“Kai Yan”
Written by Shuhada Ahmad (2015 – 2017)
I have always been asked – do I prefer learning or behavioural cases to work with? My answer will and always be the latter. I do love learning cases too but there's this complexity about behaviours that compels me towards it. Human behaviours are very intricate, delicate and complex that it makes me psyched to work on it. I would jump at any opportunity that came by, that would allow me to tackle a behaviour issue.
That opportunity came in the form of Kai Yan. He was a nine-year-old, hesitant and bashful boy. As Fel, the school counsellor was away for maternity leave, I had to wear an extra hat – the counsellor's hat. I was glad I had counselling modules during my preparatory course at the National Institute of Education (NIE). Counselling was nothing new to me. At times, I did feel conflicted with respect to my role as an Allied Educator.
I read the referral form to get an overview of my fresh case. There was something striking that stood out from it. Basically, his issue was school refusal. He was perpetually late for almost every day or just absent himself entirely. That was going on for months which began since he was in Primary 2. No apparent reason whatsoever. This sounded like an exciting new case – I felt like the need to put my undistinguished and unverified detective skills to work. How odd – "policewoman" was one of my career options but I got no idea why I didn't pursue it. Life is full of surprises at times. This job allowed me to do more than teach – I got to solve cases too.
It was the recess period. As usual, I went to find my bunch of juvenile suspects. This harmless bunch of kids were children that were on my radar and under my purview. Normally, I would observe them and make mental notes. For instance, I looked out for their eating habits, which friends were they mingling with, what kind of conversation topics they were engaging in and so on. This period had always been one of my favourites. I got to talk to my students while trying to build rapport, making small talks with the school cleaners who were so friendly, saying hi to random kids and striking a conversation and vice versa and doing all that jazz whilst making sure that my kids were eating. If they were found not to, I'd be chasing them. Trust me, I did.
For that particular recess, I was on the lookout for Kai Yan. Like a hawk, I scanned the whole canteen which was already packed and tried to locate him. I already caught a glimpse of him during morning assembly so I knew how he looked like. That morning, I spoke to his form teacher on the pretext of identifying him. Just then, I spotted Kai Yan tottered into the canteen in a slow pace with an even shorter strides. With my watchful eyes, I started focusing my eyes at his every actions. He did everything in a slow motion. He stood in front of the food stall and stared blankly. He was holding up the queue when ordering his food. Precariously, he took his plate and walked towards the table where his friends were.
Kai Yan did not seem to be engaging well with his peers. He sat there quietly, nibbling his meal. “Kai Yan, did you do yesterday’s math homework?” asked Vayne, my Cambodian-Chinese mini-me because he liked to mirror my actions and speech. Kai Yan just nodded in response. “Did you watch the YouTube video I asked you to?”, another nod. “You want to come to my house after school?” he shook his head. Throughout my whole observation, he did not appear to talk much, even with his peers. This behaviour was a constant in the classroom too, after my bouts of classroom observations.
One morning, I was strolling into school and found a weeping Kai Yan and his mother at the foot of the staircase. I simply could not ignore and I knew I had to spring into action. “Hello, good morning. Can I help?” I asked this distraught parent. He gazed up at me upon hearing my unfamiliar voice and went back to hiding into his mother’s embrace. “Teacher, he does not want to go to class and has been crying since we arrived. This happens quite frequently and….I am running late for work,” she explained with pleading eyes. I bended down to his eye level and said, “Kai Yan, I am going to count to five and you will let go of mummy, okay? 1..2..3..4..5. Okay, thank you for listening to me. Now, if you let me, I’m going to bring you up to your classroom. Is that okay?”, he gave a weak nod. At this point, his mother had started to walk away slowly without him noticing. She mouthed an inaudible thank-you and I reciprocated her with a reassuring nod.
