23. Of students and teaching

October 13, 2023October 13, 2023

roles and responsibilities of a teacher, unofficially defined.

received a notification that fb is removing its Notes pages permanently (after ‘hiding’ it for some years. here’s a post that’s created >10yrs ago, but will probably still allow some teachers today (or of yesterday?) a smile or LOL? and here you go:

a teacher is a/an:

1. instructor (delivers lessons),

2. designer (designs lesson)

3. nanny (nagging students to do their homework, study for their test/exam)

4. gatekeeper (catching students who misbehave)

5. marker (never ending marking)

6. a god-parent (for students whose parent(s) is either too busy taking care of living/him/herself; single-parent)

7. planner (plan and execute school & learning events)

8. meeting-er (conduct/attend any sort of big/small meetings)

9. administrator (handle all admin-related work),

10. input clerk (keying in of results, remarks for students’ reports)

11. role-model (moral values, lifelong learner)

12. futurist (preparing your students for 15-30 yrs down the road)

13. politician (fend off office politics for those teachers who hadn’t had enough to do, or not doing what they’re supposed to do, or simply should have joined politics instead of teaching),

14. assessor (of learning, for learning)

15. professional (require certain professional skills, while some may argue that we deal with learning too many other skills unrelated to teaching, making us a 16. generalist)

17. scientist (cos teaching is a science)

18. artist (cos teaching is an art)

19. facilitator (for all students’ activities & discourse during learning)

20. counsellor (for small and big issues)

21. judge/referee (when students disagree or quarrel or fight)

22. fireman (on standby to put out any fire that may happen in school or with your students, and sometimes their parents)

23. actor/entertainer/magician (every lesson is a show that needs preparation)

24. optimist (see the strengths and possibilities in the student, no matter how weak or how ill-discplined)

25. liar (at times while composing progress reports, school graduation certificates & testimonials and during meet-the-parents sessions)

26. interior designer (decorate classroom and CCA room with students)

27. technician (solves ICT-related issues for colleagues, hardware issues in the classrooms and computer labs)

28. lifeskills coach (teaches students about their personalities & learning styles, how to conduct research, how to stay cyber-safe, how to budget, etc)

29. financial manager (HOD manages department’s budget; form teacher unoffcially oversees class fund cos officially we cannot collect class fund)

30. loanshark (always bugging them to ‘pay’ their homework, and all kinds of money collection)

31. personal assistant (to any of your heads; AND to your students too, by following the deadlines/dates for handing up homework, tests/exams so closely than anyone of them. and you begin to wonder who’s the one studying)

32. cleaner (clean classroom, esp lower pri teachers, and CCA room with students, pri & sec)

33. FORMs teacher (going in to class to collect forms day in day out)

34. octopus (cos although we appear to have 8 hands full of things and doing all sorts of things but the 8 hands are never enough for the roles and responsibilites listed herein)

35. purchaser (make purchases for school, class, events and whatever stuff you name it; and before that you need to seek budget approval, then hunt for quotes, prepare specs docs, put up ITQ, evaluate and submit for final approvals, plus whatever other paperwork)

36. auditor (Making sure nothing you signed for go missing – constant checks need to be carried out)

37. quality assessor (Administer ITQ and when numerous proposals are made for product purchases – you need to assess the quality and sign for them. Anything goes wrong…good luck :p )

38. the Almighty-Who-Knows-All (You must always be correct and know all the answers – at least from the perspective of the students and parents)

39. motivation speaker (Always coaxing and motivating students to do better…and also motivating PARENTS not to give up, just like a 40. social worker or 41. family counsellor! )

42. delegate (when you are requested to attend official dinners at/organised by CC, CCC, RC, Istana and mingle …)

43. artistic director (when there are school/national plays to be created and directed, SYF, etc…you the (wo)man!)

