Kuala Lumpur Refugee Teacher Training Intervention: Managing Children's Behavior, Attention, and Emotions

No good training intervention starts without food
Ken baked these 60 lemon muffins.
Ken's now a famous baker in the KL refugee community

Oh, and 70 of Ken's famous chocolate chip cookies!

45 refugee teacher trainees, 12 trainers,
5 groups, 9 trainees each, 2 to 3 trainers each
We sat in a circle with no table so participants could get up and
do role plays or pair up for practice easier

Trainer Ee Lynn, a HELP clinical psychology student
"Get to know each other" questions were first asked like
Where were you born?
What's your first language?
What's your favorite celebrity?
How is the way you teach now different than the way you were taught growing up?

The teachers were asked what their goals for their students were, and they answered:
Be Confident
Good Behavior

Refugee teachers reported behavior problems, like students "not sitting still"
We organized the problems by:
Behavior, Attention, and Emotions
to help them start thinking in that framework

Vijay is a charismatic trainer who is a clinical psychology student by day and
a Malaysian Airlines pilot in his free time
HELP University clinical psychology students partnered with
Harvest Centre teachers of refugees to run the training groups.
I trained all of them the week before on how to run the groups.

Judith, a Harvest Centre refugee teacher from the
persecuted Christian Karen ethnic group in Burma
She partnered with Vijay to run a group with many Karen refugee teachers,
so she could translate some of the manual into Karen for them.

Refugee teachers were taught how a "Getting to Know You" activity
they could use with all the new refugee students who come and go in their classes

The teachers had a blast throwing the ball at each other, yelling each others' names out first.
Click HERE to see a video of the Ball-Throwing Getting to Know you activity.

Buddy Badge activity:
To help new refugee students get oriented to their new classes,
the teachers can assign one veteran student to the new student as the new student's "buddy"
The refugee teachers made buddy badges for each other as a practice activity

Another buddy badge

Old Rules:
The refugee teachers first listed their old rules, before they learned how to give new rules that the students could understand easier
New Rules are stated positively, not as "Don't Hit" but instead as "Keep hands to self"

More old rules,
Note the no racism rule
That's for the classes at Harvest Centre that have mixed refugee groups,
from Burma, Somalia, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, etc.
Most of the refugee teachers taught at community learning centres
which are started by individual refugee ethnic groups, like the
Burmese Chin group, so they are mono-ethnic

New Rules, written in the trainee's "Magic Workbook" used to practice skills

New and improved rules

PRIDE skills were taught to help the teachers build
positive teacher-child relationships by
using more praise and enthusiasm and connect with children better while children play

PRIDE skills

Silliness during the positive reinforcement activities cracked people up.
Also, they laughed really hard when they practiced a couple of the quiet, indoor games
we suggested to them to give their students a bit more activity and recharge their brains with a fun break. The refugee teachers don't do any physical exercise or loud activities in the class since the locals usually threaten to call the police on them if they make noise. So, one of their most important rules in the class is often to Be Quiet.
Click HERE to see them giggling when playing Telephone.

Sticker used a positive reinforcement. Some trainers gave trainees stickers for participation in the training groups, as an example of how to use reinforcement.

Frances teaching the goals of positive reinforcement:
Immediate, Labeled, and Specific

Star Charts

Star Charts:
Used with individual difficult children to target one, realistic do-able goal like
"Pay attention for 10 minutes" or "Completes 4 workbook pages."
Each time the child achieves the goal, s/he gets a star. By the end of the day,
the child can cash in the stars for a reward like,
10 minutes of computer time per star

Melissa made up her own star chart for her worst student

Frances made a sample star chart

Group Discussion

Ignoring, as a technique to manage the small, annoying misbehaviors
like whining or interrupting

Hard to read this but it shows the agenda for the second day.
The first day's agenda was focused on Positive Behavior Management
The second day's agenda was Managing Misbehavior, Challenging Students, Emotions, and Teacher Self-Care
Vijay distinguished between using ignoring for mild misbehavior and time out for serious misbehavior