We went up the flight of stairs to Level 3 where both of our classrooms were. As we reached Level 3, he froze. “I don’t want to go to class,” Kai Yan muttered, which caught me by surprise because that was probably the first time I heard his voice. Since it was my free period, I offered him to calm down in my classroom. Once we entered, he was clearly confused and probably surprised by how colourful my classroom was. I had balloon cards with students’ name on it, caricature of my students, rewards charts, A to Z flashcards adorning the whiteboard border and a few other splashes of colours. “Hi, Kai Yan. My name is Miss Shu. You’ve seen me around in school and some of your friends attend English remedial classes with me,” I tried to break the ice. “How long do you need to relax?” I asked with my fingers ready to punch in the duration on the timer. He asked for five minutes and I made him promise me that we would walk back to class once the timer had gone off.
During that five minutes of silence, we did not communicate. I carried on with some class preparations while Kai Yan sat there unperturbed. He looked less tense and anxious. I sent him back to class and by then, he had missed one period of English class. I smiled at Mdm Liza forgivingly for interrupting her class and we exchanged gazes that translated to “Yes, I will speak to you later about what went on” and “thank you, I think I know what this is about”. After dismissal, I went to find Mdm Liza and gave her a rundown of what happened that morning. We had a fruitful discussion about how we could tackle this issue and my role in this. I stated that I would take up this case once I had spoken to his parents.
I made a phone call to Mdm Goh, Kai Yan’s mom and introduced myself. She profusely thanked me when I informed her that I was the teacher that assisted her in the morning. After thirty minutes of phone interview, I got to suss out more information – how he pretended to be sick on certain days, how aloof he was at home and how helpless she felt seeing her demoralised son. I could not simply ignore this information and my instinct kicked in that I had to help this family.
Several days later, I went to fetch Kai Yan from his class and he had that exact indifferent look from the first time I saw him. As we were walking towards my classroom, I attempted to make small talks but he was evidently uninterested. I led him inside and tried to ease off his anxiety by offering him a candy. He obligingly took it and that was a good sign.
I gave him the “Miss Shu Wants to Know YOU” worksheet and a few coloured pencils. I recently generated this icebreaker worksheet which allowed me to know my students a lot better. Besides the common introductory questions, I included other questions too: who is your best friend, what is your favourite colour, likes and dislikes and ambition. Not only them, but I filled up a copy for myself so that it would turn out to be a two-way conversation instead of an interview. Most of them got easily amused when we discovered we had something in common. Kai Yan beamed with delight when we liked the same colour. That was probably the first smile I had seen on him.
Getting Kai Yan to open up was not as tough as I had initially perceived. He warmed up towards me faster than I predicted. We had counselling sessions for once a week and I conducted daily check-ins with him during morning assembly and dismissal. We agreed on secret hand signs as he was a little shy to speak when there were many people around. So we collaboratively came up with an idea. One finger meant he was feeling happy, two fingers represented the neutral feeling (or ‘okay’ as he called it), three could mean anything negative such as upset, angry or sick and four was an SOS sign which signalled “I need to talk to you”.
Even though I saw Kai Yan for sessions every week, he was still perpetually absent for certain days and I began to notice a pattern. He was mostly absent on Tuesdays – the day he had Chinese spelling test and four consecutive periods of Chinese lessons. Before jumping to any conclusion, I approached Mr Wong, Kai Yan’s Chinese Language teacher. He asked me to join him for morning coffee in the teachers’ lounge the next day. I had my breakfast fix with Mr Wong, a teacher who had been teaching for more than 50 years. He brought in Kai Yan’s work samples and shared his worries about Kai Yan’s attitude towards the Chinese Language. “Zero for spelling…even I cannot read his Chinese characters,” Mr Wong said in disbelief. He gave me the spelling book and even though I did not know any Chinese characters, I could tell he was just writing random strokes.
At any rate, my rapport with Kai Yan had a strong foundational base and was continuing to grow. I decided to get Kai Yan to come clean with me when I broached the topic of Chinese spelling and him being absent for those days. It did not take him that long to confess that he pretended to be sick on Tuesdays because he wanted to avoid the long periods of his least favourite subject and going through the torture of writing for spelling. He even shared that in the coming weeks, everyone had to present a Chinese poem for a recital and it would be graded. His anxiety came back crawling towards him. I gave him words of encouragement and even promised him that I would be there during the recital to give him my support.