44. professional photographer (no budget to employ a professional one…you can do it for FREE…during prize giving days, meet the parents sessions, camps, any school events that is. sometimes you may need to carry TWO equipment and double up as a 45. videoman)

46. sports coach (again, you should be fluent in soccer, basketball, hockey, floorball, …, etc)

47. (eco-)gardener (for the school science garden … plant flowers, taking care of plants, add fertiliser … and feed & rear fishes like an 48. aquarium expert if a pond is part of the package)

49. medic (for small cuts big wounds and any other injuries that do not require immediate referral to a doctor/hospital; conduct temperature-taking drills)

50. talent scout (to hunt down talented students to represent the school in various competitions)

51. event manager (recommended talent for mtt-wannabe, as cited in ST & CNA reports on 17/4/13)

52. police(wo)man (to patrol the neighbourhood and let your presence be felt by GOOD students)

53. career guidance-r (to discuss with students their future employment opportunities as if any of these will still be around in 10-15 yrs time)

54. emergency planner (to plan SOPs for (un)foreseeable situations and conduct dry-runs with colleagues and students so that they are emergency-ready)

55. detective (to uncover where students hide contrabands as defined by the school rules)

56. multi-linguist (switching between the use of different languages to aid students’ comprehension. languages include but not restricied to singlish, english, chinese, malay, tamil, dialects)

57. insurance agent (to issue insurance policy schedule to students, and assist in claims during unfortunate circumstances **touch wood**)

58. travel agent-cum-tour guide (to plan, organise, and eventually lead students on local & overseas trips)

59. PR manager (to manage relations with partners in education, including community partners, and overseas partners)

acknowledgement of contributors:

24 to 28 – Chun Kiat

29 & 31 (heads part)- Sharon Goh

30 – Wilkie Tan

31 (students part) – Lily Teo (Shu Hua)

32, 35 – 39, 42 to 44, 46 to 49 – Darren Nonis

34 – Hui Nin (Wei Yan)

50 – Yan Ling

53 & 54 – Szu An (Si An)

23 (additions) – Michelle (Xue Qi)

55 – Geok Joo (Yu Ru)

56 – Yanli

57 – Yan Oh (Xiu Yan)

58 – Yin-Chiao

59 – Chin Guan

and Joyce Meitian for reminding us that a slave’s job is more simply defined than ours (:

change log

version 2.2 added no. 59 on 18 Jan, 2018

version 2.1 added no. 57-58 on Mar 6, 2015

version 2.0 added no. 53-56; revised no.23 & 49 on Aug 22, 2013

version 1.5 added no. 52 on Aug 21, 2013

version 1.4 added no. 51 on Apr 17, 2013 (MOE promotion ceremony was held the day before)

version 1.3 added no. 50 on Apr 5, 2013

version 1.2 added no. 47-49 on Apr 25, 2012

version 1.1.1 revised no. 31 and fixed some typo errors on Apr 24, 2012

version 1.1 added no. 35-46 on Apr 13, 2012

version 1.01 added no. 34 on Mar 26, 2012

version 1.0 published Mar 24, 2012; no. 1 – 33

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July 10, 2023July 10, 2023

LLMs, chatgpt & ubi 4.0

with the blazing speed that LLMs are (or commonly known as “chatgpt”) developing, some people may be worried abt job security.

it looks more like a case of “the rich gets richer, the poor gets poorer” 贫者愈贫，富者愈富, not in the monetary sense, but the knowledge creation sense. more precisely, LLMs/chatgpt are going to make the expert-layman’s speed/efficiency gap ever bigger. layman can only (blindly, unknowingly, ‘trustingly’) copy-n-paste without understanding (cos they do not have enough prior knowledge to assess the output), while the expert can build on what LLMs/chatgpt throw out and idea-improve repeatedly with the system with further prompting and/or data input.

based on the above theory, to ensure everyone’s livelihood and well-being tmr (not limited to those who are worried abt job security), the idea of universal basic income (UBI) would probably need to upgrade to at least a 4.0:

UBI – food, water housing
UBI 2.0 – food, water, housing, power/electricity
UBI 3.0 – food, water, housing, power/electricity, wifi
UBI 4.0 – food, water, housing, power/electricity, wifi, negotiate/prompt LLMs

so what would UBI 4.0 mean for a k-12 school teacher? oh btw, openai just released its Code Interpreter within chatgpt4 few days ago. another game changer?

