Mis-Educators

Signs that You Should Not Become A Teacher

2011-03-25T20:14:00.001-07:00

Every year, a new advertisement on teachers and the nobility of teaching surfaces on TV. These advertisements are meant to recruit a new group of teachers to MOE. There could be some use to them, judging by the size and popularity of the MOE booth at the Career Fair year after year!

However, at the same time, there is a sizeable group of people who leave the teaching service. These are people who thought they could 'make a difference' but only found out that they could not handle the job when they entered the service itself. I feel sorry for some of these people sometimes, because they enter with all their hopes and aspirations. But they become overwhelmed by the children, by the work and end up counting the days to the end of their bond, leaving disillusioned.

So, before you sign on that dotted line, check and do reflections whether you are really cut out for the job. Ask relatives and friends who are in the service and ask them for their experiences in the service. Have a clear and realistic picture of the workload and expectations before you actually sign anything. Never forget that once you sign the dotted line, you will be looking at a bond period of 3-5 years. It seems like a short time, but if you are unhappy at the job, it can seem like a lifetime.

Meanwhile, in a tongue-in-cheek way, here are some ways you can assess yourself for the suitability of the teaching profession:

1. You hate kids.

I think this needs no explanation. You are going to face 30-40 children under 12 everyday. If you hate kids, no amount of pay will ever justify the job.

2. You love kids. Too much.

And yet, if you are the kind of person that thinks all children are cute, adorable, innocent and perfectly behaved, you are probably not prepared for the job either. You have to realise that, like adults, children come in many forms. You do get children who are cute, adorable, innocent and perfectly behaved, but you also get children who are mischievous, spoiled and attention-seeking. Not to mention children with intellectual, social and physical disabilities. You must realise that there are children who will not be perfect angels and be ready for them.

3. You never wake up before 12.

Assembly starts at 0710 to 0720 and most schools require their teachers to be in before that. Not to mention that in a number of years, all schools will eventually become single-session, ie in the morning. You really should be an early-riser for this job.

4. You do not like the colour red.

Nobody marks with pink or purple pens. This is an industry standard.

5. You think you can go home everyday at 12 when the school bell rings

There are only a select few I know who do this, and they are all adjunct teachers. (Teachers working on something similar to a contract basis and who are paid hourly) The full-time teachers are usually staying back for CCA, remedials, meetings and if there are none of those, they are involved in some kind of committee meetings. Nobody goes home on the stroke of the bell! The truth is that each teacher can spend something like 11 hours in school, considering how early you have to reach work in order to start lessons. Do not have illusions of laziness if you enter teaching.

That said, sometimes you never really know how you feel about a job until you do it for real. If you are considering teaching, my recommendation is to approach the schools in your surrounding areas and ask them about becoming a contract teacher. You could become a relief teacher as well, but you'd have to be ready for any school that calls you at 630am to come in that very day. A contract teacher is better because you can take on work that is similar to what a real teacher does, but you do not have the bond to keep you in the job. Thus, if you feel you are really not cut out for teaching, you can leave.

Some people may feel I am 'pouring cold water' by writing this post and discouraging people from becoming teachers. I prefer to encourage people to enter the profession realistically. It does the school no good when new teachers enter, become disillusioned, and lose all interest in the job. Rather, I would like to see more people who are clearly aware of the downfalls of the job and yet are willing to take it on nonetheless. These people will stay on and benefit us all.

The Occupational Hazards of Teaching

2011-03-04T17:48:00.000-08:00

If you teach for a number of years, it is inevitable that some aspects of it would rub onto your daily life. Even for me, I do find that I am tempted to do something in public that would only be more acceptable in the classroom. If you are entering teaching, or if you are a BT, you may want to be warned of some of the following occupational hazards following a long teaching career:

1. You become highly sensitive to spelling and grammar.

Blame it on marking all those English compositions. Once you become trained and used to skimming through written text and picking out spelling and grammar mistakes in a hurry, you immediately notice these mistakes everywhere in public. ( maybe even in my blog! ) And after a few stints as oral examiners, you may find yourself correcting the way your friends pronounce words more than once.

2. You become more impatient.

In school, everything runs on a tight schedule from 7:15am to 1:00pm. You cannot afford to be too late for lessons, or you run the risk that the next class will erupt into chaos. High value is placed on punctuality in this line. So you cannot understand why your friends can be 20 minutes. Or why your facial therapist has to delay your appointment by 15 minutes. Tsk tsk! Can't these people start on time?

3. You are tempted to scold children misbehaving in public.

After all, you do this all the time in school. If children are misbehaving, it is your duty to correct them and tell them the proper behaviour isn't it? You are so used to doing this in school that when you see the same thing in public, you can't help yourself and you tell them off. The child usually looks at you with a big-eyed stare, ( he isn't your student and he doesn't know you ) and the parent of the child usually looks at you like you are a kidnapper. You are well-advised to keep the comments to your own schoolchildren.

4. You never see a red pen in the same way again.

Let's just say, after school hours, I use every colour of pen except red.

That's my 4 occupation hazards of being a teacher. Do you find yourself doing some of these? Or do you have other strange habits brought on by teaching? Do share in the comments!

What Else Can Teachers Do?

2011-02-10T02:58:00.000-08:00

Every now and then, you hear some poor teacher unhappy about the work they're doing. Then this unhappy person starts to wonder wistfully about how it would be different in the private sector. Usually it stops at that, because most teachers think it would be difficult to get a job in the private sector with just a degree in education.

But is it?

Maybe there are some jobs out there which teachers can do. Which in fact are most suited for, because of the unique qualities that teaching has imbued them with.

So, for all those who have ever thought about life outside of teaching, here are some suggestions:

**DISCLAIMER**

The author of this post means this as a light-hearted tongue in cheek post. The author will not be held responsible if somebody took the advice seriously and quit their job, only to find it rough going. Neither am I encouraging anyone to quit teaching. This is just a light-hearted list.

1. EDITOR

This seems to be one of the most common lines for ex-teachers and I think it's because of the nature of the job. You have to read text, check for spelling/grammar, and make sure that the writing is smooth. Doesn't this sound a lot like marking compositions?

2. WRITER

Easy, because most of us are already familiar with text types, familiar with compositions, and also have a keen sense of grammar. After handing out all those creative writing assignments, why not write a lengthier composition of your own? You could always start with your memoirs of your teaching career.

3. EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS

If you have been in a classroom for a length of time, you would know that it's not easy to find well-designed educational posters. Neither is it easy to find the exact kind of manipulatives that you would want for a lesson. Why not then design new ones? You never know, some other teacher out there would find it useful too.

4. PART-TIME LECTURER

This, I think, is the same as what we do from Primary to Secondary, just that the kids are a lot older, and more inclined to listen.

These 4 points are all I can think of for now. Do you know anyone else who quit teaching to do something else? What did they do? How did their teaching job affect their new career? Please share in the comments!

Ideas for Relief Lessons - Primary 1 and 2

2011-01-15T20:40:00.001-08:00

Many of us have been in this position before. You are suddenly called to relief a class, at a level that you have never taught before. This is difficult for a number of teachers, because you are unaware of the skills and abilities of that class. So how do you find something to occupy them with, and yet not drive yourself crazy?

You can do the fierce teacher act and order everyone to take a book to read in silence, but that can make some classes try to rebel against you. Usually it's less stressful if you engage the class in an activity that they are interested in.

With that in mind, here's an idea for relieving a Primary 1 or Primary 2 class. It's not necessarily educational, but since you're just relieving the class, it doesn't hurt to do something fun at the same time! And the materials needed are easily found in school, or in your students' schoolbags.

Hand Animals

Materials needed: Paper, pencil, colouring materials

Time: One period ( Inclusive of you giving the class instructions on how to carry this out )

What to do:

1. Put hand on paper.

2. Draw outline of hand.

3. Add eyes, hooves, hair to make it look like an animal.

4. Colour.

Easy isn't it? This can be easily done by most Primary 1 or Primary 2 students. If you want to make it more interesting, you can draw a weird-looking animal, or make it into an alien instead. Demonstrate it first, so that they can see how to do it, and then let them loose to their imaginations!

Reopening

2011-01-15T20:37:00.000-08:00

After some time, I decided I would reopen this blog again. I had no idea at the time, but apparently ideas on teachers and teaching are quite popular around the Internet. Even after the blog officially closed, I was still receiving comments and email from a few people, surprisingly. This made me think that maybe ideas on teaching are still being googled, and I do find myself googling ideas for lessons at work.

So I'll make a second try at this blog. Here's to more good stuff!

Looking back... and Forth...

2008-08-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

Looking back, it's been 2 years since my last post.

Funnily enough, that's been the approximate amount of time that I've started my bond at my posted school.

When I started this blog way back in NIE, my naive self never thought of a few things that would affect the postings to this blog. I never anticipated:

1) That my work would take up so much of my time and energy that at the end of it, I wouldn't really want to do something as mentally taxing as blogging. [Other than the other after-curriculum activities that take up more of my time and less of my energy that is]

2) That I would have to live in apprehension of having this blog found out by my current employers and, ever since a certain incident concerning another teacher, face the fear of disciplinary action or even legal action.

3) That, er, work is often so boring and routine that there wouldn't be that much to blog about anyway. [How much commentary can one make on revision papers and exams?]

So after all these combined, I have to rethink the idea behind this whole blog. Often, there are things happening that I just wish I could blog, but knew that if I did so, I would get into very real trouble with people. In order to get past all these, I have to rethink the whole direction I have taken with this blog and where I want it to go from here.

So sadly, I have to officially declare a hiatus on this blog. I don't want to completely shut it down, because I think the concept is a real help to some groups of people out there. [Those who sent me mail, thanks] I'm just going to take a break and take the time to redo this blog.

Thanks for the support I've received! And finest wishes to all the other fellow educators and educators-to-be out there!

2006-11-03T16:51:00.000-08:00

Choose! Would you go through the Subaru RX challenge and stick to your hand to a car for more than 60 hours to get out of the bond? Vote now! [5 votes total]

YES!! Anything to get out of the bond! (3) 60%
No! Are you nuts? (1) 20%
Hmm, I'm not sure but I'm tempted...... (1) 20%

Die... we actually have 3 pple who are willing to stick their hand on a car for >60 hours to get out of the bond, and one who is tempted by the idea. Moe seriously needs to look into their bonding and staff retention policies. :p

For those who missed the voting, try again by clicking on this link.

End of Exams... Start of Headaches

2006-11-03T16:26:00.000-08:00

The exams have ended for the kids, and everyone is pretty hysterical and diffident to anything that resembles work anymore. X( So in a nutshell, all the kids are having the times of their lives in school, but we are faced with the job of keeping them occupied and entertained.

Personally, I'm in favour of just releasing all of them from school one week early and letting them romp around at home instead. Especially the primary 6ers, who finished their PSLE ages ago, and are just in school for... I don't know what purpose. Why keep them around when they are utterly disinterested in work anyway? And for their sakes, let them enjoy what days of carefree leisure they have before they have to face secondary, JC and even work.

And give us some kind of break from keeping them occupied too. :p

At least it's easier to occupy lower primary students. Give them a word search, a complicated maze, or bring tons of scissors and glue and get them doing some kind of models, or drawing, and they're occupied and happy. Try the same thing on upper primary students and you get the "duh" look.

Oh well... 2 weeks more and counting... :p Remember to start applying for leave, everyone!

3 Days or 3 Years?

2006-10-19T00:32:00.000-07:00

Speaking with a fellow BT one day, we discuss cars and bonds.

Think about the maths for a while. A typical 3 year bond comes with a roughly $30,000-$40,000 penalty, depending on how long you spent in NIE. [We are working on a one year PGDE bond here, to make things simple.]

If you entered the Mediacorp Subaru RX challenge and you keep your hand on the car for more than 64 hours, [approx 2odd to 3 days] you would have won yourself a new car, which, if you sold off, would almost be enough to pay off for your bond.

All you would have to do is to get over the starvation, dehydration, fatigue and sleep deprivation that comes as a result. But hey, since we face this in the job everyday, we should be quite trained for it, no? :p

What is your choice? 3 days or 3 years?

In other news, the PSLE marking period is now over, and it's back to school for everyone. While the prospect of facing my students doesn't exactly fill me with unadulterated joy, at least it somewhat beats the menial task of a recorder during the marking period...

Although I might change my mind the minute I step into class tomorrow and face the kids, who would have probably forgotten all the classroom conditioning and the holiday assignments over the 4 years. *faint*

Happy Children's Day!

2006-10-01T19:52:00.000-07:00

I know I'm going to take a good break somewhere..... hope the same goes for the rest of you too. :D

Should Teachers Blog?

2006-10-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

Who saw the article in the digital section of the Sunday Times? [Go flip through your newspaper pile if you haven't] Not a new issue of course, if I remember, this has been talked about before, though I can't remember the exact occasion.

Frankly, I don't know why people even think teachers should not blog at all. Please, just add blogging to the long list of human activities that teachers are not supposed to engage in already, including having a life outside of school that does not involve education or children in some way.

I thought being in the education line would've taught people one thing by now: that the more you stop the kids from doing something, the more they want to do it. I should know. The more I try to stop my kids from jumping on the tables and chairs, the more they do it somehow, despite obvious danger to life and limb. [sigh]

So why should we teachers not blog? I think there's nothing wrong with blogging, if you know where the lines of slander are drawn. [hee] If you're going to write about what a pretentious prick your principal is, for example, [not that mine is one!!!] obviously you're going to get into trouble, the same way you would if you were to troop into his office and call him a dumbass to his face.

What's missing is an atmosphere of open maturity. You gotta accept that from time to time, people do have grudges about their job. Even if we're in a vocation, where the standards are higher, you cannot except people to be 100% happy all of the time. If the blog does not slander, does not use foul language, what the heck is wrong with it? Besides, don't forget the sheer number of students who blog these days. If you're not familiar with it, risk losing touch with a large number of your students.

I never believed banning ever solved anything. Teach people to use things responsibly, instead of just taking it away from them.

And anyway, with more blogging going on, won't it help to raise the standards of English that Big Moe is so concerned about? ;)

2006-09-15T01:23:00.000-07:00

Here is me doing cheap promotion for my own poll. Please vote on the latest GROW plan and what you think of it at the online poll at the right of the blog. Current results indicate that, er,

2 people think it's ok
2 people think it makes no difference to their careers
3 people still feel like quitting anyway

and no one feels more motivated to continue working.

Hahaha... I'm tempted to think this is the true viewpoint of those on the ground, but I have to reluctantly state that the sample size is too small to conclude anything. [damn that stats module I took!] So please vote if you haven't already, and also leave a comment on why you feel that way!

Teachers are going crazy!

2006-09-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

The good things about being in school on a PSLE day are that the school is quiet, the children are not around, and there are no lessons to plan :)

The bad thing is that you [or rather I] get more tired easily, because of no exercise, you stare at your computer screen too much trying to finish planning lessons before the weekend, doing research for upcoming exam papers, and other assorted admin work. X(

Now I realise how unsuitable a desk job is for me.