To handle Kai Yan’s spelling concern, Mr Wong and I decided that the spelling list for him would be differentiated. Instead of getting him to memorise the ten words and phrases, he would do just three and he would be given the autonomy to pick the three that he would diligently learn for the test. I shared this great piece of a news to Kai Yan and he was clearly pleased. However, I did say that the number of words would increase gradually, to which he jokingly sulked.
The differentiated spelling list had proven to work and after a couple of months, his list of words had increased to five. The day he came to my classroom to show off his spelling book was vivid and would be etched in my mind forever. Never had I seen him so cheerful before.
Unfortunately, Kai Yan could potentially be dealing with Dyslexia – a learning disability. I began to notice the red flags in his work. He had reversals in his letters, omission in reading and poor receptive and expressive language. After getting the consent from his mother, I administered the Dyslexia Screening Toolkit (Junior) on him and the results came out as “high risk”. I shared my findings with his parents, teachers and the Educational Psychologist and we unanimously agreed to get him properly diagnosed so that we could understand his learning profile and ways to support his learning.
A couple of weeks later, Kai Yan got the diagnosis. The assessment results came almost instantaneously because I had collated ample evidences, teachers’ feedback and work samples to expedite the whole process. Otherwise, it would normally take a few months because the number of undiagnosed cases had been skyrocketing. I loved reading psychological reports – it was like reading a condensed biography of a child with all the pertinent information. I read through Kai Yan’s report and subconsciously thinking of what were the appropriate learning plans for him.
The number of times I was seeing Kai Yan increased and I enrolled him in my remedial sessions with ten of his classmates – all diagnosed with Dyslexia. I reckoned that was the right move because there would be no anxiety building up if he were to see his own friends. Speaking of his anxiety, I almost missed out on his poem recital which I had initially promised that I would be present. A case conference meeting got lengthened and in the midst of it, I got a reminder alert on my watch to proceed to the library. I was glad that my case was already presented and excused myself. When I got into the library, Kai Yan and his friends were already on the stage. I secretly hoped he had not recited his poem yet.
Kai Yan’s eyes were darting across the room and he spotted me. I smiled and soundlessly said good-luck to him. His poem was read in a shaky voice and I could clearly sense his emotions. The amount of time and effort put in had paid off. He delivered what he intended to, albeit with a little blooper. I stood proud and when he approached me, he said “Miss Shu, I thought you were not going to come. I did not see you at first”. “Sorry Kai Yan, I had a meeting just now. But hey, I still made it, right? You did it! I am so proud of you. Okay, it’s in Mandarin and you know, Miss Shu does not understand every word you said but you did a good job. I will let Mommy know and I am sure she will be proud of you too”.
Trust is a delicate thing between two people. It is not something simple to win over and with Kai Yan, I had forged a special bond that was built with immense trust. One morning, I received a text from Kai Yan’s mother asking to meet her. I met them at the school’s porch. She strolled in with her son who clearly looked like he did not get any sleep. I sat down with her at the bench after Kai Yan sauntered off towards the school hall. “How is he doing at home? Anything I can help you with?” I inquired. “You see, these days he has not been sleeping well and when I asked him, he does not want to open up. However, he did mention that he will tell you what is bothering him. Will you talk to him for me, please? I am worried if he is bullied in school because you know…he is a very quiet boy,” his mother lamented.
During our counselling session, I made a remark to Kai Yan on how tired he looked. “Do you want to tell me something, Kai Yan? I am sure you do because Mommy is worried about you.” Kai Yan glanced up at me and bit his lips, “Miss Shu, can you set your timer to three minutes? I need to think first.” Once the timer was up, I made my way to the seat next to him and smiled, “Are you ready?” That was when he told me everything and I was thankful that it was not what his mother had presumed. I called her after dismissal to put a rest to her worries.
“I spoke to Kai Yan today and let me tell you, it was because of a monster. Mdm Liza read a story during English class and it was about a boy who had a monster living in his closet. So yeah, Kai Yan got spooked by the story” I shared. We had a good laugh over that story and she thanked me for being the bridge between her and her son. “One more thing…actually, Kai Yan did not want to tell you because he thought you might be worried and he was trying not to bother you about the monster but I told him that, him NOT telling his mommy is making her more worried. Mommy is worried about you, not the monster,” I continued.
So far, I had been really blessed to work alongside very understanding parents. Sure, some parents were difficult to deal with and I had my fair share of them. Working with the parents showed me that I was not alone and how communication and trust were the game-changers in my work. Kai Yan’s mother was part of the Parents Support Group in the school and she was an active member. That very year, I received an award that was given out during Teachers’ Day – Caring Teacher Award. Every year, students, parents and fellow colleagues were urged to nominate a deserving teacher.
I was not expecting that award at all and one of the nomination write-ups was written by, none other than Kai Yan’s mother. The award was also given to 5 other teachers. A short congratulatory video was played for the awardees and she was featured in the video. It was a very poignant moment for me and at the same time, puzzling. There were other teachers that were more deserving than me. I kept telling myself that what I had done all along was nothing out of the ordinary. It was something other teachers would do too. Case in point, one other nomination write-up was written by a student that I was not teaching. He nominated me because I helped him to dress his bloodied wound when he got a cut from the wires from his bicycle. Then again, any teacher would do that.
As much as I loved teaching at Lakeside, I knew my time was up. My initial plan was to leave after my two-year bond but I stayed one and a half years longer than that because of the children. My goal was to be in special education and at that time, it was just the perfect timing for me to make my move. If I were to keep deferring, I would just be falling deep in the abyss of no escape. When I had to announce my departure to the children two weeks before my last day, I got overwhelmed by a gamut of emotions – sad, nervous and antsy. Not surprising at all, the response what was I had foreseen. I got thrown so many questions – Why are you leaving? Which school are you going to? Can we change to your school? Will you come back? Is it because we are very naughty?
It took me one hour to answer all their queries but they were still not very delighted with my decision to leave. Kai Yan was the last to leave. He stood there, lost and confused. “You need to ask me something, Kai Yan?” He shook his head and left. That same week, I started calling up parents to inform them about my leave. As I did not want to appear irresponsible by leaving their children in the lurch, I had plans made for them and did the necessary handover to the teacher that was taking over me.
Kai Yan’s mother was not very pleased to hear about my resignation that but she said that she understood why I had to leave and thanked me for the work that I had done. I reciprocated by thanking her for being so forthcoming, supportive and trusting of me. I even thanked her for being Kai Yan’s mother because he had gained confidence because of the love and time she had showered him.
On my last day, I was packing my room and I heard a knock on my door. It was Kai Yan with a paper bag in one hand. “I want to give you something before you leave,” he gushed. He gave me an owl plushy because his mother said “owls are smart” though I did not entirely agree with that. “Miss Shu, I am still sad but mommy says you will not like it if I continue to be sad. Miss Shu, can I have this picture?” he pointed to the wall where I pasted a caricature of the students and myself on it. “Sure, Kai Yan. Take a chair and climb up slowly and peel off your picture,” I instructed. “No, I want to keep your picture,” he cooed. “Oh, that. Sure, why not you help me remove everything? You can keep mine and I will give the rest of the pictures back to your classmates”.
Within that two years of working with Kai Yan and his mother, I learnt many invaluable lessons. Before a child or even anyone works with you, you need to earn their trust and respect. When I first started teaching, I wanted to make sure my children had fun while they learned. Most of them did. Nicknames given, picking their own buddy, playing games, sweet treats – anything to keep it interesting. What I eventually learned is that the personal interaction and relationship building led to deep levels of trust. Trust that can crumble with a single wrong touch. Fun is great, but there are plenty of amazing teachers that not all children would not consider as “fun.” Ultimately the classroom’s level of teacher trust is the game-winner.
– THE END –