Vijay is role playing how to ignore an annoying child, played by his trainer partner, Judith

A cultural difference emerges in a partnership:
Judith is too polite a person to be able to play an annoying student with gusto. Here she is hesitating and faltering at pretending to be annoying.
Click HERE for a video of VJ and Judith running another activity.
Adlin, a clinical psychologist who volunteered to be a trainer, pretending to strangle one of the teachers. Why? To demonstrate serious misbehavior and how it requires a more serious form of discipline.
Jackie, a teacher, enjoying demonstrating student misbehavior in class.
Teachers LOVE to pretend to be misbehaving students, like
they have been waiting their whole life to let loose and be naughty, like
the naughty students they have to put up with on a daily basis.

A list of misbehavior management tools in the teachers' toolbox:
Logical consequences, Redirection, Two-Choice Statements, Loss of Privileges,
If/Then, Time Out, Send to head teacher, Send the child home
They could use this list to decide which strategies to choose when
making a discipline plan for their most difficult child

Possible strategies to choose from

This writing on the board led to a funny moment:
As trainees had an excellent discussion about strengths and weaknesses of
using the cane as corporal punishment, the trainer wrote on the board:
"Carrot or Stick = Rewarding or Painful, Immediate, How Frequent"
The trainer told the trainees how to make reward effective
by making it immediate and less frequent.
Then he recommended making the "stick," aka the cane, more effective by making it painful, immediate, and less frequent.
He actually gave them tips on how to better use the cane.
I think he was trying to make a larger point over how to use a "stick," metaphorically, but it was taken more as advice on caning.
In the Magic Workbook, teachers made a behavioral management plan for
their most challenging student.

One teacher's in-depth behavioral plan for a tough student.

One group made a star chart with the names of everyone in the group. Each trainee got a star, with grand flourish, each time they participated in the group. I can't tell you how happy the trainee with the most stars was by the end of the training. She was given one of Ken's famous chocolate chip cookies as a reward.


CK, a trainer and published children's ghost story writer in Mandarin,
introducing the concept of FEEL:
Focus on the feeling
Evaluate the situation and all its possible solutions
Enact the best possible solution
Learn from the experience
Teachers broke into pairs and practiced using the FEEL technique with each other,
so they could better respond to a student's emotions

The last phrase above should actually be: "What keeps you hopeful as a teacher."
One of many moments lost in translation in this educational exchange.
This activity and discussion was about HOPE.
It is hard to stay hopeful as a refugee teacher. Why?
Because your students don't have much future in Malaysia, and neither do you.
And, your hope of resettlement in a better country is iffy. It takes a minimum of 4 to 5 years to get resettled and as much as NEVER or 18 years to get resettled.
So, how can you stay hopeful as a teacher?
Some said they get faith from religion. Faith that the future will get better for their students.
Faith that the student will benefit from knowing English and not falling behind in their studies if they get resettled.

Teacher Self-Care Activities:
The teachers were asked to think of all their needs, from physical to spiritual needs.

Teacher Self-Care:
Another activity was for teachers to first call out their many roles as a teacher:
Nurse, Educator, Emotional Support, Story-teller, actor/joker, etc.
Then, the teachers called out their many roles at home, after work like:
Mother, Daughter, Housekeeper, Sewing, Cook, etc.

The trainer Ee Lynn asked the trainees to list the many emotions the students bring out in them: Shock, worry, anger, scared.
Ee Lynn also taught anger management strategies to the teachers.
Click HERE to see her anger management training in action.
Magic Workbook activity:
What new classroom behavior management strategy would you like to start, stop, or continue?
How docile and subservient you might initially judge this Afghan teacher,
if you judge her based on the stereotype of her wearing a scarf.
She and her Afghan colleagues were as tough as nails.
They used the cane on their students if the student did not speak English.
So, if the student spoke any Afghan, they got caned. That's one way to quickly improve the rate of English retention. Needless to say, these Afghan teachers also had the best English of all the refugee teachers.

