Kia Ora Precious Jewels: Stories of A Teacher's Learning Journey in New Zealand

By Azra Moeed

This book is not a scholarly text reporting research, nor does it intend to show someone how to teach. I present learnings about teaching and how important my students, my Precious Jewels have been in my growth as a teacher. It is about me growing up with the support of a lot of students.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookTrail Publishing
• Release date: Jun 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637679661

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 Azra Moeed

Paperback: 978-1-63767-965-4

eBook: 978-1-63767-966-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022910706

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction.

Ordering Information:

BookTrail Agency

8838 Sleepy Hollow Rd.

Kansas City, MO 64114

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

My Learning Stories

1     The Most Precious Jewels

2     My Favourite Jewels

3     Kohinoors- My Indian Precious Jewels

4     The Lost Jewels

5     The Budding Scientists

6     Primary School Jewels

7     The Mature Jewels

8     Precious Pounamu, My Greenstone Gems

9     My Special Jewels

10   Kahurangi Te Kaitiaki of the Taiao

Growing Up As A Teacher

1     Managing students

2     Designing Learning

3     Learning What and How to Teach

4     Sharing the Learning Journey with Parents

5     Learning and Assessment

6     Caring About Students and Caring About Their Learning

About This Book

I am a learner and have strived to motivate my students to have a passion for learning. My teaching has been for creating a classroom, a laboratory, or a lecture where students look forward to coming and having fun, but when they leave, I know that they have learnt. Each learner takes away something different from a lesson but as a teacher it is my business to know each student and their learning needs. I strive to plan and teach in ways that creates opportunities to learn, scaffold learning, challenge students to think and want to understand.

In present times, knowledge is accessible, but understanding of that accessible knowledge is not. It is my job to help students to understand that.

This book is not a scholarly text reporting research, neither does it intend to show someone how to teach. I present my learnings about teaching and how important my students, my Precious Jewels, have been in my growth as a teacher. It is about me growing up as a teacher with the support of a lot of students.

They have been the best teachers I have had.

I am grateful to all the Precious Jewels who have over the years taught me so much. I present this as stories, I have respectfully, used pseudonyms so as not to identify anyone.

The stories are described under the following headings, call them chapters if you may.

Please list below each of the headings without the sub-headings. Then when you come to that heading in the text you may say something like ‘this section covers the following:’. This way you can reduce about 2 pages of the contents and retrieve the subheadings in the text.

My Learning Stories

1

The Most

Precious Jewels

Awhina a unique jewel

As always, Awhina was late to class. The other 14 students had come in and settled down to start on their individual programmes. The door opened, without turning his head, Peter said, it must be Awhina, she is always late. Awhina opened the door, walked in with her smell of nicotine, which always accompanied her. We were all ready for the expected performance and were not disappointed. Awhina: (Very loudly) don’t look at me like that! Don’t look at me like that! I, the teacher did not react because I was not looking at her in the first place. The ritual continued, Awhina’s best defence was offence, and it was the same each time. She would have been at the far end of the playing field, behind a tree, smoking with her friends. Finished her cigarette after the bell rang to signal the end of lunch break. Then a slow walk to the class across the big field. In the class, I walked over to shut the door and picked up her box and handed it to her. Then quietly said, Kia ora Awhina, it is good to see you and then carried on with my teaching.

At the end of the year, we had a celebration. Awhina gave me a card, which she had made herself. It said in bold words: Miss, I have never not wanted to come to your class. Thank you for saying my name right. A double negative, but I was happy, Awhina had settled down, believed she could achieve, and noticeably, her entry to the class was no longer a performance. Each child in that class gave me a hug and I called them my Precious Jewels.

I learnt, I needed to love them like my own children, believe in them and give them a chance.

I start the book with this story because I believe that the students had learnt what was taught but more importantly, I learnt more. That all children are precious jewels because each has something that makes them special. Sometimes they do misbehave, and I stop to wonder why all the carbon did not turn to diamond, which would be unrealistic. On some days they knew, they will be called charcoal! If nothing else, it got a laugh.

Navratan, the nine jewels….

When I got married, one of the gifts from my parents was a set of jewellery made using nine gemstones that all have different colours and lustre. Such jewellery is called Navratan and is very useful because it has nine different colours so one can wear it with any dress, and it looks nice. The nine gemstones are: Diamond, Pearl, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Topaz, Opal, Coral, and Zircon. The students I have taught and learnt from are my metaphorical treasure chest, of Precious Jewels, my Navratans. Over the years, having taught from early childhood through to university level the students have been from three years old to those older than me, and I am not saying how old I am.

My teaching journey in New Zealand started when I arrived in Wellington in the middle of November. It was windy and cold and was supposed to be summer. Lucknow (India) where I came from was 45°C in summer, now that was summer! Having lived in Wellington for 45 years, I have learnt to appreciate the wind, rain, frost, and lately warm temperatures. By the way, I was already a trained teacher and had taught at a teachers’ training college in India.

My first job in New Zealand was teaching a food hygiene course to people who worked in the food industry. My first microbiology lesson went right over their heads. So, I decided to ask my students, who had a background in science? A lovely older lady put her hand up and said she had done science in high school. A cheeky 17-year-old commented, science has come a long way since! I had to rethink what I was going to teach and how, for all my students to learn.

Never assume, what the students know, it is a good idea to find out what they already know.

There was a shortage of relief teachers in Wainuiomata, a close by suburb of Wellington. I managed to get a job there as a pool reliever for two days a week. If all teachers were present, I released a senior teacher so they could catch up on their paperwork. If a teacher was away, I was in the class teaching. This was my first experience of teaching in a New Zealand school, and there was a lot for me to learn. One day when I was in a class, I decided to mark the children’s writing. This child had written, I would off done this…I would off done and so on. I used my red pen to correct it, I would have done… When I returned the books, I was in for a real surprise. This 11-year-old boy came over put the book in front of me and said, what have you done here? I explained that I had corrected the incorrect English. He was clearly not impressed with this funny Indian teacher and said:

What do you know, you have just learnt English, and I have been speaking it all ME life!

I learnt a useful lesson, this 11-year-old did not know that I had been speaking English for much longer than he has been on the planet. My students needed to know me, and it was my job to communicate as to who I am. So, I created an introduction, which has been used year after year in all the schools I have taught, and it went something like this:

My name is Mrs Moeed.

I am Indian, married and I have a husband. He doesn’t own a dairy.

My daughter is …. years old.

I was born in India in Lucknow (A quick map of India pointing where Lucknow was).

I am 100 years old and have been teaching for 80 years.

I learnt English at the age of 5 from Irish nuns, so have an Irish accent.

I wear a sari, have a nose ring because I am a married woman, do not have a dot on my forehead because I am Muslim.

I cook curries but never make my students eat them.

Is there anything else you want to know?

It was a useful introduction; most students would take this information home and relay it. As far as I was concerned, I had given them all they expected to find out about me in the pre-facebook days. After each of them introduced themselves, I was their teacher, and they were my Precious Jewels, and we had the business of teaching and learning to get on with.

This was a very useful introduction until my mum passed away. Young Dean wanted to know how old my mother had been, I said 70, completely forgetting the introduction at the start of the year. Dean said, how is it possible that you are 100 years old when your mum was only 70. My response, good maths Dean, I am getting old and sometimes I get years mixed up.

Another incident happened in an intermediate school [Readers may not know this level of