Anyway, there is a current thread going on at Moe's forum about whether teachers are going crazy. According to either unfounded rumours or hidden facts, [whichever you choose to perceive it as] there is a significant number of teachers who end up at IMH for......... you can go ahead and guess for whatever reason. :)

I tried reading the threads, but I almost went crazy doing so [haha, cheap pun] so here are the main points as supplied by my friend:

1. Prioritise your time.

Work is work, leisure is leisure and never the twain should meet. I only realised how important leisure time was when I started the real work. True enough it does take up time that could be used planning lessons or looking for resources, and the worst thing is that I end up procrastinating a lot and doing a lot of last minute work. :p

The upside is, I get my recess time, and something about being forced to meet a deadline no matter what has resulted in some of my better lesson ideas. Mwahaha. At least my creativity and quick-thinking skills are improving.

Put it this way: You won't want your kids to sit through lessons the whole day without recess in between would you? So why subject yourself to the same torture?

2. If you can't, you can't

Everyone has their limits, and a wise man knows his. If you know you can't do it, why force yourself to do it, and then convince yourself you can? It's true enough that nobody knows their real limits, and that if you never grow, you will never know. But you know when you can't do it. That's when you start dreaming of nightmare scenarios involving you, your students and your HODs and endless piles of unmarked papers. Or you sweat uncontrollably at the sight of a red pen.

Face it, if you think you need learning support, don't force yourself to join the A stars.

3. Eat bananas

So you don't go bananas. No really, according to someone on the forum, bananas contain anti-depressants, so maybe there is some truth to the statement after all.

And my very own point at the end of it all... when all else fails....

4. Just Don't Bother

Fergeddabudit. Throw the red pens into the bin, switch off the laptop, ignore the pile of unmarked books, and just go do something fun. Tell yourself you owe yourself that much.

IF you don't agree with any of the 4 points here, I sincerely hope you don't land in IMH one day.

We Are Not Happy. Why?

2006-09-05T21:20:00.000-07:00

It's telling how, simply by glancing through the Tomorrow.sg website, one can come up with the number of grudges, grunts, and overall noises of dissatisfaction against the System.

Why I Hate Teaching
D&T above all else

And wow, even a petition for a principal to please, quit already.

Ironically, I remember when I went for the mandatory Reflective Practice course, the trainer was trying to tell us that we had the power to change our situation. If we could just take our own positive affirmative action, then we could drastically change our teaching outlook and approach, and generally, at least life would look a little better for us.

I think I can only half agree with her.

Firstly, there are just too much crap going on outside of the actual teaching that is causing dissatisfaction within the teaching profession. In my very-short career, talking to other contract teachers and senior teachers and reading other blogs has yielded one result: that it is NOT the children that is causing the dissatisfaction, but all other things like the leadership, the administration, the non-curriculuar activities.

Above all, it is the expectations. It is telling in the trainer's presentation that the reason why WE suffer is because of US and that WE can take action to solve that, while having faith that the system is doing its best behind the scenes to help us.

There is a lot expected of teachers isn't it? Is it because we are working in a vocation [as opposed to an occupation] that people think it's only right that we suffer all these with a whisper of complaint? I feel as if we are expected everyday to do more and more and more for the children, but only for that few extra peanuts. [and not gold-plated ones, to boot]

But on the flipside, I have seen situations where the teacher in question could have avoided extra work with a few simple actions. For example, one BT in school was looking particularly strained because 3 different HODs had suddenly called in her children's workbooks for checking. And suddenly she had to examine and sort out piles of English, Math and Social studies workbooks and files to be handed in the next day

I told her to tell the HODs that she was swamped, and to ask for an extension. After all, it was the eve of the holidays! Why can't she just hand in the books either during the week, or even in Term 4?

She didn't. Maybe she was nervous, after all, a BT telling a HOD that she can't do it, would she look bad? Would the HOD just demand it of her anyway? Maybe she was afraid that it would give her a bad, or unprofessional image to the HOD, but still! Isn't this a pretty impossible uphill task, even for a senior teacher???

Why not at least make the effort to ask, in a professional way, and explain the situation to the HOD? If you asked, at least you get the chance of a reprieve, rather than suffering in silence all the while.

[anyway I learned my lesson from her situation. From next week, I'm hounding my students for all workbooks, worksheets and files, and I'm making sure they stay in school, unless it's exam period. That way anytime someone wants to see my books, they're prepared.]

I hope our suffering is not caused by our own silence. There is only so much that we can all take to a certain point. Why allow others to put you past that point? If you think people are shitting on you, then raise a stink and make sure they know of it!

I hope I never reach the point where I suffer things blindly.

$250m

2006-09-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

The new measures to make teaching more attractive and retentive are out, announced during the Mass Lecture at the Singapore Expo yesterday. [incidentally how many of you were there? And how many of you left after the speech/informal break/lecture? ;p]

Among the measures: [as stated by Straits Times]

- Increase in gratuity bonus
- Higher starting salaries for graduates with pass/pass with merit and dip. holders [I joined one year too late!!!]
- Salary review for mid-career grads
- More opportunities for promotion
- Full-pay sabbaticals for teachers with at least 12 years of experience [I'm so out!]
- Learning-related expenses of $400-$700 to be made claimable [the most flexible, it will be available to everyone]
- More emphasis on staff development [whether this gets translated to the ground level, remains to be seen]

Unfortunately our salaries are already found to be quite competitive with the private sector, so no changes in that direction. Shoot :p

At first glance though, most of the goodies seem to be more for the long-term employees rather than the newbie BTs. Is anyone interested in whether we'll stay beyond our 3/4/5/6 year bonds? And most of the goodies don't focus on the purely material but instead seem directed towards making our life and career development as smooth and varied as possible. Which means you'll only feel the full benefit if you stay for as long as possible.

Hm. What do you guys think?

Happy Teacher's Day

2006-08-31T18:31:00.000-07:00

It seems highly ironic to me that the day that is supposed to be for the teachers, ended up being more tiring for me, the teacher, than any other normal school day.

2 of the troublemakers decided to get into repeated fights with each other, just a few pathetic minutes before I was supposed to get them all gathered up to go to the hall for the Teacher's Day concert. In the ruckus, they push over a much smaller girl, who starts crying on the spot.

Honestly, it's days like these that make me wonder why I joined this line.

We finally arrived late for the concert. I had the two boys stand outside the hall giving them one solid scolding while the rest of the students were settled in the hall waiting for the performance to start. Once I had finally cooled down enough, I dragged one of the major troublemakers to me for a calmer talking-to.

I told him something like there was no point in fighting, because even if the other kid started it first, he was equally in the wrong for continuing the fight. [and for hitting back more savagely, may I add] And in the end, only innocent bystanders like the smaller girl would get hurt in the end, and would he only be satisfied after he had killed all his classmates, or pushed his other friends down the stairs or something?

I told him to please think in the future if someone hit him. If it was accidental, then ignore it. If it was on purpose, then tell a teacher, instead of hitting back. At the end of it, I asked him to repeat what I said.

His reply: "If someone hits me, hit him back a million times." *grin*.

Teachers are the imparters of values, the principal read out from the Teacher's Day letter to schools. But what if the students are not willing to accept those values?

*Haiz* Anyway, for a lighter note, please scroll down to read the entry on Things Teachers Wish They Could Tell Their Students.

Happy Teacher's Day, all.

Things Teachers Wish They Could Tell Their Students...

2006-08-31T18:27:00.000-07:00

But obviously, they can't.

Courtesy of Talkingcock.com

personally, I like no. 6 and 7.

1. Actually, you’ll never need to know most of what I’m asked to teach you.

2. I wish they didn’t make you come to school either.

3. Wait till you see what I’ve written about YOU on MY blog – www.siginnah.com

4. Don’t take this the wrong way, but where your father and mother brother and sister?

5. I really wish you were as smart as you think you are.

6. You know, it’s true. You really don’t have to go to study hard and go to university. I did, and look at the crappy job I got.

7. Please don’t breed. Please!

8. Jack Neo was wrong: you damn stupid (and you damn stupid too!)

PSLE Oral

2006-08-17T17:05:00.000-07:00

These 2 days of PSLE Oral exams have been like a lull of peaceful waters after heavy 10-foot-wave storms. With a heart half of relief ["I get rid of them for 2 extra days!"] and anxiety ["Will they actually study for the CAs over the weekend? Or play and fail consequently??"] I let my bunch of ragamuffins go off on Wed, though I had to come back to school for duties on Thurs and Fri.

Now on Fri, while waiting my turn for duty, I have one observation about oral exams: They are a BORE. Unless you're an examiner, or a Big One on top who has to constantly monitor the situation and make sure nothing screws up, there is not much for the average teacher to do except take care of the kids who are waiting their turn for the examiner.

Examples:
- Walking around a 2m radius around the kid
- Leaning on the balcony railings staring at cloud formations
- Talking/Scolding to the kids waiting their turns
- Doodling frantically on any scraps of paper at hand

BUT, as boring as it all was, I am still grateful for the lull. At least in the meantime, I managed to get my LPs for the next week all done. :p Weekend here I come.

Email Feedback

2006-08-02T07:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while, but this email made me feel like doing it:

"u r a disgrace to the teaching
profession....displaying such a negative attitude.when
there r people dying to teach n cant! go kill urself"

Times like this........... I really wonder at some people............ here he is commenting on my negative attitude and at the same time telling me to kill myself.... [??] That's not a very positive attitude on his part now is it?

Of course, it does make me think a bit.

1. Is this guy a teacher in Singapore as well? And does he have a 100%, 24/7 positively sunny attitude towards his job everyday?

2. Is it wrong to display negative feelings? If so, then is it better that we should all never talk or do anything about our problems, and just carry a forced smile to work each day?

3. Is keeping this blog such a disgrace to the teaching profession? If so, I think you can shut down most of the teacher blogs out there.

I'm not keeping this blog to purposely throw a bad light on teaching. Neither am I out to discourage people from teaching. There are people who have emailed me about teaching in Singapore and I've tried to give them as objective a view as possible, concerning job scope, prospects and others.

But what I think this blog is about, is to give people a view of the teaching profession, from my eyes. Granted I'm not utterly happy all the time at my job, but who is anyway?

The truth is there are many people out there who are just as dissatisfied with their teaching jobs, and I'm just one of those who actually blog about it, rather than just keep silent about it.

And for all those who are dying to teach and can't? At least they don't carry any illusions in their head about what the job really entails.

Some people make me feel just.... *Phwargh!*

Into the deep blue sea without a float

2006-06-30T02:49:00.001-07:00

Update: Induction is over. Holidays are over. School has started. With me in it.

*long shriek*

Yes, I've finally ended my much-too-short children's education... er, education and I've been thrown into the deep blue sea without a float. Why without a float? Because that's exactly how I feel. You can just imagine me walking off the plank, two miserable floaties around my arms, screaming, "I'm not ready! I'm not ready!"

*Sigh* Like anyone ever cared? Like time and tide ever waited for anyone?

Anywayz, because of the probability that this blog may be read by some colleague, *seriously crossing my fingers here* I obviously have to go on a strict Vow of Unwilling Confidentiality. Sorry guys, but so do NOT want to be the first teacher-blogger to be sued by an wrathful principal.

So just a few details. I've been posted to one of the many inconspicuous government schools around the island. [so you can immediately cross out the famous ones] The school is ok, but... I still think my previous School Experience and Practicuum schools were run better. :p The kids are ok, except for one or two cases that makes me just want to........ I think the experienced teachs would know what kinda kid I'm talking about :S

And so much to absorb!!!! It's not quite about the amount of work, it's the sheer number they pile upon you on your first week in school! I've gotten a form class, I've had to run around after several people for my resources, [after which I gave up and bought a couple of non-core texts, like the SS and the health ed books] I've had to run after other office staff for keys, codes, laptop, [still yet to arrive] and I've even run into and met a few parents already!

And this is just my first week? *faint* Only about 155 more to go............

Ok, I'm guessing there are a lot more horror stories out there about first days, [do share in the comments!] but hey, since it's my blog, gimme some time to angst about it, eh? :p

Into the deep blue sea without a float

2006-06-30T02:49:00.000-07:00

Do you feel enriched?

2006-06-04T22:29:00.000-07:00

After the talk I just attended today, I managed to organize my thoughts on what about the induction programme irritated me so much.

No Value Whatsoever
What did I learn from the talks? What did I take away? NOTHING. The content of the talks, on speaking good English [duh], importance of Health Education and especially NE were all things that I knew before, and worse, in the case of NE, drummed into me so many times that I became utterly sick of the whole idea of it. [Talk about a case of overload]

But whatever the 'learning objectives' of the talk were, I do not know whether you can consider them fulfilled. Because I was so bored for the talks that I went to, that I became turned off the rest of the talks. Why would I attend something that adds no value to my knowledge, and that is so boring?

Some may give the reason that "Well, that's just you. Maybe there are others who are interested". Well, firstly, I don't see that my boredom affected their interest so much. Secondly, judging by the number of people who left the auditoriums to go to the toilets, the number of people who totally skipped the talks and the number of people who were reading magazines or using their laptops during the talks, I don't think there were that many people who were interested.

And by the way, most of us are university grads? I think we know the importance of speaking good English? *duh*

Lack of Organization
This was in more than one area. Firstly, the programmes themselves. Aside from one feedback session [arguably the most interesting part of the induction], one visit to an SAF camp, and another visit to ITE, the rest of the programmes were talks. What effort is there in organizing a talk? You decide on the topic, get one or two peoplew willing to do up a powerpoint presentation for you, and talk on the topic, book venue, submit approval, and TA-DAH! Done! Maybe that's why there are so many 'talks'.

Another very bad example of lack of organization is the attendance taking after the talks. Hordes of people crowding around tables, no queues, no signs to tell you what was on that table. I left the auditorium and what I saw were 2 crowds gathering outside, one presumably for primary school teachers, the other for secondary.

Here's the big question: Which table is which? There was no sign to indicate whether that table was for primary school teachers' attendances, or secondary school teachers, or maybe just drinks. You could only find out either by squeezing through the crowd, to look at the papers on the table, or you asked people who had already been there.

Worse, once you squeezed your way to the table, you had to look through the papers for your name, because the name lists were just dumped on the table. In other words, you still had to get up close, look and guess which paper had names starting with the same letter as yours, and if you had the wrong one, you had to squeeze past another group of people who were also trying to find their names.

And through all this, the staff in charge were just placidly standing behind the tables, watching us squeeze, groan, and flare our way through.

What kind of organization is this??? Is it such an incredible, original idea, to put up signs indicating where to go to sign your name? Is it too much effort on those poor, overworked, underpaid, admin staff to print out a few sheets of paper, and even put up some barricades or chairs so people knew where to queue and where to stand, and so that traffic would go smoothly? Apparently it was, because NONE of these simple, commonsensical ideas were done.

Through the squeezing, I did hear people remark wryly that this was like the Great Singapore Sale. I disagree. I've seen Robinsons Sales that were better organized.

So after going through all this, I'm expected to still be keen and eager and listening during the talk? Some people better start talking to the pedagogy people, because it seems they lack a few lessons in 'classroom management'.

Induction

2006-06-04T04:38:00.000-07:00

Now that the practicuum is over, it's the last 2 weeks for NIe to stuff whatever they want left into us before we leave. Well basically it's the induction period. No lessons or stuff, just attending talk after talk after talk.

Granted this is a GREAT improvement from either lessons or practicuum. After all, all we have to do is sit there and listen. The only thing is that I wish that the talks were a wee bit more interesting to listen to?

The first one, for instance, was a forum on Speak Good English. Basic lessons from talk: Teachers should Speak Good English in order to show a good example to their students. :s OMG. Is that something they thought we didn't know??? Why are they spending 2 hours preaching to the already-converted-for-very-long?

The other interesting thing was the ITE visit. ITE at EXPO of all places....... :S If we thought the location of NIE was bad, this was almost worse. The upshot though was that the campus was very sleek looking and very up to date. Definitely did not look like a stereotypical 'dumping ground'. We were brought around a couple of the facilities by the students, and definitely, the equipment and facilities looked just as good as any poly or uni.

The irony was, halfway through the tour, while we were still rather impressed with the place, we were brought past a toilet, with an unmistakeable nicotine-ish odour wafting from the inside that left no doubt about wat the people inside were doing. :s Oops........ Hey, the beauty therapy school looked great though. :D

Haiz, well at least as I said, there isn't much need for work or brainpower on our part. Just show up, keep quiet, and then that's it.

It's Over.... For Now....

2006-05-25T19:16:00.000-07:00

The practicuum has ended for quite a while now, thank GOD! :s

The most important thing learnt from the practicuum? CLASSROOM MGT. Forget teaching the syllabus, forget all that creative teaching strategies, the one thing you must have is CLASSROOM MGT.

Is putting it in caps not obvious enough? ;)

I can't name any obvious incidents, because if anyone from that school is reading this, my cover is blown. :) But suffice to say, most of my problems stemmed from precisely that, and my last week in that school went really crazy because of that. :s As in really, chaotic,chaotic crazy. Talk about learning a lesson the hard way. *sigh*

Anyway, that's over. *phew* Next week starts the induction program where we have to go to all sorts of education-relevant places like SAF military camps and Sungei Buloh and ITE.

Why ITE anyway? I have this impression that we're gonna tell the kids, "Hey, it's alright to go to ITE if you want to! It's really cool!"

That's going to go down so well with the parents.

And my posting will be in June. Almost time to face the real world.

All scream now. EEEKKK!!!

As much as I'm totally enjoying the slack time for now, I feel the inevitable ticking of the clock down to the start of the Bond. *deep sigh..........* Then it's 3 Years to Freedom. Why can't the good times keep rolling? :(

Ok, not gonna think about that for now. Back to slack.......

Oh yea, and it turns out someone from one of my classes actually found my blog and is reading it! How small is this world? :D If you're reading this, here's a hey to you!

Perking Up

2006-04-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

So the 'down' period is over, n things are finally beginning to look up, thank God.

After a couple more observations, my assessment finally started to reach the 'acceptable' levels. *Phew!* So maybe I won't have to repeat my practicuum just yet. :p

Today's observation was havoc to prepare for though. I had intended to sleep well last nite and wake up early in the morning to finish up the preparations.

Early my foot. I woke up at the ungodly hour of 215am.

I don't even know why. Maybe it was my subconscious brain waking me up to frantically prepare for the lesson, because that was the first thing on my mind when I did wake up. So I decided to just start preparing my materials.

Wah lau. I cut and folded papers till I nearly died. And I still wasn't feeling sleepy.

I went back to bed, tossed and turned, and then woke up later at 6 to finish my lesson plan.

Which nearly made me totally late for school. I ran into the gates with all my barang, praying that assembly hadn't started yet, plonked myself into the staff room computer, glanced at the clock

And realised I was 10 mins early. My watch was 10 mins fast. *faint*

Anyway I managed to print out the LP for my CT and though the lesson could have been better, I saw she had given me all 'acceptables'. So I'm not complaining. :)

So now here I stand: I have 2 more weeks of practicuum left. The other trainees in the school have already left, leaving me all alone here. :( Although my teaching is still not quite 'proficient' enough, at least it's picking up and I'm starting to get into the swing of things. [starting with marking the pile of homework returned to me over the weekend and chasing those who did not hand in homework]

My classroom management is better with the younger class, maybe because they are smaller and easier to intimidate.

I have 2 more CT observations and 1 more sup observation.

I have finished my marking for the day and am listening to music while I blog while I wait for my next class.

Hey, maybe I'll make it after all.

Somewhere between Unacceptable and Acceptable

2006-04-14T04:35:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I updated this blog, and sorry that I have to update it with sucky stuff.

My practicuum had been going ok.... till this week. This previous week, the following happened:

1) I had 3 observations...... Which all tanked. As in, nearly failed. In one, the activity was pretty ok, but my classroom mgt was poor and I couldn't control the class. My CT also thinks that some of the children didn't get it. In another, my CT says I taught some of the content wrongly, (!!!) and it wasn't learner-centric enough, too much chalk-talk.

In the final 3rd one, half the class was looking obviously bored and the other was just going through the motion with me. I knew I had lost them all by that point of time. And in the process, my grade for this observation.

2) One of the parents of my kids complained about me, that I wasn't monitoring his progress in my class, that he still didn't understand the chapter that I had taught, and that I wasn't marking his work!

That complaint actually baffled me quite a bit at first, because I had always kept the workbooks in school, and also marked every single page that I went through with the class. I had also marked every worksheet that had been given to them, and both worksheets and workbooks had always been kept in school, so where did the parent even see the work in the first place....?

As for the monitoring of progress, and lack of understanding, I'm also baffled about that. Because this kid had done most of the work set out correctly, aside from a few mistakes, so why did he say his kid didn't understand the chapter at all? Unless the kid had been copying his work all along without me knowing? Does that still make it my fault?

I'm not sure how to handle this one...... whether to face the parent with my CT during the parent-teacher meeting or not......

3) All the other trainees have finished their practicuums. Except for me. Next week I have no more company. :( :( :(

All in all, this made it a pretty low week for me all around. Suddenly my ability to teach a proper lesson and heck, even catch the kids' attention has been called into question and found lacking. Severely. I'm not sure whether this is just a bad phrase I'm going through or whether I'm truly in the wrong line. I tried to tell myself all the way that this was just a learning curve thing, that it would get better with practice, that I couldn't convince myself that I was a total loser, but...

Well, after hanging out a while over the Friday holiday, I feel slightly better, and even started thinking about what to do for the next ob rather than just wallowing in self-pity and misery 100%. I mean, I still feel pretty sucky, but at least I feel like doing something about it now, rather than just wallow.

Tip for others: Always have something non-teaching related outside of work to go to. It clears the mind lots.

Yeargh!!!!!!!

2006-03-28T19:28:00.001-08:00

I'm in the middle of my practicuum now and there doesn't seem to be a better word to describe how I feel than "YEARGH!!!!!"

Classes like my mentor's should be rendered OUT OF BOUNDS to trainee teachers. I swear, the number of discipline problems there......... Let's call it a sort of baptism by bonfire.

Ok, I did not have a good day in class today. The usual students were causing havoc, the ones who were actually interested in learning at the start were now getting dismotivated, and half the class near the window seemed dead to the world. Oh, and plus the few looks of sympathy that I had to suffer their class.

Just when I thought I was getting the hang of classroom management, in comes in my crash-or-die course in discipline.

The first step being the usual method of scream. Screaming once or twice of course will stop them in their tracks a while. But it's shortlived. Once they get used to it, it almost seems as though they just love the sound of your screams, considering the number of times they try to ignite you.

The next step, is punishment. So far, I've tried isolating the noisy/disruptive/plain offensive ones by getting their butts to the front of the class. However, I haven't used this often, because also, I haven't had a good strong discipline system pat down. :p Here's another warning for other newbie trainee teachers...

Another step, which my mentor just talked to me about, is to just talk to them. Talk? Talk to them one on one? Will they listen?

"Yes they would, if they feel that you are not against them, or their enemy. Talk to them. Let them know that you are on their side. Talk to them as soon as they misbehave, so that they know why you are talking to them. But get them on your side."

"What if they don't want to talk?"

"They might not at first. It took me a while before they would respond to me as well, but eventually they did. And they will behave better in class."

I guess it just takes that little bit of trust built up.........

Yeargh!!!!!!!

2006-03-28T19:28:00.000-08:00

Deviant at the Substation

2006-03-16T05:59:00.000-08:00

This is an installation that teachers near the city area could check out.... Deviant at the Substation is about the 'deviant' students in schools today. You know, the ones who don't want to listen to your lessons, spend their time doing all sorts of crazy stuff...

And yet one day do fantastically well for themselves.

I dunno whether any of you have ever experienced this kind of student? I felt it was an interesting conundrum for any teacher. If you were to impose your own rules and restrictions on them, you could stifle them for life. Yet, if you don't hold them in check, they could potentially self-combust. And obviously, they're not interested in listening to you anyway.

Hence this installation by Felicia Low, who herself happens to be an art teacher at CHIJ Katong Convent. "This show is all about the students I have witnessed - surfacing in full bloom"

This is the main installation piece:

I like the idea of the helium balloons. They hang around the empty classroom area with illustrations of concerned parents, and they have little tags on them with a quotation from that parent, eg, "Let's ask your teacher why she always picks on you". It reminds me a lot of parents who are such "concerned stakeholders" but they only hang around, [literally] and are never really around in the classroom. It also makes me feel like they were ghosts hanging around the classroom, keeping a high eye on everything you do.

This is the kind of art I like. That makes me think.

I also like the photos on lightboxes, especially this one:

I can bark and bark all I want, but I can't stop them from biting me if I want. Sheesh. Unfair world.

The installation is about slightly larger than a classroom, so take the time to walk around and think about the artist's message, rather than just quickly peeking around and dashing off.

For more information, click here

Spare the Voice... Spoil the Child?

2006-03-14T19:21:00.000-08:00

One of the very first pieces of advice I received before my first steps in a classroom was to "show no mercy".

I think many trainees would have received this advice in one form or the other. The idea behind it was to always be more firm, more strict than usual in front of the class, in order to gain their attention, and their [?] respect. The other idea was also to show that you may be a relief teacher/trainee teacher/temporary teacher but you sure as heck was NOT going to let this class get in your way.

Then again, the next question some trainees may ask is, "So just HOW strict?"

Some trainees and I were mulling over this question just the other day. We agreed that we had to be firm and strict, but to some of us, this had to be out of character, because, well, we just weren't really that fierce in real life.

Not only that, but we also felt that we didn't want to create an environment of fear in our classroom, where the students tremble at every sound the teacher made, and lived in fear of stepping out of line.

As a trainee myself, I witnessed 2 kinds of teaching methods in my mentors.

Some mentors were real fierce. The way they screamed and shouted at their students made me shudder inwardly when I sat in their classes for observation. I wondered, naively, whether the students would actually learn this way, and whether such an environment was conducive to learning, let alone to my own voice and blood pressure.

[of course, the thing is that after the lesson, they can quickly switch face and speak to me in a more lenient tone. thank goodness for that]

It was only when I had to teach a rowdy class on my own that I realised why they had to act those characters. Because if you didn't shout, you'd never get heard above the ruckus of the class. If you weren't strict as hell, they sure as hell weren't gonna listen to you.

I've also known other trainees who suffered in front of their class, because they weren't strict enough at first, and then the class just decided not to listen to them anymore.

Then again, this creates other problems. Apparently, if you, the form teacher, are too strict in your class, other subject teachers suffer because when they step in your class when you're not around, the whole class takes your absence as an opportunity to descend into chaos, never mind that another teacher is around.

Then again, I've also seen other teachers who weren't that strict, except when necessary. They spoke nicely to their class, they cracked jokes, and they were still generally popular with the class, and the class was generally well-behaved in front of them.

So one didn't have to be a complete gorgon all the time......

I guess it generally depends on the class. If your school does what most schools do, then students of generally the same standard ability are lumped together in the same class. So all the brightest sparks will be in the A classes, while the...... not as gifted...... would be in the Z classes. [you get the idea]

If you teach an A class, then congrats for you. Your classroom management is that much easier. The children will listen to you, follow your instructions, and sit by quietly waiting for further instructions, because that's what they've been trained to do.

If you teach a Z class......... Prepare the Prozac.

How to Be A Tuition Teacher Part 3 - Your First Lesson

2006-03-13T20:40:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know I took really long to do up this series, but at least it's progessing!

Your First lesson

Great. You've done the fieldwork, you've done the calling, and you've landed your first student! *Claps in joy*

Now what the heck do you do with him??

[note: obviously you may get female students but for convenience I'll just use the male pronouns]

There are several things you want to do during the first lesson. One is obvious to get to know the student. Some basic information you can ask include school, what kind of class he is in, etc. [stay away from personal information like friends, hobbies etc... start off professionally]

You may be starting with him in the middle of the school year, so you have to update yourself on several things about him. Ask about his performance in school. For example, you can ask,

1. What has his grades in school been like?
2. What were his grades for his last exam/test/CA/SA?
3. Has he had tuition before?
4. What books does he have? study guides? Assessments? Past year papers?

You can easily talk to the motherfatherguardian on the first day for all this information. Chances are the parents will be more than happy to talk about it. [hey at least you're showing an interest...] Most parents I've met were more than happy to rail off at how bad their children are in school, how lazy they are, how much time they spend on CCAs, etc etc etc...... just try to head them off when u can...

After a while the parent might leave you alone with the kid. And now the two of you are standing/sitting there staring awkwardly at each other. What now?

Usually I like to make them do some kind of test on the first lesson. I do this so I gauge for myself what the kid's abilities are like. While he is doing his math test, you can observe several things, like what kind of questions is he having problems with, what seems to be the problem, is there a particular topic he's having trouble with, etc etc... Catch whatever kind of info u can, because you will be able to use this in future lessons.

Of course, some may make it easy for you, like one sec sch one I had who looked at the very first question and declared, "I don't think I can do the rest of this." Then you know you don't have to narrow it down to one topic any longer.

If the child has no assessment books yet, you can get him to do something from the textbook, while you make a mental note to buy the books. I prefer most Longman books myself, if you need a headstart. Remember to keep receipts and charge parents for any materials you buy. After all, the book belongs to the kid after that.

Ok this should be more than enough info to get anyone started. Have fun earning your first month! :p

Students do the darnedest things......

2006-03-08T01:04:00.000-08:00

Even in the midst of their CAs.....

What happens when you get a bunch of students who finish their 2 1/2 hour CA in half an hour? The following occurred in just ONE particularly restless class:

- A continuous line of students asking for permission to go to the toilet
- Various arts and crafts projects being done. For example, ice cream stick sculptures, drawings, paintings, spaceships constructed out of rough paper and ice cream sticks and heavily decorated with pens,markers and highlighters
- Space fantasies enacted with abovementioned spaceships
- Ping pong balls being bounced
- Chinese books read [during english language exams]
- Correction tape/erasers/pens/pencils being passed around when they thought the teacher wasn't looking
- Students looking at Pokemon magnets
- Students twirling waterbottles
- Students twirling waterbottles at just the right angle to create a mini tornado inside

And the absolute winner:

A boy who attempted to create a modern art-type skyscaper structure with 2 waterbottles and his pencilcase on his table.

MAN! They don't just lie down and sleep any more.

A Telescopic View of it All

2006-02-22T02:04:00.000-08:00

Which is basically how I feel about my practicuum right now.

Ok, a little background info. This is the first week in my pract. school, which is a rather good school in my area. I've of course met my mentors and I've decided to give the impression of a total idiot. Well, not totally, but I've just been bombarding them with a million and one questions about the school and how things are run here and how the class is run, and I'll probably continue till they think I'm some crazed spaz.

Well, it's the only way I know to get the info I wanna know anyway. :p

but the one thing that really bothered me was my total lack of experience in handling a class.

I knew my mentor's class tended to be on the rowdy side, especially for the boys, but what I didn't realise was how bad I would be at managing them.

For one, the entire class decided to switch places and sit with their best friends! And I didn't remember their names or faces, let alone their seating arrangements, even though I knew some of them switched. Which is also why one of the first things I requested from my CT was a seating arrangement........ which I'm gonna bring into class every lesson from now on........

Then the usual ruckus. Half the class talking while I was talking. Some walking here and there. No one caring or paying attention.

*GIANT SIGH* thankfully this was just a relief, and not an observation. Bye bye, passing grade even.........

Though when I look back, I can see a few things wrong with what I did. I should've really properly introduced myself and most imptly, MY RULES. I donno why, but I had this nice little speech in mind to scare off the little terrors, and then, when it came to an actual classroom situation, I forgot it all!

Thank god I never went into acting................

I don't even know WHY is it I forgot, it just totally slipped out of my mind when I walked in, and I went straight into the lesson. *Sigh* Thank god my CT wasn't around to witness the debacle.

I only have a few things to prop me up on this. First, I'm making sure that next week, when I take over, I dedicate TIME to drill my rules into them, and let them know that I'm not gonna let u step all over me. [even though u may try, and some of u may be damn successful] Then I gotta scream at them a thousand times till they get it in their heads that I do NOT want those rules flouted.

And hopefully I get them into shape for my observation. *twists fingers*

Then I gotta remember the story of my friend too. I had a friend who actually joined the same time I did, but decided one week into the school experience that he could NOT do this.

One thing was that he had a rowdy class like this, which also made it hard for him to control the class. Finally, he decided that he could not do this for life, and sent in his resignation. MOE told him that he had to give 1 mth's notice, so he spent an extra month in that school contract teaching while I went to NIE.

Funny thing though. He said that the longer he spent in the school and in the class, the more he got the hang of classroom mgt. Even though ironically, he learnt the reins just in time for his contract to expire and now he's in the private sector.

So if he could do it after a while, why not I?

A guy was talking to the teachers during contact time just today. He said that sometimes we had to take a telescopic view of things, and look ahead. If we looked microscopically, then all we would ever see would be the short term failures that we did.

But if we looked far, and treated these as experiences...... maybe we might just see a better ending for ourselves.

Let's hope that applies to my teaching career as well.

All My Bags are Packed...

2006-02-15T07:36:00.000-08:00

I'm aready to go.

Well, the bags aren't exactly packed, considering that most of the important stuff from my hostel room has already been taken out and put back home, ie the things I would most likely need for practicuum, so really all that's left in the room are excess stuff [that will only add to the existing useless clutter pile in my bedroom] that I don't need anyway.

And of course a whole host of memories.

It's strange that I could be even a little attached to this room after just barely 8 months of staying here, but after all it's kinda my home away from home now. The place where I can quietly sit, read, go on the Internet, do everything except work, without complaints from parents who think you should be spending your time productively all the time.

The more I live here, the more I think I'm getting a freaky sense of independence, that hey, I can actually live on my own, and not whine for mummy to do something for me. I can do it.

But of course, the hostel room has become more than that for me. It was the place of much afternoon naps, when I would doze off after a particularly boring tutorial, the only sounds being the whirring of the overhead fan and the low sounds of my roommate playing Maplestory. It's the room where we watched TV together and made snide comments at whoever was on TV.

It's the hall where we climbed the stairs, heaving and puffing, to finally reach our room, and stand there breathing heavily till we both caught our breath again. It's the room where we trained our leg muscles to stairclimbing perfection.

It's the hall where we had to walk down the corridor to the bathroom, and key in a 3 number code just to take a pee. It's the hall which served better food than any stall in NIE, or even NTU for that matter.

It's the hall where I would take my laundry down all those flights of stairs, and lounge in the lounge reading while waiting for my laundry to finish. It's where I excused myself from work, saying that I had to do the laundry.

Can you even call these memories? I think what I'll bring with me is the general feeling and impression of the place. The feeling of calm, of rest, and my beckoning bed. The feeling of coming home to rest thy weary bones at last. And all a convenient few minutes away from our classrooms.

And now that practicuum is starting, we won't be here till around May, and even then, we have at most one or two months before we completely vacate the room and return to our original addresses.

I'll miss the place.

Practicuum Postings are Out....

2006-02-05T23:23:00.000-08:00

And you can hear the screams from NIE to all over Singapore.

My friend is currently bemoaning her posting to her old contract school, where she had the most marvellous time of her life being treated as free, underpaid labour under a tyrannical buffoon of a principal. [and NO, I will not reveal the name of the school or the principal]

I'm bemoaning my posting to another school which was NOT the school I went to for my 3 week school experience, a good school which I liked, had nice staff, a good mentor, and was comfortably getting used to, before I had to go back to NIE.

I've been posted to a good school again, the benefits of living in a decent area of Singapore. [note that, all potential teacher-wannabes] BUT I'm still dreading it, because I've heard that that school had a reputation of some of the most kiasu-fied crazy parents around Singapore. *faint* I can see myself with the Valium already.

Other than those, I'm also worried about a few other things.
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OMG!! WHAT THE HELL DO I DO IN SCHOOL?? WHAT IF THE KIDS ARE DEMONS?? WHAT IF THE TEACHERS HATE ME?? WHAT IF THE PRINCIPAL IS A DICTATOR?? WHAT IF THE PARENTS ARE OUT TO SCREW ME?? WHAT IF I HORRIBLY SCREW THIS UP?? WHAT IF I HAVE TO REPEAT MY PRACTICUUM?? WHAT IF I SCRAPE THROUGH IT BARELY ALIVE AND BLEEDING AND I GET STUCK DOING IT ALL OVER AGAIN IN JULY?? WHAT IF I CANNOT MAKE IT THROUGH?? AACCCCKKKKk!!!!!!! ARRRRGGGGHHHHh!!!!!!!!!!!! SCCCRREEECCHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
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*cough*.
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.
Ok now I'm better.

But seriously, I would love to hear about other's practicuum experiences. If nothing, at least it'll give me a good idea of what I'll be going through in about 2 weeks....... send in your comments, please!

Can You Handle the Truth?

2006-01-23T07:54:00.000-08:00

Tune-In Question: How honest can you be in your profession?

It came to me one day how hard and how potentially risky honesty can be.

A friend of mine was doing a feedback form for a community service project our cohort had done over the holidays. And seriously, some of the questions really deserved the most inane answers.

For example,
"What were your contributions to the project?"
Oh yes, my committee was the driving force behind the whole project. In fact, I am certain that without us, the project would not have ended with the resounding success that it did. Never mind that there were other committees in this group, WE DA ONES, you hear??

"What skills did you glean from the implementation of this project?"
Personally? Nothing that I didn't already have. If I had to learn it while the project was going on, you think I'd still have been able to complete the damn thing?

"Give some feedback on your group members. (Positive only)"
What's the point of writing anything then?

And OF COURSE she didn't write any of those answers down. What, you think we're crazy? But it did make me think of how effective all these feedback thingies really are.

For one, does anyone really dare to write their true opinions on these things? When there is that chance our job security may be at sake, or worse, that we may have to sit in our tutor's office for god-noes-how-many hours listening to an impromptu lecture on why the Ministry is right and we, the untrained, uninformed, unworthy trainee teacher is wrong? Nope, most people would rather take the safe, easy route out and simply write down whatever it is that the higher-ups want to hear.

[and btw, they don't want to hear that you are neutral on the whole thing. You're supposed to have an opinion, and you damn well better express one]

This is the same fallacy facing the Psychaitric Unit in NIE. On the official front, the clinic is there for you to vent your stresses, your problems, and receive professional psychiatric advice.

On the unofficial front, do you really want your potential employers to think that you may be unable of handling the work load in school? Or do you want your future school to think that you may have some psychiatric disorder? I wonder if they get much visitors.

So in the end, the problems go unsolved. The people at the bottom are too afraid to voice out the problems they see, and the higher-ups are just to happy to hear about all the things they did right and so they inflict the same crap on the next batch of unknowing trainees.

Of course, the flip side is that who does it hurt in the end? Because when we give the wrong feedback, the higher-ups just make their next policy decisions based on the crap we feed them, and we hurt, and we bleed, and the people on top wonder what the heck is wrong with the whole thing.

There's a whole essay that could be written on the openness of Singapore society, but that would be digression on a major scale......

But then, can we be totally honest? That pretty much depends on how much you think you're going to be hurt by your honesty. As in, how much shit am I gonna be in for this? Cos it's a small comfort to think that you're giving the teachers of the future a better life, when you're jobless, and broke.

So in the end, we build a vicious cycle:

Govt controls our jobs
We scared of govt
Govt tells us things
We say Govt good
Govt thinks it's good
Govt gives us more 'goods'
We die
Go back to "We scared of govt"

*Sigh* More and more I wonder why I didn't just stay giving tuition......

Back to Life, Reality and School

2006-01-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

As with all the little munchkins around Singapore, we too have to trudge reluctantly back to school...... Where did the holidays go???

Well, it appears that more than a few of the staff [including yours truly blogger here] may still be in the holiday mode. I arrived back to find a whole host of scheduling problems in school.

One lecture had to be postponed to a very hateful timing because Monday was a public holiday. [ok, my sympathies to the lecturers as well for that]

For another tutorial, the tutor tried in vain to find a common time slot for all of us to have a make up lesson, because a couple of Tuesdays were public holidays, but we realised that everyone's time table clashed with one another, and we were unable to find that common slot. [he tried, at least]

2 classes for another module were rescheduled because of time tabling mixups in the admin department [neither the fault of the tutor nor us, but we all suffer anyway]

And to make matters worse, I'm suddenly unable to log into Blackboard [the online portal with all the course documents, readings and other important announcements] because they seemed to have changed the whole damn thing.

I've been in school for a week and I already feel as if I'm 2 weeks behind the entire cohort.

Not to mention one of my tutors went through a pretty scathing session on What We Did Wrong During the Last Module, and with a pretty sinking heart, I suspect that I may committed most of the errors she mentioned in the project and the exam, although I don't really remember exactly what I wrote and handed in. Ok, the main reason why I suspect it is because I think I scored one of the lowest grades in the class. -_-!!!

Not an indicator of teaching ability, not an indicator of future teaching ability, not an indicator of future teaching ability

*sigh* caught up in the holiday mood, I forget that school has already started......... now to rush my ass up with the rest of the school...

How to Be A Tuition Teacher Part 2 - Getting Your Students

2005-12-13T21:30:00.000-08:00

After the previous post on how to prepare yourself for getting your students, now I'll continue with how to actually go about getting those students.

In Singapore, there are hundreds and thousands of students out there who actually need tuition, or were harangued into it by their parents. ^_^! Your job now, after confirming your credentials, are to actually connect yourself to these students, and there are several ways you can go about doing it.

Free Advertising - Word of Mouth

blogger two057 in a comment to Part One mentioned that another way to get students was the good results of your previous students. Definitely, word-of-mouth is one of the best ways you can get students, since you have other parents who can vouch for your capabilities and spread your number to other parents. This is the best kind of free advertising you can get.

If you are a new, inexperienced tutor though, then you may not be able to draw on this with the same kind of success. However, you can still use some word of mouth to your advantage. Let your friends, parents, acquaintances know that you are going into the tuition business, and let them help you look out for potential students.

Remember though, to spread the news through people who like you, and who are willing to vouch for you. And make sure you can live up to your obligations. It's not beneficial to your social relationships if you taught Mrs Ong's daughter for a year, only to have her fall 20 places in the class ranking. Not to mention if such a thing happens, Mrs Ong can easily spread the news to Mrs Tan, Mrs Lim, Mrs Chai..... word of mouth can definitely work to your disadvantage as well.

If you want to avoid teaching the children of your immediate social circle, or you have no social life at all, then you can try DIY advertising

Do It Yourself

Make your own flyers, advertising yourself. Some may print namecards, but you can probably get the same kind of result printing out a simple flyer on your home printer and then mailing one into every mailbox in your estate. There are a few advantages to this, that you reach a wider audience than if you were to rely on your social circle, and you don't have to lose any of your pay to tuition agency commissions. Also, any students you get would be living around your area, assuming that's where you mailed out the flyers. It's also relatively cheap and easy

Make sure your printer can churn out hundreds of flyers though. You'd need to print out a relatively large number in order to assure yourself of students. And have fun cutting the papers if you want to print out 2 flyers on one A4 sheet.

Some may do a cheaper method and print out one flyer for each block, and stick it to the wall of the lift lobby, with strips of paper with their handphone numbers on it for the potential parents to tear out. There is one caveat to this, however, which is you may find your flyer torn off the next morning by the cleaners, or rival tuition agencies. This I found out the hard way after one afternoon of cycling around my estate. ^_^!

Tuition Agencies - The Pro Way

Tuition agencies are basically middlemen. They connect you, the tutor who needs students, to parents who want tutors. They are also the most common way by which most inexperienced tutors get students.

Essentially what you do is call up the tuition agency, give them info like your name, contact no, qualifications, what level and what subjects you want to teach, your expected fee and, sometimes, when you are free to teach. What the agencies do after that is try to connect you to a parent. Then, they deduct 50% of your first month's pay as their commission. Their numbers are also easy to find in the classifieds.

Mind you, this is all in theory. You may call up dozens and hundreds of tuition agencies, only to receive maybe 2 or 3 potential students about a month later. Then you may find that they will tell you that the pay that the parent is willing to pay is way lower than your expectations. The tuition agency biz is a competitive one, so what they do is offer parents lower tuition salaries [your salary, mind you] in order to attract the parent's commission. This means that your monthly salary will also be lower than what you could've gotten for yourself. And this is after half of your first month's pay has been deducted.

And then there may be other complications, like they may ask you to er, 'enhance' your tuition experience by a year or so. They may also ask you to teach subjects which you never learned, or which you failed miserably in school. They may offer you parents who live crazy distances from where you live.

Most agencies may also seem shady. Mind you, you may never see the agent who gives you the commission, and you may only speak to them over the phone, so be wary of agencies who ask for commissions higher than 50%.

Naturally, if you approach more established tuition agencies, you will not face this problem. But experienced tuition agencies may not give you, the inexperienced tutor, that much opportunities either. When I started out, most of my students came from the agents over the phone, and not the established agencies. In the end, what's more important is that you get connected with a student, and you are able to teach that student for more than a month.

Right, that's all for this installation! See you next week, when I prep you for your first lesson!

Funny Exam Answers

2005-12-01T00:25:00.000-08:00

I doubt whether any of our local students are crazy or despondent enough to hand in this kind of exam papers, but apparently some students [somewhere] were. [my favourite is the last one]

Funny Exam Answers from Currytan

Note: Are we allowed to publish students' work online like this? :p Or is it alright as long as we don't show the names?

Timetables are out!

