The second theme that emerged from the teachers’ interviews relates to the difficulties the teachers faced in implementing the curriculum. Issues of teachers’ assistants and resources are further presented below.
5.10.1. Issues of teachers’ assistants
Teacher assistants have also been recently introduced into the preschool system. These assistants are volunteer O-level or A-level students who are waiting for their results to further their studies or take jobs. Hence, the post is temporary and they can opt out at anytime. The findings showed that Anita, Laila and Tina had one teacher assistant each; most of them do not stay longer than six months. As for Hana, she had volunteering parents as her teacher assistants. She has one teacher’s assistant to help her throughout the day and if this parent cannot make it, she has other parents who are glad to volunteer. According to the four teachers, they are using their teachers’ assistants by giving them the role to assist children in giving out work, looking after the children’s safety, including restroom breaks, assisting with phonics when required and helping children who need more attention.
151 Due to the volunteering scope given to the volunteers, the assistants do not usually stay long. Laila reported that her assistant was with her for a month only, at the start of the year, to help with transition. Tina is also having the same dilemma of not having a teacher’s assistant on a regular basis, as hers is not present every day. As for Anita, her assistants are helpful and her only issue about them is their temporary service.
“Only for a month in the beginning of the new term. Now they have secured a job and the other one has a scholarship to further her studies”. (T-Laila-I- Trained)
“Not there every day, they come and go as they like, so I do not depend on them as I do not want to get used to the temporary help”. (T-Tina-I-Trained) “They are student volunteers waiting for their exam results and so they do not stay long”. (T-Anita-I-Untrained)
Anita is faced with the challenge of delivering the lesson to a class including a child with special needs who requires a lot of her attention; at the same time, she has no teacher assistant to help her. She is struggling to attend to the rest of the children and the Special Education Needs Assistant (SENA) cannot help her yet until the child’s parents declare their consent. This situation is similar to Hana’s, who is also trying to understand the behaviour of the children with special needs in her class. However, in her case she has a teacher’s assistant.
“Delivering the lesson is OK except when there are children with special needs. They need more attention but at the same time, I need to look after the other children and this issue affects them as well. Hopefully, slowly, I can manage it with the SENA teacher. The challenge is my teacher assistant left and SENA teacher cannot cater to the child yet without the parents willing to accept and consent”. (T-Anita-I-Untrained)
Laila, who is a trained teacher, is challenged with creating a conducive classroom organisation to make the learning more fun.
“I am challenged when it comes to classroom organisation on how to make it conducive; a learning class to do activities with the children. By learning class I mean is to make them like the class to feel like home so they can enjoy their learning. I am thankful to have temporary teacher assistant to assist in handling the children, because without them it is challenging”. (T-Laila-I- Trained)
Tina is challenged with the temporary teacher assistants and raised the issue of safety. She does not provide sand play in her activities to avoid being blamed if anything
152 negative happens, as she cannot monitor them all. She also shared that her non-teaching period is sometimes used to relieve her class automatically, if the special lessons Ugama (Islamic Religious Knowledge) and/or P.E (Physical Education) teachers are absent.
“Alhamdulillah OK. Syukur Alhamdulillah so far. My challenge is only having temporary teachers’ assistants. Now they have left, I need some assistance with teaching activities especially the reading programme to help monitor children’s reading progress. This is also why I do not have sand play activities as I am concerned with the safety of the children and not enough adults to help with monitoring. I also become the relief class teacher automatically, when the Ugama teacher or the P.E. teacher is not there”. (T-Tina-I-Trained)
Indirectly, both the trained and untrained teachers are saying that the issue of temporary teachers’ assistants does greatly affect them but has contributed to the factors that challenged them when implementing their lessons.
While these teachers are facing issues of no teachers’ assistants, Hana has the advantage that her assistant (a parent volunteer) is always there. She mentioned that in return for the volunteers’ service, the school acknowledges her teacher assistants by rewarding them with gifts on teachers’ day, certificate for volunteering, and also access to any school extra- curricular activities.
“The school rewards the volunteering parents as teacher assistants with teachers’ day gifts, certificate, and access to ECA school activities”. (T-Hana- I-Untrained)
Furthermore, Laila’s research discussion revealed that the children were also part of her challenges in implementing the change.
“Classroom change, sometimes children can say my classroom is always the same”. (T-Laila-I-Trained)
5.10.2. Issues of resources
Hana expressed that she did not find resources were a challenge.
“Resources for everyday are enough for me. It is enough, it depends on the creativity of the teacher on how to get more resources but so far it is enough”. (T-Hana-I-Untrained)
Laila and Hana suggested the need for more resources on book references for implementing the curriculum, specifically for each topic.
153 “I would like to suggest for the Curriculum Department, to provide more book references on how to conduct activities or sample activities for topics in the curriculum”. (T-Laila-I-Trained)
“Curriculum Department to provide topical charts to guide us for each topic”. (T-Hana-I-Untrained)
“We still lack resources and limited budget allocations for our class. We need more reference books and on materials like stationeries for the children”. (T- Laila-I-Trained)
Tina on the other hand, shared that when she does not have enough budget from the school for her resources, she buys them herself, paying out of her own pocket.
“If I don’t have the resources that I need, I buy them. We do have a Pra budget but we use it on everyday stationeries like glue, pencils, coloured pencils and if the plasticine is not enough, I buy more”. (T-Tina-I-Trained)