FISH! Philosophy

I still can remember the day when Prof Maznah brought in some fish toys into our class not long ago. At that time, I have no ideas of what sort of things that she tried to do with those toys. Then, the class started to feel noisy with laugh and shouts from every girls and boys when Prof asked us to throw the fishes randomnly around the class. I felt weird of what was happening and tried to guess the motives of Prof for doing that. Lots of questions played in my mind at that time like "Are we being punish of doing something wrong?", "Are we going to create a lesson using these fishes?", "Is this some sort of set induction to get us ready for our lesson, just like we usually think of during creating the lesson plan?" and whatsoever.

After having fun for quite sometimes, Prof asked us to stop and the truth revealed. Actually, what we did with the fishes had some connection with what Prof Maznah shown to us after that. It was about FISH! Philosophy. In my entire life, I do not come across any philosophy regarding Fish. So, I was quite blur to hear it for the first time.

What is FISH! Philosophy?
FISH! is a skill that provides the process, tools and language to generate the skills necessary to design a workplace full of inspiration, creativity and innovation. FISH! creates a common language. A language that will help improve our culture by using four simple practices – Be There, Play, Make Their Day and Choose Your Attitude.

In my opinion, this philosophy is really meaningful to be applied in everyday classroom. Due to the workload that most of teachers are experienced and the long list of syllabus to be finished before the end of school term, they sometimes neglect to make the classroom the most interesting place that students want to be. So, the four practices mentioned above are the ways that teachers can do to make the classroom alives.

"Be there" means teacher needs to be not only the one who delivers the knowledge but a friend to where the students can turn to instead of their family members. When the students feel comfortable and secure with their teacher, they will automatically give full committment and they will enjoy learning.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. If we can see, students will not enjoy learning the lesson if there is only one way communication whereby only the teacher do the teaching and students do not given opportunity to involve in the learning process. Therefore, teacher needs to integrate "Play" in the lesson so that students will not fall into boredom. According to Krashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis, learners will filter out input when they feel bored, angry or anxious. So, to prevent this from happen, teachers should create a "play" in their lesson.
"Make their day" means teacher should think of something that can make students feel happy and smile even though they are in the middle of something. Other than that, teacher must able to make the students feel good about themselves.
Last but not least, "Choose Your Attitude". Teachers needs to possess good values so that students can follow the good characteristics of the teacher. Besides that, teacher should avoid favouritism in the classroom and treat all students equally. Teacher also need to know which attitudes that can suit the class mood at that day.

In conclusion, teachers who are the anchor of turning the ugly picture of the classroom situation to a classroom that has alive, interactive, and joyful atmosphere.