2005-11-30T18:43:00.000-08:00

Before my exam results have been released, my timetable is already out... Do I treat this as a good sign and take it that I've cleared the necessary modules? *fingers crossed* Because there are some modules that I so, so, SO do not want to retake!

How to Be A Tuition Teacher Part 1: Before-Class Revision

2005-11-30T18:35:00.000-08:00

So in an effort to keep this blog getting too dusty over the holidays, *blows dust off*, I'm writing a segment on becoming a tuition teacher.

I'm doing this because the tuition industry in Singapore is like, one of the largest underground industries here, and also because of the sheer number of people who want to enter it. [hence, I'm also doing it in an effort to boost visitor stats to this site]

So what do you need to do to become a tuition teacher?

One of the things I found most useful then was Preparation. Yes, a highly overused term, but one that remains useful nonetheless. Before you start making those calls, you might want to decide on a few terms beforehand:

1. Your Working Hours
One of the great advantages of tuition is the flexibility in timing. If you're working full-time, you can choose to teach either in evenings, or during weekends. My usual hours during my full-time tuition days were weekday evenings [except Fri night of course...] and weekend mornings. This gave me more than enough time during the day to do whatever it is I wanted to do.

Obviously if you're taking tuition up as a part time option, then you don't have to dedicate all your free time to teaching. [unless you're possibly that hard up, or that lacking of a social life altogether] Hence decide for yourself when do you want to teach? Some would prefer to teach only during the weekends, some prefer teaching after work on weekday nights, leaving their weekends free. Again, it's up to you.

Once you decide for yourself when you want to teach, then you can save time having to negotiate with parents about your available tuition days. Just tell them straight that you are available "mon and thurs, 730 to 930". If anything, this saves you having to teach during weird slots. [I once had a student whom could only have lessons at 10pm!] Also, this keeps your own schedule relatively intact.

2. Your Teaching Subjects and Level
What were you strong in? What are you good in? If you were an accounting graduate, you can teach Principles of Accounting. If math was always your strong suit, go for it. If you've always been good in the written word, teach kids how to write great compositions.

Don't, for example, attempt to teach O Level English when you scraped through it with a C5 say, ten years ago. ^_^! You will do yourself and the kid no favours.

After you've decided on what subject you want to teach, then the next step is at what level are you comfortable teaching? Primary and Secondary school students come with their own set of baggage each. The primary school kids will tend to be, well, kids. They will be more childish, more playful, and will require more energy dealing with them. [I once had to run after a Pri 6 kid who decided to run out of the house halfway during one lesson]

However, you do get some kids who will tend to listen to instruction more, and these will be a breeze to teach, because they will be relatively docile in the presence of strangers, [yes, even though you're in their house, and after teaching them for a period of time, they will consider you as a relative stranger] and will generally do whatever it is you tell them to do. If you get these kids, hold on to them as long as you possibly can, because they will make your teaching career that much easier. ^_^

This is as compared to the Secondary school teens. The word says it all: Teenagers. They will be more rebellious than the primary school kids, and they will question you more, and be more sluggish during lessons. But you get some where, when it comes to the crucial years of Os and Ns, will be more attentive during your lessons.

You ask yourself: Which do you prefer?

3. Your Qualifications
Obviously this would influence whatever it is you're teaching, [and how much you get paid] but it makes sense to prepare any necessary documents in advance. [yes, time to dig out that ol' dusty O Level cert] Some parents and tuition agencies would want to see copies of these documents in order to ascertain that you are what you claim, so prepare your O level, and maybe A level certs, and any professional qualifications you may have, like ACCA.

Teachers and ex-teachers, you're in luck. Experience counts way more than qualifications here, so the higher the number of years you've worked, the better. Ex-tuition teachers and private school teachers can also count their experience.

4. Your Salary
And this is what we're all doing it for, ain't it? Salary, like in any industry, depends on qualifications and experience. Graduates, good on you. You get a higher salary than your poly counterparts, with rates going up to $40 an hour for honours students. [based on anecdotal evidence] JC students and below...... Better spend more time in school. With your lack of experience, and your young age, parents are least likely to hire you, one of the reasons being you might scram on their kids when you start uni/poly. [which some of you are most likely intending to do] Sorry to say, but you might have to get a data entry job instead.

Again, people with teaching experience have the advantage. Rates for teachers/ex-teachers can go up to $50-60 an hour, based on experience and the number of subjects taught. Tuition teachers can also get just as good rates, if they have a good sucess rate with their students, and good referrals.

So consider all the factors from 1 to 3 and price yourself reasonably. Bear in mind that there is no fixed income standard for tuition, and that a lot pretty much depends on the bargaining powers between you and the parent. However, if you do have a strong advantage in a particular subject, [like you're a teacher, or you have professional qualifications] I suggest you milk it to the core. Go for as obscenely high a price as you possibly can, and then bargain it down slightly to a slightly more reasonable rate.

Don't go overboard with it though. As of yet, I haven't heard of a tutor getting paid $100 a hour for teaching. o_0

Well, that's all for Part 1... After I post this up, I'll start work on Part 2: Getting the job itself. Stay tuned!

Leavings and Beginnings

2005-11-23T02:48:00.000-08:00

"Why haven't I received anything from you yet?"

Me: "Isn't the deadline the 28th?"

"No! It's today!"

Me: *Shrieks*

And so starts a flurry of typing...... I never knew I was capable of typing out a 3 hour English Reading lesson in less than 30 mins... ^_^!

Thankfully, this is not for NIE, but for the holiday community project we're supposed to do. [you know, the one that's supposed to instil a sense of service learning in us and make us all ready for unrestrained devotion to CIP]

Face it, it's a bit of a drag having this to do over the hols, but it has to be done...... And NOBODY wants to repeat an ungraded module like this anyway....

My group has managed to get it down to a holiday camp for kids with the theme "School IS fun!", the idea being to convey to the kids that, well, that school can be fun. We've gotten a family service center to agree to the thing, and I'm hoping all goes well by then.

Or rather, I'm hoping all goes well with the kids during the camp itself. ^_^! Planning is fine. I've done dozens of planning for projects just like this, it's the thought of actually facing the kids that scares the shite out of me.

That has been something I've been thinking about so far since reading of Tym's resignation from the teaching force. It raised the question in my mind: Can I actually pull this off?

Well really, it hasn't been a new question, more like something that cropped up every time I [thought I] did particularly bad on an assignment. [conversely, when I think I did ok, I think to myself that maybe I can pull it off after all] But the question remains. I mean, if there are teachers out there tons more experienced than I am leaving the force, what the heck am I doing??

I remember the time I passed my neighbour, who was an ex-teacher with a top school, in the corridor. We chatted a bit in the lift, and she asked me what I was doing, and at the time, I replied that I was waiting to enter NIE.

"You're entering?? My god, I just left teaching and you're entering?? Are you sure??"

Great encouragement.........

But today's a day I feel particularly green about the whole thing. Like a wide-eyed little kid stepping into school for the first time. Gee, and the kids think they have it bad. What about your poor old untrained teacher who has to contend with 40 of you?

*Sigh* Ah well, no point worrying about it too long. For now, I'm hoping the community project goes through successfully, so that after early Dec, I can truly enjoy the rest of my holidays......

Exam Fever is Here Again

2005-11-08T03:51:00.000-08:00

And it shows, because if you were walking through campus, you'd think everyone had been quarantined and were now lying at home, recuperating.

Well, in a sense, i suppose they are recuperating. Welcome to Exam Fever Season. Bane of both teachers and students alike.

Me, in my program, I'm lucky. I had one exam, on Teaching English on Monday, and I'm cleared for the rest of the semester. Others, including the rest of NTU, I know, have it till almost the end of November.

I would gloat, but I know it'll all come back to me in karmic payments, probably in the first time I have to help mark exam papers. *sweat*

But then again, the Exam Season does give rise to some strange behaviour on the parts of some people. It's probably the overall atmosphere of stress and pressure that does it, and me being in a more relaxed mood now, have the leisure of observing these specimens at will.

One interesting foreign specimen started nesting at the staircase on the same floor as my hostel room. I don't know why she doesn't just stay in her room, but she apparently decided that the staircase was a more conducive place for her to study. The first time I saw her, I nearly got shocked into falling down the staircase. This was because I was walking up the stairs, looking down, when then a pair of feet came into view.

I looked up and I saw this pale, haggard face staring at me, wild, dank strands of hair streaked across her face, with piles of paper in her hand, and muttering some weird language under her breath. In the next few microseconds, I realised that 1. she was human, and 2. she was studying sitting on the staircase and 3. She wasn't a ghost. Thankfully, due to the astonishingly fast neural impulses of the human brain, I registered 1, 2, and 3 in time to not scream bloody murder in her face.

Since then, she's been there almost daily, and sometimes I even see her taking her lunch there. Her spot has been reserved for her, with a few sheets of paper placed there. Just tonight, she was lugging a chair up to her spot. I take it she intends to stay there for quite a while. Maybe next, I'll see her huddled in blankets and sleeping there.

Indeed, Exam Fever does bring out the strangest in some people...... Anyone know any other cases? :p

2005-11-04T01:02:00.000-08:00

pinkcherryade: I've added your blog to the links section... Any other blogging teachers wanna exchange links? :p You're always welcome.

Not a student, Not yet a Teacher

2005-11-04T00:43:00.000-08:00

"This is the last class for the module, so that means your holidays are starting already?"

*A happy sound from the class*

"Well, enjoy it while you can, this will be the last real holidays you ever enjoy in your life."

*DESPAIR GRIEF LAMENTATIONS*

That was a really nice way for my tutor to wrap up the module huh? *grumble* And he's one of the nicer and better ones in the PGDE program too...

[aside: I heard on the grapevine that some girls are so enthralled with him that they actually went to find out his age, marital status... probably his vital stats as well, for all I know]

but in a grudging kind of way, the guy's actually right. When I think about it, this Nov/Dec hols will probably be the last kind of school holidays we will enjoy as students. Not as teachers, planning holiday programmes, classes and god knows what else more.

I DONWAN!!! WAHHHHH!!!!! I'm not sick of being a student yet! Honest! Lemme stick to my studies, student ID and bad canteen food! I'm not ready for responsibility yet!

Man, times like this, I feel like I should give myself 2 tight slaps on the face and shout, "SNAPOUTOFIT!!!" I seem to be stuck in that transitional stage where I'm enjoying the amenities that come with being a student, and yet, I'm not actually a student, I'm a "trained employee of MOE with all the responsibilities and obligations that go with it". [that one particular line has been thrown at us in these few months god knows how many times already]

Not a student, not yet a teacher.

But the feeling kinda sucks in a way. It's like someone pulled you out of your comfy seat in front of the TV, threw you the vacuum, and said, "It's time you did some real work for a change!" only the effect is multiplied by a gazillion.

The effect this has on me is akin to a pendulum. On one swing, when I'm particularly optimistic during classes, I see the lesson plan I write out, and I think, gee, maybe I can pull this off after all.... On a bad day, I'll thik, wtf am I doing here?!! I'm not going to make it! ARGH!!! SOMEONE GET ME OUTTA HERE!!!!!!

Trust me, I'm not turning schizophrenic.

On the [slightly] brighter side, though, most of the assignments have been handed in, done, even while the rest of NTU/NIE is still having exams. Gives me a little gloaty feeling, when I see all the anxiously mugging faces stuck in piles of books and I'm thinking of my next blog entry and how long my afternoon nap should be.

Yea, yea, I know... karma....... :p

But I really should start preparing myself... To say goodbye to being a student and start being responsible for students myself... *sigh* Wish me luck......

Don't laugh... HAHA!

2005-10-23T23:19:00.000-07:00

This really happened during a module, for which we were supposed to do a 3 min presentation to a fictional primary sch class for our assessment.

Speaker: ( Slightly nervous ) Class, today I want to share with you something I saw in the shopping center.

( Slight giggles from one corner )

I saw a girl who was making fun of a mentally retarded child. She was making fun of the child and was laughing at her.

( Giggles again, probably at seeing their classmate suddenly acting so serious. )

Now class, this is a very sad thing. You should not be laughing at other people like that.

( Someone cracks up. The speaker is starting to crack a bit, but pauses and resumes her composure )

It is very bad to laugh at those who are less fortunate than we are... HAHAHAHA!!!!

( Her friends lose control and break up slightly. Unfortunately, this sparks off a fit of laughter in the Speaker, and the rest of the class feel the tremors. The whole presentation breaks up in a small tremor of laughter, and the Speaker clears her throat, tries to resume her composure again, and resumes the rest of her presentation )

So in conclusion, *giggles* it is very bad to laugh at those less fortunate than we are.

( The speaker goes back to her seat, where the rest of her group make frantic apologies in between gulps and guffaws. The next Speaker, waiting outside the class, now comes in and starts her presentation )

New Speaker: Class, I want to talk to you about laughing at your classmates.

( New Speaker wonders why the entire class, including the instructor, is trying to stifle laughter )

Most ironically, the topic the new speaker was supposed to present was that of how unfair it was for us to laugh at our fellow classmates............

and with the start of this week, we at NIE start to look forward to the last deadlines, the last lectures and tutorials, and for some, the last we'd have to see of our tutors. *Yea* It's now about 2 weeks or so to term end, so the holiday mood is starting to set in. People are now looking forward to the end of deadlines, as opposed to dreading them, because it only meant that another deadline was around the corner. They're also starting to book their holidays in the Dec period.

*Sigh* Don't you just love holidays?

Sorry about those who have been coming to a dusty blog. I've been having a billion problems with the laptop connection in NIE and my new laptop only comes in about a week's time. Somehow or another, I managed to survive doing my assignments by borrowing my roomie's laptop to send email, and also queueing at the computer lab. [although it's a little uneasy, when you are blogging at the computer lab and there's like a line of people reaching outside the lab who're all waiting for a com to do their work on....] Hopefully things will be better when I hook up the new laptop....

I'll also try to do little write ups over the hols about the stuff I've learnt in NIE. I've realised that there are highly differing views about the validity of what they teach here. A LOT of people claim it's highly irrelevant to today's classroom and that the lecturers have spent too much time in research. Yet others admit that some concepts do help.

What's the line drawn in the sand? Maybe soon we'd find out....

Till then, I believe this is currently examination period for most primary schools and O level teachers? Good luck to all who are involved in marking, invigilating, and all the other crap that comes with it!! Hope none of you vomitted too much blood over your students' scripts... hahaha...

Slander? Sedition?

2005-10-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

Hmmm.... such familiar terms to bloggers nowadays.... especially for those poor JC sods who wrote one too many wrong things on their blogs.....

I must confess, my sympathies go out to those students. For voicing out what was probably in the minds of dozens of their peers, they were unlucky [and dumb] enough to put it on their blogs and get themselves in, as we say, a whole pile of crap.

But are we going too far here?

I understand that what the students did was possibly slander. I understand that had they been older, they might have found themselves in serious trouble.

But as students? Writing about their teachers? Er....... Isn't that the norm amongst most students?

Like, who hasn't said slanderous things about their teachers and discussed seditious acts among their peers before? I remember when I was in school, as a student, the whole school was aflame about a married female teacher and a [much younger] single male teacher who were constantly [we thought] seen in each others' company. The rumours flamed when the married teacher didn't appear in school for a week, and we all decided that she must have been kicked out of the school for unsavoury behaviour.