Teacher Self-Care Activity run by Judith, the Burmese teacher at Harvest

End of training:
Pre and Post-training intervention we did a research-based assessment
of the teachers' knowledge and confidence in using the behavioral management strategies.
And, the trainees completed a satisfaction form every day telling us how they felt about the training and topics covered. We got a lot of different answers but one lesson learned was that teaching them how to give "Commands" clearly, simply, and directly did not work well and was the least popular topic. We think that was due to their having English as a second or third language and the Commands activities were required a more advanced level of written English.
It was a lovely certificate of achievement Harvest Centre made for each trainee. The trainees were so proud to receive the certificates. Note the NYU logo they ripped right off the web for the trainee certificate of achievement.
The Afghan teachers
They crashed the training, uninvited. Only one teacher from each refugee school had been invited but they all aggressively came, insisting, with a smile, on getting trained. Turns out they had crashed previous Harvest trainings with some of their uninvited colleagues. So, Harvest told them the uninvited people could sit in on the training but not get a certificate.
Then, the Afghan teachers came straight to me and asked if they could get a certificate. Not knowing the history, I said YES! Absolutely, not aware they were splitting me with Harvest.
That led to me getting sucked into an inter-ethnic, quietly spoken, Asian spat.
In the end, only one got a certificate. Harvest doesn't mess around with setting limits. But, after threatening to leave, because Afghan women don't mess around either, the Afghans agreed to stay with some cajoling from me.
At the end of training, the Afghan sister teachers asked for a photo with me. Then, a Burmese male teacher impulsively and loudly, jumped in and asked for a picture with the Afghan women.
Stony Silence. Their unscarfed female head teacher quietly explained to me that Afghan women older than 16 cannot take pictures with men unrelated to them. I then explained it to the Burmese male teacher who looked culturally confused and rejected. I offered to take a photo with he and his friends as a consolation prize -- see just below.
The Burmese teacher in black was the one who insisted on a photo with the reluctant Afghan women
Me chatting, waiting for the certificate ceremony. The certificate ceremony was more important to these refugee teachers than I ever imagined. These refugee teachers are not allowed to get educational degrees or certificates in Malaysia. They do not get any government-funded professional development, as the Malaysian government teachers get loads of and take for granted. So, getting a fancy certificate of training completion is the pride of them and their ethnic refugee community. It is often put up on the wall of the school, like graduate degrees are put up on professors' walls.
Frances, a HELP clinical psychology student, who does therapy at Harvest with a refugee child who is causing problems in the Harvest school. Pastor Elisha, the co-director, of the Harvest school is giving Frances some background on the family history and behavioral problems of the child.
A refugee community teacher talking to Rama, a local Indian-Malaysian citizen, who teaches at Harvest. A more positive moment of Malaysia citizen-refugee connection than usual. Often, the refugees here have only negative harassment and muggings by local male citizens in Malaysia, who know that the refugees are unprotected by the government, so they make easy prey.
Me, kicking off the certificate ceremony, with my applauding all their hard work. I also told them that the hardest work was ahead -- making a change in their classroom behavior management, which requires bravery.

Dr. David, head of a refugee school

Me speaking to the refugee teachers at the certificate ceremony

Certificate to Dr. David, a refugee head teacher

Pastor May,
she went on to use this training manual and workbook
to train 20 of her own teachers in classroom behavior management,
after she did this training!

Melissa, the outspoken spokeswoman for the Afghan refugee teachers
She gave me a couple gifts at the end of the training,
thanking me for including the Afghan teachers in the training,
despite most of them having been uninvited.

Yuki - Harvest Centre teacher

Priscilla - Karen Women's Organization teacher who wants to start an adult education for refugees center with people earning their GED's. I later met with her at her KWO school to discuss her plans for starting the equivalent of a GED program for Karen Burmese refugees.

Rama, a Harvest Centre teacher, who makes me laugh.