and thanks ziwei for the early brain-waking convo (:

May 27, 2022May 27, 2022

term 2 week 10 day 5

and this marks the end of the last school day in semester 1 (in the singaporean K-10 schooling calendar). most, if not all, schools are having teachers meeting parents (under names like parent-teacher-conference, meet-parents-session) either f2f, online, or hybrid.

and something in my shirt pocket that had accompanied me for the past 144 days (100 days if we exclude sat, sun, & public holidays) reminded me of the end of the time passed during daily teaching/lessons:

even week seen here in an odd-even-10-day timetable

and while looking at it, i countdown to 10 days to a new timetable greeting me 🖖🏼

also to capture this day are two excerpts from M. Housel’s book The Psychology of Money, on happiness:

having a strong sense of controlling one’s life beats anything else in life

and hopefully my new timetable will afford me the sense of control in life 🖖🏼

March 10, 2022

5W1H and two other family members

unwell yet couldn’t continue to sleep as phlegm develops **cough cough** did some surfing to distract my mind and came upon this blog post by dr. ashley tan (he who occupied the room opposite mine while i was in NIE). **cough cough**

using 5W1H to scaffold thinking processes is all too familiar, but perhaps we wouldn’t know the “five wives and one husband” have a son. and the 5W1H1S family has yet another distant relative with split personality. **cough cough**

keen to see how the 8-member family can further enrich classroom discourse? read on:

Powerful questions

January 23, 2022March 10, 2022

first biweekly reflection piece of the year

school has decided to encourage teachers to perform biweekly reflection (in an pre-assigned google sheet) this year, and below’s my piece posted to the YI PD Lounge @workplace instead:

two weeks of teaching (& learning) have passed, and as we consolidate our experiences and pen some reflections, there are two possible avenues to do this. the first convenient way is to use the assigned Gsheet template, which is good for those of us who believes reflection is private or perhaps we’re “shy” abt it. the second way is to post it here in our PD Lounge; this is suitable and encouraged if you (too) believe that professional learning is a social phenomenon. after all, all ideas are good and improvable, and therefore, all reflections are good reflections that can only become good-er through our social discourse.

in this reflection, i’ll write abt a phenomenon instead of focusing on a specific lesson (you could do the same too, for freedom of choice is key in adult learning). the phenomenon is that of “sec 1 students”. having only taught sec 1s during my practicum and first year as a bt, it’s absolutely refreshing to get to teach sec 1 again after 20 years. compared to the sec 3-5s that i had been teaching (and graduating), the sec 1s are extremely high in energy level, highly enthusiastic, and highly impressionistic. this is the first time in my career that on just the second teaching day (i.e. T1W2D2), two students walking passed said “陈老师，我们喜欢你(的课)”, and i was caught off-guard and didn’t know how to react to this evidence of the 3-highs.

harnessing the 3-highs, with the vision of developing Leaders for Tmr, i have invested considerable time to teach and negotiate classroom routines, lesson expectations, and what learning is about, including possible habits of becoming a more effective learner (cf. syllabus contents). take my IQ form class students as an example, i have (attempted to) impressed upon them the importance of asking “Why” from day 1 and reinforcing it (through teacher modelling, which is a powerful approach) on different days for the past two weeks. Asking Why is not only in-line with the Inquisitiveness spirit, but more importantly, it activates the mind to think deeper, even if the Whys are not verbalised (oh yes, when to verbalise and ask, and when not to verbalise and ask during lessons, is something to be taught in the future; communication is after all an art). in the meantime, i must apologise if you are teaching 1IQ students and they are disturbing you with Whys more often than expected. so how well my “investment” would return is gonna be a longitudinal study. will monitor and report back as time goes.

how’s your experience with our pioneer sec 1s? are they the same, different, or same-same-but-different in the first two weeks? feel free to leave comment(s) to interact and share/add-on your experiences, for learning is in the discourse thanks for reading!

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#biweeklyreflections #4ideaimprovement