Now that I'm older, of course, I know that she must have been in course all that while. Duh.

So granted, students saying very unsavoury things about their teachers is a natural course of events. And if you're the source of homework, tests, and evil of all evils, exams, it becomes a for-granted part of your job that students WILL complain about you, insult you, and generally declare you the source of all living and undead evil on this earth.

If you, as a teacher, think they shouldn't be this way, or that they don't, then I think you're being terribly naive.

Now if we take this to be a natural behavior, the next question is, is the punishment appropriate to the crime? Is suing them really going to solve anything?

What was hurt here? The teachers' professional reputation? C'mon, who's going to take a few angry lines in a blog seriously? As bad as they are, I don't think there are much people who would believe in them so sincerely that they would seriously think the teacher was [insert choice accusation here].

And what do the students learn here? "Say anything bad about teacher and he will sue you." What does this say about our ability to take criticism? What does this tell the student?

And most importantly: What does this do to the teacher-student relationship?

I wonder how the rest of the students in that JC is going to regard that teacher in the future, since now the message seems to be "cross me and I sue!" More importantly, I wonder whether they will ever trust and respect him again.

There but for the grace of God...

2005-09-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

Hmm, so my previous post may have been a bit sombre and heavy on the ambiguity... I apologise, but seriously, you never know who reads this blog...

Which is frustrating in a way, because there are tons of things I want to comment on, I want to tell people, I want to let those outside know, but yet....... Well, most regular bloggers will know of all the fiascos regarding certain blogs...

So regarding the 'unpleasant incident'... I shall not mention it exactly. But it didn't do much help for most of the postgrads here, I had to say.

This past week or two after the one week 'break' has been a mash of major deadlines one after another. After one educational psychology essay had been passed up, most of us took a breath and jumped right into the next deadline waiting for us in English, another killer project.

Here's one HUGE drawback about the postgrad course here: It is essentially a crash course on teaching. Everything that took the diploma people to learn in 2 years, we cram into one. So everything is just rush, rush, rush, quick! Finish this paper! Finish that lesson plan! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!

Needless to say, all of us have very sour grape expressions when we see others like the dip holders and the PE pple having semblances of actual student lives......

So when that incident happened, you could sense a huge morale drop in our numbers. I think all of us were secretly thinking: That could have been me......

And really, it could have been. Already we get the feeling of being pushed on too fast for us to fully absorb whatever it is we are learning. We get deadlines thrown at us one after the other, esp the poor sods taking SK modules [which deserve another rant all by itself]. And we have NO student representation in the form of faculty clubs, or unions who are willing to speak on our behalf. [most likely because we are only here for a year]

And when you think that, "Hey, if NIE is supposed to be the holiday period before I get my permanent posting............."

Hm. There but for the grace of God......

Another Unfortunate...

2005-09-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

... incident bappened in school, which once again made me think again about the double binded knot that many of us trainees are in.

Unlike most other tertiary students, we are bound in a noose which is in danger of being tightened anytime. We do not have the freedom of skipping classes, lectures, and in the case of my coursemates, an abundance of free periods.

Making this worse is the breath of Big Brother down your neck, whispering coarsely the words, "Bond......"

And this is the deal with the devil that all of us signed. That we are bound to this institution with no earthly hope for escape, unless we 1) come into a lot of money suddenly, or 2) be involved in some accident which renders us incapable of physical activity altogether.

Is this bad? Some may say no. We are after all paid to study. This is a deal that is unavailable to a lot of students all over, and perhaps yes, we should be grateful in a sense for the chance we've been given.

But it is akin to a deal with the devil. Because at the same time, we sign ourselves into a gilded cage. Because once you sign on that dotted line, there is no hope for escape or respite. Bound you will be, till the course of your obligation is served, whether or not it really makes you want to scream.

People in the private sector have the freedom of leaving their jobs anytime they want. [let's not take job prospects and employment prospects into consideration for a while.] If the economy is good, or if their job sucks big time, there is room for them to escape. They can quit, change jobs, start afresh. They may envy us for our steady jobs, and our stable paychecks, but they don't see how we cannot escape just when we need to.

This, I feel, is the worse part about being here. Everyone here is a prisoner of their own making. Until one day someone snaps and tries to fly to better parts.

And what is the school doing about it? They opened a psychology clinic on campus, free to all students. All the tutors encourage the students to use it if they have to. But what's the use? Talking about it is NOT going to help you solve the main problem. It is not going to get the tutors to lessen your workload, it is not going to lessen your bond, and most damning of all, I do not believe it is going to lead to any positive change in policy, even if large numbers of students swamp the clinic.

So what's the point of it all, if I just talk about it to some nice lady in the clinic, but yet, when I come out, all my problems are still waiting for me? And I am still left with no solution for them?

I hope yesterday's incident serves as a signal to some people on top. That push us any further, and one day we will all break under you.

I know I'm deliberately being vague about the incident which happened on campus. I'm doing this because I don't know who reads this blog and whether I will get into trouble for violating some sedition act in NIE or whatever. :p But I believe if you read closely between the lines, you could deduce what it is that has happened.

Happy Teachers' Day!

2005-09-01T08:23:00.000-07:00

When I came to my tuition student's house.....

"Er, this is a Teachers' Day card for you. Happy Teachers' Day."

"Oh! Thank you!"

"And, er, I forgot to do my homework because I thought today was Saturday."

"..............................................."

Haiyah...... scold or not to scold, like that?

But at least I got something. Teachers' Day in NIE this year was..... dismal at best. In the days before yesterday, posters were put up all over the campus, advertising the "Teachers' Fiesta!" promising games! Food! Stalls selling great stuff!

I came out of class on Thursday, and saw...... maybe a 3 or 4 makeshift bazaar stalls at one far, far end of the canteen, selling some stuff? [One stall looked like it was selling secondhand stuff]

Ok, frankly, it was a dismal affair. These stalls were stuck at one far end of the school, out of sight of half the main traffic, so already there was only a trickle of people heading towards them. Not only that, but each stall was just 2 tables joined together, and stuff was just listlessly piled onto them. Plus, everyone had classes anyway, so no one paid them much attention as most people were just running from class to class.

As I said, dismal.

Funny thing, that a school full of teachers is not very keen or supportive of celebrating a day which pays tribute to the work of teachers. One tutor explained that the People Upstairs thought we were celebrating too hard, and so discouraged Teachers' Day celebrations in school, lest we, I don't know, have too much fun here, and forget that we're supposed to be here in humble servitude. God Forbid!

*Sigh* Why don't you just change the name to "Happy Underappreciation Day"?

But anyway, HAPPY TEACHERS' DAY to all. Here's hoping that your students all score full marks, your red pens never run dry, and that you all get the appreciation and thanks you deserve. :)

Can you teach people to serve?

2005-08-25T23:54:00.000-07:00

Seriously, is it possible to force people to become more charitable?

Ok, here's the situation: The trainee teachers now all do a compulsory module called General Endeavours in Service Learning ( GESL ) called "je-sul" by all of us.

It is a non-graded module, and briefly what we are expected to do is to get into groups of 20-25, and work with an organization to provide some sort of service to the community at large. Eg, some group last year worked with a dyslexic organization to teach dyslexics mathematics. Another group went to the National Library for storytelling sessions with children.

You get the gist. It's somewhat like community service for trainee teachers. Here is the official description from the website:

"GESL is an experiential learning experience for trainees to acquire and develop skills in project management, self- and team-development, and community service. This will provide them the background and experience for trainees to eventually take on leadership roles in their school's community involvement and service-learning projects (CIP) and academic work."

So my question is more towards the 'community service' part. How successfully can you inculcate a sense of 'community service' in us in one year?

For me, I think community service should be something that's entirely voluntary. If you force people to do it, then they may do it, but they aren't necessarily doing it sincerely aren't they? And I thought this was why the compulsory CIP thing in schools was being scrapped. Because of all these piles of schoolkids going in and mucking around just so they could fulfil requirements, and in fact, not doing out of some sense to the community at all.

So now, instead of schoolkids doing it, you have all these trainee teachers doing it instead. :p Same problem, different groups of people.

And you know, so far as I can see, or hear, there really isn't a lot of community spirit being built up yet. Judging strictly by my cohort of people, most of us just find it a waste of time better spent doing assignments due very, very, very soon. And why aren't we getting the community spirit?

I think part of the problem lies with the amount of time we have. We are in this campus for one year. One year. Already the modules we are taking resemble something of a Crash Teaching 101, rather than those who are here for 2 or 3 years. Most people just feel that this thing has become something of an additional burden to bear, on top of all my modules. Not to mention, it's ungraded, so given the choice, would you spent more time on this, or on your graded modules which may affect your job security in the future? I think the answer's clear.

And I shudder to think of more insidious motives behind this. Could the purpose be to somewhat make future teachers feel more indebted to society, and more willing to serve, serve and serve society and never question or ask for anything in return? [Ok, no more 1984 after dinner.....]

Herein lies the flaw of the program then. You may force people to do a job, but you cannot force them to do it out of their heart. Sure enough, most groups will do the project, fulfil the requirements and write glowing reflections about the whole process. One or two may even come away genuinely touched.

The problem is that the number of people turned off by the whole process is that much more. And whether it is worth turning off that large number of people in order to reach those few hearts......

You think about just how much good this does the community.

Module Blues

2005-08-25T23:41:00.000-07:00

By this time, I have already accumulated something like a week's worth of rants about school in general already. :( I can't wait till I go to School for the real fun to begin. :( :( :(

First comes...

English

So all trainee teachers have to take this module on teaching of English language here, unless you opt out of doing it, and so far, everyone's been running around in a misty blur regarding the requirements to fulfil for this module.

At the start of the year, we were told that we would have to have a portfolio of 5 children's books, aimed for lower primary students, to teach reading and writing in school. These 5 books have to be connected with a particular theme in the textbook.

My class had opted to use a Pri 1 textbook, and the theme we had chosen was "Places in my Neighbourhood". So we had to go out and look for books around this theme. Right?

Not only that, but a lot of us took advantage of a book fair in school to buy the books we needed for this portfolio. A lot of people spent between $50-$100, including myself. [although quite a number of books were ultimately for my own pleasure. :p]

THEN my tutor told me that our theme had changed! It had been broadened to "My Neighbourhood". So now quite a couple of my books are now INVALID because they were to do with "Places", and not "My Neighbourhood" per se. You still following me?

AFTER THAT we heard that the requirements for the module had changed, and now there was a whole bunch lot more work we had to do for the module, ON TOP OF the 5 books we had to BUY, and the 3 hour test we had to take in October.

Adding to the confusion is that apparently each tutor had been passing down different messages to their classes. So everyone in my cohort was walking around in a hazy blur regarding this module. :( :( :( No one was actually confident of exactly what they had to do for the module.

NOW that the confusion has finally been cleared up, and we knew EXACTLY the amount of work we all had to do and exactly WHAT we had to do......

We're all just blardy depressed. :(``````````````````````````````````

Comment spam?

2005-08-19T18:06:00.000-07:00

We're all familiar with spam in our letterboxes, spam in our inboxes, spam in a can, spam coming out of our ears......

Now lo and behold: Comment spam.

I received a new comment on the previous post, and it turned to be, not from a teacher, a student or anyone even remotely connected to local education.

It was from a US timber company of all things.

"='Brand New News Fr0m The Timber Industry!!'

Recognize this undiscovered gem which is poised to jump!! Please read the following Announcement in its Entierty and Consider the Possibilities�Watch this One to Trad,e!Because, EGTY has secured the global rights to market genetically enhanced fast growing, hard-wood trees!EGTY trading volume is beginning to surge with landslide Announcement. The value of this Stoc,k appears poised for growth! This one will not remain on the ground floor for long.KEEP READING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

And so on for a couple for paragraphs.

Like HUH????? What da heck does this guy think he's doing? My blog here ain't even connected to wood, unless you count some of the people working in NIE................... :p

Server Down and the whole campus crashes

2005-08-10T21:54:00.000-07:00

From about 8th August, till today, the NIE portal has been down.

This afternoon, the portal has been brought back online, but Blackboard still remains stubbornly down.

All functions, like announcements from lecturers, student time tables, discussion forums have been inaccessible to the entire NIE.

All of which means one thing to the average student.

We now have a valid excuse for not having our tutorial notes in class. :D

Teacher Answers Questions

Tym mentioned in the comments of the previous post that she was shocked to see how the lecturers treated us like kids in NIE.

[If you don't remember the previous post, I meant a comment about how, for the National Day celebrations, the lecturers were supposed to 'escort' us to the NIE grounds to watch the performances. Probably as a real life demonstration on how we were supposed to escort our future primary school classes to events in the hall]

Anyway, seeing as how so many of them are ex-teachers one way or the other, I suppose it's become ingrained in them by now, the tendency to treat other future teachers as kids. Which is ironic considering they're supposed to train us into becoming like them, but in fact the way they treat us is making us turn into our students instead.

It's a Catch-22 situation that has no end in sight, unless some really big changes are made.

So most likely even after I graduate and teach for a while, I might stumble upon some blog about how NIE lecturers are still treating their trainees like kids? *shrugs*

Holiday Book Syndrome

2005-08-09T00:30:00.000-07:00

Coined by GTS, this syndrome hits tertiary students of all majors in most universities around the world.

This is when an unknowing student takes home piles of revision notes and textbooks from school over the weekend, thinking that he would take advantage of the weekend to read them all.

And at the end of Sunday, the notes and texts still remain unread.

Yup, I can think of at least one person to which this applies......................... :p

A National Conspiracy

2005-08-09T00:08:00.000-07:00

If you had been walking around NIE yesterday, you might have noticed an air of conspiracy about the place.

People walking to their classes, trying to look innocent.

Furtive glances left and right.

That half-suspicious look at you, to decide whether you could be trusted.

And finally, when you had proven yourself,

They would glance around again,

And then whisper in your ear,

"Eh, today you going for National Day celebrations or not?"

.
.
.
.
.

So maybe this post deserves some explanation.....

Remember that for us trainee teachers, we are not supposed to skip classes or lectures, because we were trained professionals being paid to attend and blah blah blah.

However, no one made much comment about events such as the Director's Welcome, [during orientation] or National Day celebrations. [which were yesterday]

Classes were meant to end at 1430, and all tutors were supposed to 'escort' their classes to the square in the middle of campus, to watch the concert together. But some people didn't have classes during that period of the day. So there would be no one there to escort them to the concert. Or make sure that they attended it.

And given the choice, would you prefer to attend some dumb concert, or spend the whole afternoon out in town?

*Whistling innocently as they walk out of campus*

Anyway, word on the street was that not all the tutors decided attendance was compulsory either. I heard that one tutor, towards the end of the tutorial and the start of the concert, looked at her class and said,

"Gee, all of you look hungry! You should all go to the canteen for food!"

Of course, her class then eagerly gets ready to go. And then she says,

"Don't forget the concert is on later! There are so many people there, I might not see you! If I don't, I'll just take it that you're there!"

Superb tutor this one....... ;)

Another point hit me later. The upper echelons of NIE is always onto us about our conduct, our clothing, blah blah blah. [Remember my earlier rants about the dress code and the lecturer with the punctuality issue?] It suddenly hit me why such 'nagging' from NIE about how we should 'behave like professional teachers on campus' will never work.