Another Harvest teacher trainee

Julie, a Harvest Centre teacher, who grew up in Harvest Centre foster care, went to school there, and became an elementary school teacher with kids in her class ranging in age from 5 to 12, even though her class is designed for 5 year olds. 12 year old refugees are in a included because they are at a 5-year-old education level, due to their lagging behind in their education due to their odyssey as a refugee.
This refugee teacher seemed like such a Buddhist in his approach to talking about his work. He passionately advocated in his group for everyone changing their teaching style from traditional Burmese authoritarian, didactic to more liberal, modern teaching including storytelling, music, and dance. He said: "You must act, sing, and dance to be a good teacher!"
Pastor Elisha, co-leader of Harvest Centre, gave me a big hug of thanks for running the teacher training. He and his wife Petrina have become my good buddies from all our work together this year.

Everyone clapped and I waved in embarrassed thanks back.

Trainers Certificate Ceremony -- trainers got certificates too that they were SO proud of.
Above is Adlin, a clinical psychologist who is a local citizen and Muslim-Malaysian. She volunteered to be a trainer, giving up two days of paid clinical work to do the training.
Judith, a trainer, who is Karen Christian Burmese, who escaped Burmese government persecution and the harrassment she experienced from being the only Christian in her all-Buddhist Burmese school growing up. I heard of other Karen Christian Burmese who refused to bow for daily Buddhist prayers at their majority Buddhist Burmese schools. And, their Buddhist nuns would beat their backs with a cane daily to make them bow to Buddha in prayer. So much for non-violence as a Buddhist teaching by nuns and monks.

Fadlin, a Harvest teacher and trainer
In the background, you can see Christina, the assistant Harvest director
She helped coordinate the training.

Francis, a HELP University clinical psychology student trainer

Su Chen, a HELP University Counseling Psychology student trainer

Melanie, a Harvest teacher and trainer

Jeng Mun, a Clinical Psychology student and trainer
She went on to being our Refugee Child Mental Health Clinic coordinator
and she was a trainer of the later orphanage caretakers

Vijay, HELP University clinical psychology student and trainer

Ee Lynn, HELP University clinical psychology student and trainer

Benjamin, Harvest teacher and trainer, who teaches the high school students

Christina, Harvest trainer and assistant director extraordinaire

Photos of the 5 individual training groups

Left side of the photo of the over 60 trainers/trainees in the intervention

Right side of the photo of all the trainees/trainers

Center of the photo with all the trainers and trainees.
To the left of me is Petrina, the Co-Director of Harvest Centre with her husband, Pastor Elisha

May 2 and 3, 2011

Refugee students in Malaysia are hidden away because Malaysia refuses to sign the 1951 UN convention for protection of refugees. As a result, refugee children in Malaysia are not allowed to go to government schools, but that doesn't stop the refugee communities in Malaysia from starting small, informal community learning centers, often hidden away in the bottom of parking garages or in kitchens. These refugee teachers are usually untrained teachers, without much education or only minimal, poor quality education when they grew up, largely, in Burma.

As partners, Harvest Centre (an NGO in Malaysia for refugee education and training), HELP University, UNHCR Malaysia, and I developed and tested a culturally-adapted, empirically-based classroom behavior management training program for refugee teachers based on the NYU TeacherCorps intervention. While the NYU-developed teacher training program had been found to be effective with teachers of underserved, minority urban students in the U.S., it may not be effective with this refugee population.

As a first step, we ran a pre-pilot training of refugee school Headmasters and determined that the training topics were welcomed but there were concerns that using more positive discipline strategies would weaken their authority in the classroom. The refugee teachers are used to using more heavy handed classroom management strategies, like the threat of corporal punishment of using the cane.

We also conducted a pre-pilot focus group with teachers of refugee students and found that teachers face the challenge of having new refugee students come and go often, be rowdy and unfocused in class, disobey the rules, and the teachers need help with their own self-care, like anger management. We used the pre-pilot Head Teacher training and focus group to inform the cultural adaptation of the classroom behavior management training manual. This manual was used for the following refugee teacher training pilot prevention program:

On May 2 and 3, 2011, we conducted a refugee teacher training pilot prevention program called “Teaching the Heart and Head: Classroom Behavior Management Training for Refugee Teachers” in Kuala Lumpur. This was a university-community organization partnership with the goal of improving refugee student school success. The intervention focused on improving classroom management of refugee students’ behavior, attention, and emotions.

