen without warning.

'Stop asking me to get out of your class, you dirty bxxxh!' Amaia shouted at beginning teacher, Sandra. Amaia, a Year 9/10 student from a neighbouring class, roamed into Sandra’s class and she was asked to leave. Undeterred by Amaia’s abusive demeanour, Sandra stood her ground and demanded an apology. 'Ask me to leave again, I’ll ask my mother to beat you up!' Amaia yelled back. Shocked and embarrassed, Sandra tried hard to keep her composure though I could see the corners of her eyes were already starting to turn red. At that point, my teacher instinct took over and I wanted to intervene. However, the researcher in me kicked in and I reluctantly forced myself back onto my seat. (Fieldnotes, Term 1 Week 6)

During school recess time, Sandra fought back her tears while relating the incident to the other staff. Linda, another beginning teacher, comforted her and confessed that she too had been bullied by her students, some even younger than Amaia. Ignorant of the context these students lived in, I began to develop a deficit view of the students and their parents. Before I could fully make sense of this disturbing incident, I encountered another classroom episode that shocked me to the core.

I was in the middle of a classroom visit when the siren for lockdown suddenly went off. It appeared that a student

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physically had just assaulted a teacher and then proceeded to rampage through the facility. The police were called in. Without hesitation, the classroom teacher quickly locked the classroom and told the students to shift their desks away from the window and hide under them. (Field notes, Term 2 Week 7)

Following these experiences, I was determined to investigate the reasons for these frequent meltdowns in the school. Hence, I decided to step up my role from a "non-participant observer" (Creswell, 2013, p. 167) to a co-teacher for Tia, the class teacher for Room 2. It all started during a classroom visit when I offered to coach some of her students who were struggling with their mathematics. After noticing that the students were responding well to my tutoring, Tia asked if I would also like to support her in the PE lessons. I gladly accepted her offer because I was excited with the prospect of working directly with the challenging students in her class.

At that point, in my naivety I expected that I could use my hard- line Singaporean teaching style to teach these unruly children respect and discipline. After all, didn’t Jackie Chan in the Karate Kid movies show that an Asian martial arts master could turn around uncontrollable western children and transform them into the perfect student and disciple? It would be a piece of cake. In reality, it was not quite as I thought.

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It was time for PE and I was helping the teacher to get her class ready while she had gone off to put on her PE gear. In Singapore, I could literally get my students to get into two neat lines with a snap of my fingers. At Greendale School, this simple exercise took countless minutes and many excruciating heartaches. My patience started to wane when Kauri, a Year 7 boy, started to defy my instruction to get back in line. In fact, I noticed he was deliberately walking away from the line to push my button. In a strong but firm tone, I called out to him, 'Hang on, Kauri.' Expecting complete compliance, I was stunned when he shouted back at me, 'You go hang yourself!' (Fieldnotes, Term 1 Week 4)

At this moment, I felt like an ostrich desperately looking for a hole to hide in as the rest of the class watched and waited for my response to Kauri’s challenge. If I did not assert myself there and then, I risked losing face and authority in front of the other students. On the other hand, I was not prepared to handle a full blown confrontation with him which could potentially jeopardise the research partnerships and even endanger the safety of the other students. It was such a painful dilemma. In the end, I bit my tongue, swallowed my pride and left the matter to Tia. I was hoping then this would be my worst encounter with the students. However, my first student focus group was just as disastrous.

From the start, I could again sense that the students did not trust nor respect me. Terina, for instance, kept asking, 'Are you sure you are not a counsellor?' Like her friends, she was not willing to share much about herself during the session. Before long, the students were turning our meeting into a mini riot. As I was facilitating the session, Rawiri mocked my Asian accent while Pania snatched my Dictaphone, recorded and played back profanities to the others. Ihu, the one who asked me for my sandwich, tried to trick me into saying the Māori word for butt-hole, saying it was something else. Given my traditional Asian teaching history and teacher identity, I felt very infuriated and disrespected. Furthermore, I was also frustrated that they were not giving me the data I was after. (Fieldnotes, Term 2, Week 3)

Watching how the students mocked at my helplessness, it was hard not to think of them as mean and lacking empathy. Upon

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reflection, I realised that instead of blaming them for their behavioural deficiency, I should have questioned whether I had ever tried to build my rapport with them in the first place. Still, I found myself walking away from the meeting feeling empty and defeated.

Having shared the challenges in the material and situated context of the school in Scenes 1, 2 and 3, I now turn to the external context of the school. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Ball et al. (2012) refer to this context as aspects such as pressures and expectations from broader local and national policy matters such as league table positions, and legal requirements and responsibilities, as well as the degree and quality of local authority support and relationships with other schools. They further posit that the four contextual dimensions of the school can overlap and are interconnected. In the next two scenes, I shall also demonstrate the relationship between situated context and external context of Greendale School.

Scene 4.4: Baggage from the past, “of white flight and financial