During Educational Psychology, [edpsych] we learned about the Parent, Child, and Adult states of mind of a human. The Parent state of mind is a controlling one, which always tells us what to do. The Child state of mind wants to have fun, but is more willing to listen. The Adult state balances the two.

[I realise this is not an exact description of the theory, but bear with me. I only read 1 chapter of my edpsych text so far]

So what's the connection?

Here, NIE is in the Parent mode, telling the errant Child, namely us, what to do. Now, if they are in the Parent mode, then we as trainee teachers have no choice but to respond in the Child mode. Why? Because if we respond with either the Parent or Adult mode, conflict will arise, since both will want the other to listen to them.

So, no choice! if NIE continues to be in the Parent mode, we have no choice but to respond with the Child! Parent must be counteracted by Child!

So forget with all the 'trained professional' crap eh? If you continue treating us in this manner, then we have no choice but to respond like this lor........

Educational Cliches

2005-08-07T01:53:00.000-07:00

There are some lines, which are heard all over NIE during the first week or so of tutorials, that one can get heartily sick of by the time it gets to Wednesday.

1. "You are to buy the following texts......" [Deep groan throughout lecture theatre, followed by] "Hey, you should be able to afford this, since you're getting paid by MOE/you're paid employees."

This line [and other variations is irritating in two ways: Firstly, just because we get a salary doesn't mean that we like to see one quarter of it burn down the drain because of costly textbooks, photostating, laptops, and all those various other purchases necessary to campus life. Not to mention that the NIE canteen food is relatively higher than those of the other canteens. [though cheaper than outside food]

Secondly, it particularly urks me when a lecturer tells me that the text is compulsory reading for his module, and you notice that the text has his name somewhere on the cover. Gee, since I'm getting truckloads of money from MOE, why not be generous and contribute to my lecturer's retirement fund at the same time? After all, he probably only earns peanuts......

2. "You are NOT to be late for lectures, as you are paid employees. And if you are to be absent, you are to submit an MC to the office."

This one was mainly irritating because it was repeated by just about every tutor and lecturer we had. By Tuesday, whole classes were probably nodding wearily, and repeating the line word for word at the start of the class.

However, there was a lecturer who happened to be either particularly picky about time, or happened to wind his watch 15 mins ahead of time.

In the LT, just about 3 mins after the lecturer was able to start, stragglers were pouring into the LT as usual. Usually, this is a common thing, as people either can't find the venues, misjudged time, or simply bottlenecked at the 2 doors of the LT. [which means that even if you arrived early, you might not be able to get in because the people in front of you hadn't gotten in and found a seat yet]

Most lecturers are either sympathetic, or they would just start the lecture anyway, not caring whether the latecomers were ready or not. Not this lecturer.

He gave us a 'lecture' about punctuality, how we were supposed to know the lecture venues and timings by now, how we were supposed to be trainee teachers, no longer uni slackers, how unprofessional it was to be late, what a bad example we would set to our future students blah blah blah......

The funny thing was I looked at my watch, and saw that the lecture was only about 4-5 mins late, and already he was making more fuss than my mother on menopause. Not to mention the final irony was that by the time he'd finished making his little speech, the lecture started about 20 mins late. Huh.

[Sidenote: One thing taught in TPP is that teachers should NOT let anything interfere with the smooth flow of the lesson, and one thing recommended was to start on time, regardless of whether all the students were present, to not waste time, and also to teach the latecomers the idea of punctuality. This lecturer didn't seem to read the same course book that we did]

3. "These are the deadlines for your assignments............"

Need I elaborate more on why this is groan-inducing? I don't think so......

More about the NIE dress code....

2005-08-01T01:40:00.000-07:00

[This post courtesy of NIE com lab...]

I just realised something about the dress code on the way up to the library....

Read and compare the code for males and females.

For females:

Click on photo for a larger size...

And for males:

Again, click for larger size...

Notice the difference in the two? Only to be expected, right, because of dressing differences between the two sexes.

However, here's an interesting thought:

Does that mean that it is acceptable attire, if men wear skirts that are 4 finger lengths above the knee, expose their midriffs, their bare backs, or if they decide to wear spaghetti straps, tubes and tank tops? [As a sidenote, are there any men in NIE right now who want to test out this loophole? :p]

Hmmm..... NIE might think about how they want to phrase their signage in the future.........

Dress [with no] sense

2005-07-29T20:28:00.000-07:00

One of the things they will keep hammering into you at Nie is the dress code. All over campus, you will see a sign like this:

[Click on photo to see full size image]

The first time I saw the sign I almost laughed. My general line of thinking is that surely at our age, we would already have an idea of how to dress at school, as a student, and at school, as a teacher.

[This is excepting the diehard rebels who know the rules and who delight in flouting it. But then again, in order to flout the rules, you have to know what they are in the first place. So even for the rebels, you can't claim that you have to keep reminding them, because they already know of the rules.]

So why all the incessant brainwashing about "you must dress correctly, you must dress correctly"? It's become almost like a mantra in Nie around the entire campus. Everyone pushes the line that:

"Since you are paid employees of Moe, you are expected to dress appropriately and exhibit the proper image of a teacher"

I have a few doubts about this stance. For one, does that mean that ALL law students should therefore go around NUS in full lawyer gear and wigs? Or wear starched-collar shirts with black bottoms and carry briefcases and large piles of paper? Since that's the image that everyone has of a lawyer, and being in the Law faculty, they are naturally embodiments of the legal system in Singapore, even if they aren't being paid?

Or should it mean that ALL nurses should go around in nurses' uniforms, whether in school, or at home? And that if you have a scholarship from one of the major hospitals, you have to set an example by doing so?

I'm pretty sure that most law students and nurses would disagree with me on the above points. For one, it's blardy crazy to walk around campus in full lawyer's gown and starched wig. If the laughter from the other students don't kill you already, the heat generated by walking around in billowy gowns surely will. And let's not start on the nurses' uniforms.

So why do we have to dress in 'teacher-appropriate' attire even when we're in school?

This is a point that will be driven home to all trainee teachers, and even those already teaching. Unfortunately, we are in a vocation where we are expected to set examples to the children. Whether we like it or not, children will definitely look up to us, and follow our lead. We're almost like surrogate parents to them, and thus, people expect us to set examples for their children to follow. If you're a parent, and you wouldn't want your kid to smoke, you wouldn't be smoking in front of them, would you? And you wouldn't want them to see their teacher smoking right?

However, my opinion is that rather than apply a standard wardrobe to all teachers ['teachers must always dress like that in school'] wouldn't it be more useful to stress appropriateness? As in 'Teachers must dress appropriate to the occassion'.

THEN it makes a lot more sense. You are allowed to dress like a student, [spaghetti and all] so long as you are in NIE/NTU. However, during working hours in school, you should dress as a teacher should. Which means ditch the tubes and the spaghettis for after-hours.

[Note the similiarities between this and the Speak English campaign. Remember how they tried to wipe out the usage of Singlish, and then later changed their stance to using a language appropriate to the occassion? NIE might take some hints from that...]

However, I did note a few interesting points about this dress code in school:

1) The word 'appropriately' apparently has several meanings in school.

Just last Friday, there was a formal welcoming ceremony for all the trainee teachers, and one of the segments included a 'fashion parade', which AGAIN stressed the dress code [as if we hadn't heard it a thousand times already] and had a few 'models' parading on stage, to show what was considered appropriate attire in school.

When the first female model came on stage, the entire assembly burst out in raucous laughter. The model was wearing a 'smart white-collared shirt with long sleeves, a long black skirt, set off by diamante high heels and a stunning diamond belt'.

For blardy sake! No sensible female teacher is EVER going to wear something like that in school! Considering that most schools in Singapore still rely on the 2 ceiling fans in each classroom, the heat from the shirt will kill you and cause massive sweat stains all over your smart, crisp shirt. The high heels will give you arthritis in less than 3 months, after walking all over school in them, and up and down the stairs to your classrooms, and the students will be too mesmerized by your diamond belt to listen to your lesson!

Can you almost see how comical it all is?

2) Appropriate attire doesn't always include good taste.

During the ceremony, I noticed one woman sitting in the audience, somewhere near the Director, which meant that she was probably Nie staff. So she has to dress 'appropriately' to show an example to us, right?

Well, let me describe her outfit. She was wearing a long sleeved lime green shirt, which had crumples all over the front [deliberately designed, I think] a knee-length hippie skirt, and calf-high boots. And I'm being as objective as possible here, cos frankly, I think her outfit looked awful, but that's just my opinion.

Then I thought of some of the [stereotypical] old Chinese teachers in schools all over. The same image of permed hair, thick spectacles, and the same 'aunty' clothing.

My conclusion: You can dress with as much bad taste as you want, as long as it's 'appropriate'.

In other words, if I decide to wear a bright red dress with white polka dots, that has large puffy sleeves, and reaches to my ankles, and tie my hair up with a huge pink ribbon, does that mean that Moe can't object to my dressing, since:

1. It is not a sleeveless top
2. It is not exposing an indecent amount of cleavage or leg
3. It has no offensive logos, or slogans, or vulgarities

Maybe such repetitive reminders just don't work on people like me. They just make us want to rebel, even when we don't. :p

Learning to Teach... In the Jungle...

2005-07-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

So what better way to get inspiration for a blog on [mis]education, than to sit in the very heart of education and learning, the computer lab at NIE?

Well, actually I can think of tons of better places, but since my laptop is not hooked up to the Internet yet, this will have to do. :p

Yes, it is the first week of school already, and from [trying to] teaching in one, I've now gone to [trying to] learn to teach in other schools. :S

Not that lessons have actually started though. This week is still considered Orientation week, so it's still mainly briefings, briefings and briefings on other future briefings. As opposed to work, work, and mind-numbing, suicide-inducing work, so I'm not complaining.

But first time visitors to NTU/NIE be warned though: The physical geography of the place takes some getting used to.

Already, I commited a big boo-boo by taking the wrong bus from Boon Lay interchange. Which landed me waaaaaay on the other side of campus from where my hall was, and earned me one lonely, long walk at night, only seeing the occassional passing jogger, [hall people are capable of jogging at weird hours of the night. I can barely bring myself up 6 flights of stairs to my room] and the sound of rifles punctuating the night.

Whenever I take a bus in, I'm always looking into the bushes to see whether I can see one very lost NS man sticking his camoulflaged head out of the jungle.

Not only that, but unlike NUSSUX, NIE and NTU tend to be built, er, long. THe buildings of NIE itself are built in one straight row. Getting from one end of the campus to the other is basically a long distance straight lined walk. And so is getting from NIE to NTU, and the computer shop. In order to find the computer shop, GTS and I walked along both spines of NTU [North and South] before we got to where the laptops were being sold.

Most appropriately, in the middle of the computer engineering faculty, it seemed. What, the rest of the campus didn't need computer stuff?

So now, at least, we know how to get from Hall to Various Parts of Campus without getting too lost. Simply walk. In one very straight line.

Teacher Answers Your Questions

2005-07-15T01:52:00.000-07:00

Like in any class, the Teacher likes it when students ask questions, or raise [intelligent] comments. Here are the Teacher's responses to some of the comments:

Petals gives other suggestions, like:

"1] to give them a piece of assignment and tell them tis a test"
~ A variation of this, is to tell them that they MUST hand it in by this period or there will be bloodshed.

"2] threaten to detain them during recess or after school"
~ It can work. There's no thought more dismaying than the one that you have to stay in this hellhole of a school longer than you have to. But newbies be warned: If you detain them during the whole recess, you are depriving them of time to eat, and go to the toilet. If you detail them after school, there is the risk they may not catch the schoolbus in time to go home, and you may face some very angry parent complaints.

However, my experience today showed me that it's quite an effective threat. I sat in front of the class and duly stated that "No one goes home until I'm satisfied you can stay silent for 10 seconds." Most of the class became extremely silent, and even scolded off those errant boys who still wanted to 'strike pose' in front of me. Peer pressure at its most effective.

"3] switching off all the fans in the class to reinstate order if they go crazy but this can get rather unbearable for the RT him/herself "
I agree. :S This one may not be worth the pain to yourself.

Someone said:
"while there are some useful tips on relief-teaching mentioned, like always be firm, the general approach advocated in this blog seems overly totalitarian. From experience, a warm demeanor from any teacher will certainly bring many happy acknowledgements from students as he/she walks past the schools' corridors. "

And ningx seems to agree:
"I dislike teachers like that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!No offence but as a secondary school student, I like teachers that come in and make small talk with us.About the no permission thing, I once had a teacher who forbidden water drinking.I hated her. "

Erm, can I state for the record first, that I always allow my students to drink water in class? :P Water deprivation seems too close to being an infringement of human rights.

And next is my disclaimer: Everything in this blog is strictly tongue-in-cheek. [If you don't know what that means, go ask your teachers, or ex-teachers.]

I cannot stress or bold that sentence enough. I advocate firmness with students, because there is no way I can teach a class, if everyone ignores me/shouts back at me/defies me/or tries to make small talk with me. Again, in a class, I am outnumbered. I need to make the students respect me, and possibly, fear me. [And I especially believe this, having relieved what was possibly the rowdiest class in all of Neko Primary.]

BUT I am not encouraging others to become a semi-Hitler in their classes. Being firm is fine. Being a total dictator is another. Maybe it was not clear in the tongue-in-cheek way I wrote it [it was supposed to make you laugh. Ha. Ha.] but now I'm stating it clearly in bold.

Once again, I'm just a trainee teacher with about 2.5 weeks of teaching experience, and I write mostly for humourous [and the occassional stress] relief.

Don't take this blog too seriously.

And I'll show that to any principal who claims my blog turns his teachers into sadists.

From Tomorrow.sg, I've also found a funny entry on Yao guai's blog about Teaching as a Performance Art, and Teaching and Dungeons and Dragons. The one I can't figure out is how a magical elf becomes a teacher.......... ??????

Anyway, check out his blog here.

Thanks for sharing your comments with the Teacher!

Reflections with relief...

2005-07-15T01:33:00.000-07:00

AKi: It's been about 3 weeks since I started at Neko Primary, and already I have only one more week in the school, before I head to Nie. (!)

Was that fast or what? It's funny that the Enhanced Schools Experience (ESE) only lasted such a short time, and yet is supposed to help us decide whether a teaching career is suitable for us. :S So how do we decide based on such a short period of time?

I have a feeling most graduate trainees would not be able to experience the full workload of a teacher. What is the point in asking someone to sit on a committee, for an event happening next term, if the person is leaving in a month's time? And how much teaching can you entrust to an untrained teacher?

So most of us probably did a lot of relief, with some light teaching work, and then not much else.

But has it helped? From a friend of mine, it's certainly helped him to decide that teaching was NOT for him. :S The combined trauma of lesson planning and standing in front of a class of 40 little darlings was just one more straw on the camel's back and he's decided to leave.

For me.... I feel I can go on. But I'm not sure.

Because after all, I know that what I'm going through now is definitely not the full duties of a teacher. And even if I can take it all now, I don't know for sure that I can take it in the future, when the full load crashes upon me.

And there are times, like today, when I feel that the class is spiralling out of control, that my nerves are feeling extremely frazzled, and when I feel utterly helpless in front of the 38-40 boys who refuse to listen to me.

Sometimes it's not just a matter of being fierce or being firm. It's being able to MAKE them even notice you in the first place. And THEN you can be fierce.

Most people don't get this. They think that all you have to do is to be fierce to the kids, and they will listen. Which will work for 1 or 2 kids at a time, but when 40 of them resolutely ignore you, is much harder to accomplish.

And you can scream all you want, but you will never be able to outscream 40 voices in unison.

So how do I get by? I come home, dump my workbag on the floor and change into my comfortable home clothes.

I turn on the radio to some soothing jazz.

I step into a shower, and let the warm water spray all over me.

And with it all the knots of the day are unravelled........

Here's to the next 4 years......

Tips for First Time Relief Teachers

2005-07-11T00:42:00.000-07:00

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Inhale. Exhale.

Relax..................

Whoever said being a relief teacher was an easy job with easy pay? Smack the bugger in the face right now... it's NOT that easy...

Ok, it's definitely better than being a regular teacher, but it still isn't that easy all the time.

Here then, are some tips [and shocks] for aspiring relief teachers. Add this onto all those simple info like "show up at school at 730am" and "Just get them to do some worksheets" that the school will tell you.

1. UNDERSTAND THE TYPE OF CLASS YOU'RE IN

Being relief, you will have no choice in what kind of class you will be teaching. If you're lucky, you will have a relatively well-behaved class, and this is what will happen the minute you walk in:

"Class, stand!" Everyone stands up, and greets "Good morning, teacher." and sits down again, looking at you with curious eyes, wondering what happened to their regular teacher.

If you're unlucky enough, and the class you're relieving happens to be one of the 'bottom' ones:

"RAHAHAHAHAEHEHEHEHCHERCOMELIAO!!!!HAHAHAHA" and other classroom gibberish. One or two boys will be running around the classroom, despite your fervent attempts to catch them and bring them to their seats, another group in the corner will be blatantly ignoring you, and playing their own games, and when you try to speak, a chorus of childish voices will totally drown you, and leave you to die.

And all this while their teacher is either a) at home trying to recover from the high blood pressure and heart failure his kids have induced in him or b) happily out shopping because her relative's a doctor and she got a free MC, while you desperately try to control her class.

2. ALWAYS BE FIRM.

This means never smile, never joke, never play games, never let them do their own thing, never talk to them, never reply their inane questions, never back down on anything you say, never show weakness, never show hesitation.

In other words, switch off the humanity and act like your old, grumpy Chinese teacher with the bad dress sense and the perpetual PMS.

This is vitally IMPORTANT if you ever want the class to do what you want. Because the moment you let slip your guard, and they know that you are human and therefore FALLIBLE, you are so doomed. They will run circles around you like dogs in heat.

Some people may say, "Oh, but that's so fierce! What if I scare the little darlings?" and I say, "[insert name of animal faeces]" remember that you are outnumbered 40 to 1 in a classroom, and that if they were to suddenly realise that they could all scream, shout or run out of the class and you wouldn't be able to stop them all, you are so screwed.

If you were outnumbered 40 to 1 by a gang of ferocious hounds, would you go, "Oh lookit the cute little doggies!" and try to pet them? Same concept.

3. NEVER TOLERATE ANY BEHAVIOUR YOU DID NOT ENDORSE

No one goes to the toilet without your permission. No one goes to the bookshelf without your permission. No one drinks water without your permission. No one talks without your permission. No one even lies on the table to sleep without your permission.

This is now part of classroom discipline. Establish yourself as Most Revered And To Be Obeyed Leader of the Pack. This is once again important, in order to get the class to listen to you. If they feel that you can't lead, they will never listen to you.

And if you survived your relief teaching, and you're out of class, you may do the last thing, which is:

4. RECLAIM YOUR HUMANITY

Shop. Eat. Drink. Chat. SMS. Become human again, and shed off the Dictator For Life persona you were carrying in the classroom. For one, it will endear you to your peers a whole lot more.

The Road So Far...

2005-06-29T01:26:00.000-07:00

Here's a rough outline of the Educators' Journey I've roughly taken so far. [Also a handy guide for people intending to know what lies ahead for potential teachers, and for frens clueless as to whether I'm now teaching in school, or studying in NIE]

Registration at NIE

My path started on the 20th of June, with registration and briefing at NIE. As a graduate, I was put into the Post Graduate Diploma in Eduation course, known as PGDE (Pri) on all official documentation.

That's when they informed us that we had to go for classes the very next day, bringing me to the next step, which is...

Content Upgrading Modules

Because of feedback from the public, [darn parents...] MOE has decided to make sure all its teachers are aware of the higher levels of English grammar and language, so that their English teachers didn't end up sounding like PCK trying to sound educated.

Simply put, the course is supposed to make us clueless teachers grammar experts in 4 days.

So for about a week, I went for these language classes, and absorbed a lot of information that, as Dr Andrew Lim put it, I would probably never use in my teaching, because it's just too cheem for the kids I'd be teaching.

After the good Dr did all he could, I went on to the...

Teachers' Preparatory Workshop

This is where, for 2 days, I went back to NIE for a Teachers' Preparatory Workshop. This time, it was a crash course on teaching methods and classroom management. [incidentally, classroom mgt could be one of the most important skills to learn as a teacher, but i'll touch on that later]

Thankfully, I had an interested and well-experienced tutor, who managed to teach us and make us listen to his voice, rather than the sounds of the refreshment tables being set up outside with our tea break snacks.

There were other interesting tutors of course. I heard from Turtle that as a filler at the end of the lesson, his tutor played Abba. (?????) not quite sure of her educational purpose in that.

Then, comes the final step before full-time study in NIE.

Enhanced School Experience

I was sent to a local primary school, which for personal reasons, I shall call Neko Primary School, as part of my Enhanced School Experience.

The ESE is actually for trainee teachers like myself who have had no formal experience teaching in schools. [as opposed to contract teachers, who first start out teaching, and then make their way to NIE] It's a new programme, and my batch is the first batch of trainee teachers to be going through this.

Onwards to....?

Now, the situation stands as such: I'll be a trainee teacher at Neko Primary from now till the 22th of July, taking on whatever teaching duties is necessary, and possibly observe other experienced teachers at work.

If my performance at Neko Pri. is satisfactory, I will then enter NIE as a full-time PGDE trainee teacher.

Following which, the Journey will continue on...

I am a Japanese School Teacher

2005-06-25T20:06:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not, but this guy is, and his editorials on the Japanese schools that he teaches in is hilarious. [seen as a link in Singapore Teachers Journal]

Eg, from the first entry:

"You know, before we come to Japan, they tell us a lot of ultimately useless stuff. What kind of computer to bring, if our DVD's will work, clothing sizes, that kind of nonsense. Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, in the 3-4 months of orientations did anyone ever mention that at some point, a Japanese kid may try to stick their fingers up our butt. That's something I would have liked to know, personally.

It's called Kancho, and just about any kid can be a Kancho Assassin. Even the sweetest little girl may be prone to jam her fingers up your ass the second you turn around. This happened to one of my friends, which just goes to show - don't trust anyone. I'd say the little girls are the most dangerous cause they have natural ways of lowering your defenses."

So.......... anyone feel like teaching English in Japan? :p

Click on to take a read!

The Adventures of GTS and GTT

2005-06-23T19:30:00.000-07:00

This was actually based on real events that happened during lecture, except for GTT's response in the last panel...

If you know Yenn, you will know that she's the kind of person that CANNOT stand any kind of bimbotic behaviour, and it urks her to no end. [and also you will know that that's my favourite strategy for urking her out.]

It turns out that our lecturer for this particular lecture is an atypical motherly-henly kind of woman. And since our lecture is about how children acquire language in early childhood, she loved to punctuate her lectures by giving us audio examples of how these children would speak in early childhood.

"Lookie that! It looks like an E! How clever!" she cooed.

"Daddydaddydaddydaddydaddy" she chattered happily.

"This is my cat. My cat is nice. I like my cat." she clucked.

And so on, while Yenn and Turtle cringed for dear life on either side of me.

Anyway, here's the cartoon:

The Eccentricities of Teachers

2005-06-22T07:25:00.000-07:00

One of the first tutors I've encountered, whom we shall call Dr Andrew Lim for now, [due to his similiarity to the actor] is a pretty interesting character.

While we were doing his tutorial today on text types, he gazed into the distance, for a while, and started telling us stories about his teaching days. [Now which tutor will do the same and distract you from his own tutorial, I have no idea]

One particularly amusing one concerned the vice-principal of one of the institutions he was teaching at. For anonymity's sake, I won't mention any names, but only briefly describe her.

She was an old single woman [we all know the common 'nick' for such a woman] who had a truly, er, ancient sense of fashion, thick spectacles, and walked, or rather hobbled around school with a slight slouch, and she was pretty short at that.

This grande dame of the school looked so unintimidating, in fact, that during the first three months, one of the JC1 students, not quite acquainted with the school hierarchy yet, went up to her and said in Chinese:

"Aunty ah, the tables in our class dirty, later can come and clean can?"

The grande dame must have been in a forgiving mood that day, since she stared at the student and let him go without so much as a scathing glance. It was only later that the [probably horrified] student realised his mistake and he probably keep a very low profile in school for the rest of the 3 months.

Anyway, the point Dr Andrew Lim was trying to drive at, was that teachers develop various eccentricities in their teaching career. Apparently, it comes about from the stress of the job, and the outnumbering of juvenile minds to the adult ones.

He also named some of the possible eccentricities:

- Neurosis.
- Poor sense of dressing. Untidy, unkempt, or clothes fashionable during the times of Queen V
- Bad hygiene. [one VP was seen picking her nose in public, in the bus stop right outside her school]
- A tendency to order other adults around, like they were 7 year olds. [following this, he proceeded to warn the men never to do this to their wives, something which prompted me to think that he must have learned this lesson the hard way]

He then went on to say,

"Some of these teachers, they spend so long in the teaching force, they develop all kinds of strange, eccentric behaviour! It's so funny to see them!" Following which, he started to laugh, a little nervously at first, and then ascending to a slightly more neurotic, out-of-control pitch. This caused some of us in the class to look nervously at each other and think Is he, like, all right? and Are we going to turn out like him???

Anyway, he stressed that as teachers, the one key survival tool we needed to have was a sense of humour. At the end of the day, we had to be able to look at everything, all the crap that happened, and still be able to laugh at it all. And if you had that, somehow, you'd make it through.

Following which, he proceeded to laugh slightly more maniacally............

The First Day...

2005-06-21T08:56:00.000-07:00

Come in, and sit down.

Get your notes ready.

Done? Good.

Welcome, then, to your first class.

Welcome to NIE.

This is where all future teachers are taught to be teachers, by those who were teachers, and those who were teachers for a while, became aghast at the thought of teaching Spore's precocious young things for the rest of their earthly lives, studied frantically to gain their Master's in Education, and then took up a career preparing other people for the career they so frantically jumped ship from.

Well, ok, maybe not all.

I'm glad you survived the bus ride into campus. Enjoy it while it lasts, because when term time starts and the rest of NTU start classes, you will no longer be able to find breathing space on either 179 or 199. In fact, you will be lucky if you weren't squeezed up against the glass pane of the bus as it trundled dangerously through army training grounds, or if you didn't suffocate and die unnoticed in the crowd in the bus.

Did you find your way here? Despite the rudimentary map with the lack of labels and names? You did? Without help? Man, you were smarter than we thought.

How did you find the briefings? Were they helpful? Did they give you a good idea of the courses you'd be taking in NIE, the level of difficulty of the courses, and the amount of the coursework you might have to do? Did they emphasize the seriousness of the course, that you weren't students anymore, you were paid employees of the government, and that your ass may now be severely kicked if you skipped classes with the same regularity that you did in your previous institution of learning?

Well, if you didn't run screaming with despair out of the lecture theatre, then I don't think they did a good job in the above.

How about the food in the canteen? What food have you tried? The undersized cups of drinks in the canteen? The suspiciously rubber-like western food? The unappetizing... well, pretty much everything? Did you manage to find a table, with a fan blowing comfortably at you?

You did? Man you have to tell me how you did that.

How about the tutorials and lectures? Yes, the ones we surprised you with on the very first day of school. Man you should have seen your faces!

All right? Well, of course. It's only the first ones. Trust us, it will get more interesting...

And we hope you understood that lecture on the development of the English Language from the Celts to Present Day Singlish. We hope you diligently wrote down piles of essays, like that girl who was sitting three rows down in front of you. Amazing isn't she? I think she actually wrote down more information than was given by us.

And we hope your first tutorial on the different forms of text was interesting too.

It was?

Really?

And the lecturer? Yes, the Andrew Lim dead lookalike.

He was interesting too?

Hm. We'd have to have a little talk with him over that...

Anyway, it's been nice talking to you.

We're hoping you will stay around a while.

Oh wait, you HAVE to anyway. What am I talking about? There's still that matter of the 3 years of servitude you owe to our government.

Oh well then. See you again soon.

Don't despair... yet.

Welcome!

2005-04-17T03:32:00.000-07:00

This is the newest blog I've set up, revolving around education in Singapore. It's still under construction, so please be patient. If anybody involved in the education industry in Singapore is interested in contributing to this blog, please email boredslacker@gmail.com Thanks!

Mis-Educators

Signs that You Should Not Become A Teacher

The Occupational Hazards of Teaching

What Else Can Teachers Do?

Ideas for Relief Lessons - Primary 1 and 2

Reopening

Looking back... and Forth...

End of Exams... Start of Headaches

3 Days or 3 Years?

Happy Children's Day!

Should Teachers Blog?

Teachers are going crazy!

We Are Not Happy. Why?

$250m

Happy Teacher's Day

Things Teachers Wish They Could Tell Their Students...

PSLE Oral

Email Feedback

Into the deep blue sea without a float

Into the deep blue sea without a float

Do you feel enriched?

Induction

It's Over.... For Now....

Perking Up

Somewhere between Unacceptable and Acceptable

Yeargh!!!!!!!

Yeargh!!!!!!!

Deviant at the Substation

Spare the Voice... Spoil the Child?

How to Be A Tuition Teacher Part 3 - Your First Lesson

Students do the darnedest things......

A Telescopic View of it All

All My Bags are Packed...

Practicuum Postings are Out....

Can You Handle the Truth?

Back to Life, Reality and School

How to Be A Tuition Teacher Part 2 - Getting Your Students

Funny Exam Answers

Timetables are out!

How to Be A Tuition Teacher Part 1: Before-Class Revision

Leavings and Beginnings

Exam Fever is Here Again

Not a student, Not yet a Teacher

Don't laugh... *HAHA!*

Slander? Sedition?

There but for the grace of God...

Another Unfortunate...

Happy Teachers' Day!

Can you teach people to serve?

Module Blues

English

Comment spam?

Server Down and the whole campus crashes

Teacher Answers Questions

Holiday Book Syndrome

A National Conspiracy

Educational Cliches

More about the NIE dress code....

Dress [with no] sense

Learning to Teach... In the Jungle...

Teacher Answers Your Questions

Reflections with relief...

Tips for First Time Relief Teachers

The Road So Far...

I am a Japanese School Teacher

The Adventures of GTS and GTT

The Eccentricities of Teachers

The First Day...

Welcome!

Don't laugh... HAHA!