One of my students blogged about my leaving the school, in a way that sounds accusative. To be honest I feel rather sad about leaving my students, especially those from 3.9, 3.10 and 5.04. It was a fun year, and I only regret not being able to know them better, plus my failure to do more in class due to my bad health towards the middle of the year.

Sometimes I too wonder why I feel the urge to leave school. Maybe it's just in my bones, this tendency to want to run away? I mean I've done it once, plus this round maybe this is an indication that I'm an escapist? Maybe I just haven't grown up yet, this refusal to do things that I don't like doing ... A colleague was tasked to do this package for next year, and I realised I have already done one chapter of it last year. We ended up musing about how we have to do all these things just-for-show, and completely waste our time away. The first time you have to do something like that, you'd probably be enthusiastic thinking someone would read it. But when the reality sink in, when you realise that it's all for show ... how can you bring yourself to do it anymore?  read more »

The much awaited for film by Colin Goh and Joyceln Woo is finally here. The idea for the film started with this article written by Colin and Joyceln many years back, called "Paved with good intentions". Which is why I just posted the entire article in this site. I remember first reading this post 5 years ago as a teacher trainee in NIE. I read it with much trepidation, as the article spoke of Joyceln's experience as a teacher. 5 years on, I looked back on those years with a bit of nostalgia, as well as some resignation. Teaching is exactly as Joyceln described.

Read about the film on the official website Singapore Dreaming, or listen to the podcast interview of Colin Goh and Joyceln Woo by Mr Brown. I'm definitely going to catch it, may be going with my current class in NIE (Visual Arts and Creativity).  read more »

My reply to this guy who made this statement that engineers and mathematicians are not known for their creativity (read that letter here) has been published! Here's my letter (as published by ST, somehow I think they 'corrected' my grammar and I don't really agree with the correction).

I REFER to the letter, 'Stress language and creativity, not sciences' by Mr Patrick Tan Siong Kuan (ST, July 15).

In it, he made the comment: 'Mathematicians and engineers are, unfortunately, not known to be great creative thinkers.'  read more »

At first it was a simple request from this teacher for fellow colleagues to comment on this piece of assignment he created, which forms 10% of the final grade. But it soon spiralled into ugly emails. Come monday someone is going to ask me for my opinion (in fact she already did last friday), and seriously I have no wish to be involved. Right now I'm dreaming this really interesting way of teaching basic trigonometry, and I can't be bothered to make the water muddier.

Here's my dream teaching profession - having only to teach, design lessons, share ideas with like-minded people, and perhaps with more experience mentor younger teachers so that the excitement can be passed on. Also, getting to know students better, sharing their happiness and sorrow (just read this angry blog entry of a student, makes me kinda sad), convincing them that life is beautiful and worth living. No handling of money, selling tickets, printing concert programmes, getting involved in stupid office politics, worrying about stupid file checks, constantly thinking about meeting exams requirement...  read more »

Sushila told us this story from the Alchemist by Paul Coelho during our Macritchie chat this morning. When she told us she couldn't remember the whole story, so we started guessing what the message was. I thought the idea is to forget about the oil, since it probably doesn't mean anything. We should give up all these meaningless burdens and pursue our dream. After I went home, I did some research and realised that the oil represents responsibilities. So the message is to enjoy life and yet not forget one's responsibilities.

Hmmm. Maybe I'm a really irresponsible person, but I'd rather not have to worry about the oil anyway.  read more »

Laycheng, Florence, Sushila, Chad and me met up at Macritchie Reservoir for a chat. Hmmm, we ended up grousing about school life again. With us was a Dr Chua who's some educational consultant (not with NIE). I hope he doesn't go away thinking we hate teaching. In fact, we all love to teach, and as a junior in the group I have great respect for the others (cept Chad who has fewer years in service than me) for lasting so long in education.

Well, I really yearn for the mountains, and a change of environment, so hopefully I can bring myself to quit the service at the end of the year and go do something else. I don't think I can be a good teacher if I'm lost msyelf.  read more »

This post is rather political, but since it can fit into a category here, I thought "why not". So some of you may know who is Mr Brown, his blog mrbrown.com and his articles in Today newspaper provided a lot of comic relief for me, especially during the recent GE as well as my reservist training after that (everyone in camp was playing his podcasts on their fancy phones). Anyway this guy wrote an article "S'poreans are fed, up with progress!" that apparently touched some raw nerves, and this was the reply. Now his column in Today has been suspended.
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Those who have read my earlier post would know of my current belief that people are the most important component of good education, and that I no longer believe that much in any system. So I was telling my friend and ex-colleague, James, about this, that I used to blame everything on the system, but now I think what matter most are the teachers and students and the community of learning. James then told me that surely a good system will ensure that there are good people around.

That got me thinking. Perhaps this is the crux of the problem: our system is simply not people-oriented! If we focus on teachers, on administrators, on students, and not innovation or whatever buzzword, perhaps that's the real way to bring change to our education system! After all, I've experienced myself how results-oriented innovation always seem to end up in crappy implementations that are "redeemed" only but dishonest and blown-up documentations and reports.

I was kind of interested in knowing more about the angst and suffering teenagers go through in school, especially with regards to examinations. So I googled the web and stumbled on one of my own student's blog! He's a great kid, a very talented GEPPER, very insightful. But then again please don't let that cloud your judgement - read this and judge for yourself. Here's an entry in his blog on exams:

Examinations exist to test your knowledge, your learning. After three months, six months, one year, they give you a test to see if you learnt what they taught and to see if all that time and money was wasted. They measure, they test, they examine, they give you a score at the end. A two-digit number, three if you're really good, and one if you're really really unlucky. And then that's it. They're cast in stone and can't ever change and they'll haunt you for the rest of your life.  read more »

An ex-student from VJC, Cliff, came to visit me today. I was in school so he took a taxi from orchard and we had a good chat. Cliff is now studying in New York University, doing business. He's one of the more unique individual around - I can still remember him perpetually falling asleep in class, which is a problem he has been having since Pr 5. I met the mother before over this, and she said she had sent him to various doctors before, but nobody could tell why he has such a problem. Haha, actually we had quite a few good laughs over this during lessons, especially when he fell asleep during PW group discussions (it's like, there're only 5 people talking and you can fall asleep?!?). The weirdest thing is - Cliff is a sportsman. He was into Judo and was some national champion in his category. Maybe his metabolism goes in bursts. I remember having to squeeze a lot of brain juice when writing a recommendation letter for him for his Uni application as he did not get fantastic results. But I truly feel he has great potential, so I was rather glad when he told me he made it to NYU.  read more »