Forty-five refugee teachers were trained by 13 trainers from Harvest Centre, HELP University, and NYU for two full days on the following topics: Day 1 Positive Behavior Management – Teaching in a Refugee Classroom; Rules, Transitions, Commands; Positive Teacher-Child Relationships; Praise, Rewards, and Star Charts. Day 2 covered Negative Behavior Management including Active Ignoring; Discipline and Time Outs; Behavior Plans for Difficult Children; Helping Children with Feelings; Teacher Self-Care and Anger Management.

This training intervention was not didactic. It was done in small groups. The 45 teachers were divided into 5 groups with 2 to 3 trainers leading each group. The ratio of trainer to teacher was about 1 to 3 or 1 to 4. This level of intimate individual attention was necessary because the training activities require intensive feedback and facilitation. The trainers taught the material by very brief explanations in simple English combined with modeling behaviors (e.g., How to give a “time out”) and helping the trainees role play classroom management strategies in front of the group or in pairs. In addition, the trainees also did one-page written activities for each module.

The intimate attention of the small groups was also necessary because the refugee teachers have English as a second or third language and the individual attention helps them understand the English-based activities, especially the Magic Workbook activities. The Magic Workbook contains the one-page written activities for each module, like “Difficult Child: Write a Behavior Plan.” The Magic Workbook also included step-by-step summaries of each topic, like how to praise children using specific, positive, labeled statements.

At the end of each day, the trainees completed a Satisfaction questionnaire, and the teachers seemed very satisfied with most of the training while also indicating which topics in the training were less helpful. The teachers gave high agreement ratings of 4.5 out of 5, on average, to the statement: “I learned something new today that will be helpful in my job.” Of all the training topics, they seemed to like the “Effective Commands” topic the least. The trainers gave feedback using an “Integrity and Impressions” questionnaire which confirmed that the “Effective Commands” section was hardest for the teachers to understand because it involved intensive written and translation demands. While the teachers reported liking numerous topics, they each seemed to prefer different topics, not showing a pattern of everyone liking only one topic.

What was fun to watch was how much the refugee teachers enjoyed letting loose and acting silly with each other, as a part of the role plays in the intervention. They often broke down in giggles and seemed to really need an outlet to both have fun and express their struggles in the classroom. Many of them explained that they feel isolated in their hidden refugee schools, without freedom to walk around their neighborhoods or Kuala Lumpur. This training gave them a sense that they are not alone.

The effectiveness of the training intervention was assessed by asking the refugee teachers classroom management confidence and knowledge questions before and after the intervention. There was statistically significant improvement in the refugee teacher confidence and knowledge, as a result of the training prevention program.

We are hoping that this teacher training doesn't live a short life, but is sustainable. Already, one teacher, Pastor May above, ran the training with about 20 of her refugee teachers. And, we are scheduling another Teaching the Head and Heart teacher training for the Fall at Harvest Centre, using the same HELP University and Harvest trainers along with some additional trainers who had previously been trainees, so we can expand the training to include more refugee teacher trainees.

We are currently starting "In-Class Consultations" for the refugee teachers who came to the training; this consultation is also adapted from an NYU TeacherCorps consultation manual. Studying strategies is much easier than actually putting strategies into practice in the classroom. So, the clinical psychology student trainers will pay 2 to 3 visits to each of their interested trainees to help them implement changes in their classroom behavioral management, live, in-action, in the classroom.

Our ultimate goal is to help these underserved, undertrained, undereducated refugee teachers get the same, if not better quality training that government teachers get. In the end, the refugee students will hopefully learn more by not having their behavior, attention, and emotions get in the way of their education, because their teachers will know how to not only better manage the students' behavior, attention, and emotions, but also manage their own emotions, as teachers.