– a Singaporean teacher's storeroom 🖖
the video is not new. in fact it probably can be classified as ancient in view of the 日新月异 of modern technologies.
and let me reify one friend’s post-viewing comments in 2022:
“Depressing. It’s like watching maserati videos. Have but don’t own. N don’t dare to tell ah bu about it otherwise she ask why u only drive Honda.”
and let me return to my manual marking of the never-ending essays now …
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:
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!
permalink: https://onepublicservice.workplace.com/groups/yipdloungewp/posts/4151763408259981
#biweeklyreflections #4ideaimprovement
today marks the official last day of Rab who has lent great support to me this year.
another thing I would like to note down in this storeroom is two other graduating students that i had 缘 to teach this year (earlier on I posted the first BSh):
the second student is ZQ. despite “我不喜欢华文” and dad’s pressurising was not too helpful, he has put in a lot of efforts when doing my homework. for someone who struggled so hard with foundational knowledge such as 词汇 and 句法, he still gave his best to compose 2.5 pages (that’s easily >600 words) essays. for someone where single digit score is common place, he has perservered in our 6 mths learning journey together. I’m glad he obtained a final grade that opens door for him to enter JC next year. and thanks to his dad for finally letting it go and not forcing his boy to retake in hope of further improving in grades.
the third student is JX. he is another student who has struggled with foundational knowledge in 词汇 and 句法, and I learnt that he had been looking at offering CL B at the beginning of this year. at the beginning of the year when I am officially his 老师，we had two chats, where I encouraged him to continue to study express CL and to sit for the exams at O-levels, and only consider switching to CL B if results were unsatisfactory. like ZQ above, he has also demonstrated great perseverance in his work, and receiving essays >800 words is not uncommon. I knew he had a good chance of making a pass, but 天意弄人，he had fallen quite ill in June, and that greatly affected his performances for oral and listening compre which are important components of the whole exam.
with these 3 students who we had 缘 and fought a difficult battle together, 2021 has been a good year for me despite some distant echo reminding me that teachers are only good and worthy if they produce 5-point value-added results.
2022 is going to be an exciting year ahead, for I’ll be once again teaching 12-13 yrs old after a 20 yrs break hahaha.
was packing things for the upcoming shift from bukit batok to punggol, and saw this thumbdrive that was given out last year. plugged in and recalled the last year’s yearbook (a whopping 333MB) was stored within.
compressed it to a 10MB file with acrobat pro dc and uploaded it to designrr and now it can be viewed/shared online:
enjoy (: