2nd Week Sch Exp + OEA Symposium

School Experience@ WRS 2009
My time at WRS this week can be summarised with one word: Fantabulastic!
The school has been really supportive in that the management truly believed that they wanted us to experience the school through oberving the diverse levels and even different subjects.

The school bases itself on one word and one word alone: VALUES!
Governed by 3 simple values: Respect, Responsibility and Resilience. From School Leaders to teachers and right down to every student. They all sing to the same tune. Such consistency is rarely, or never, seen in any school usually.I have nothing but praise for the way the school is run and every trainee agreed the school was orderly,efficient and students were disciplined.The PE dept: Physical Education here is still taking steps to establish itself as an integral part of the school's curriculum. They adapted the Sports Ed Prog from Zhenghua and to see it in the flesh was a really humbling experience. They tied it in with Character Education and each student has a booklet for the events, programmes and most importantly, REFLECTIONS! They review their activities and students are guided to find their learning points.


Discipline Dept (Student Behaviour Management): Its refreshing to find that they approach it with a values-based discpline other than rules-based discipline. The 3 "Rs" are always their point of reference and parents would usually find it hard to refute the fact that they dont want their children to have values. The HOD also makes an effort to ensure the school's surroundings are free of any punks/hooligans that will harrass the kids so that it gives them a conducive environment to study so they dont have to fear that thos gangsters area waiting for them outside of school. The HOD knows his stuff, he asks us: What does the word Discipline mean? Well.. for the uninitiated, it means to make a disciple of somebody. So the key issue here is: Are you a teacher worth making a disciple out of? You must embody the values before somebody wants to make you their master. So it was truly insightful. And he does the restorative practices in the SEL component so as to mend and heal relations between students.


The Character Education Dept: Another pillar of the school. In fact, the dept is so strong that most of its progs are done in-house and only few of it are subcon out to vendors. What it does is to infuse its CE progs into a lesson each week. On top of that, they try to integrate with PE (Like the SEP) and also ART. The HOD is also a learned person who is into child behaviour studies and reads lots about writer like Thomas Lickona who writes about ed pyschology too.

People that I meet (Fellow NIE Trainees): Above was with Abang Rizal Hida, the girl that really clicked from day one. I gave her HELL everyday. Disturbing her to the maximum. I think i gave her a week to remember =pThe 3 MOE Scholars: Eunice from Shanghai University. Hazi and Wee Keong from NUS. Both going on exchange. Hazi going for a whole year! how cool is that.. Wee keong going to Toronto.

All the trainees! I think this bunch of people are really nice and could click with Sasi, Rizal, Hida.

The contact time was no joke. A whopping 3 and half hours. We had to read the handouts, discuss and then present on our points! But the session was good and i think i really learnt alot!

So the one week stint was really eventful and enriching. I thank God for this opportunity. When i first saw the posting i was like what?! I havent heard about the school before and I thought i was just another school in the neighbourhood. So this really changed my perception of the school.

OEA Symposium

I went in feeling really sleepy. But the keynote speech was not bad. The icebreakers were fun and I even bought a book about propless games which I think it was useful in future!

Had a good catch-up with yong hui. Learnt quite a fair bit from him. Think his circle of contacts damn big. He knows most people at the conference itself. I got to know new people as well, such as the christchurch teachers who climbed EBC, TPJC teachers. Then I also met Jeremy and Veron from campHA, as well as the CCAB peeps who I met at the outdoor camp.

Chat with Cindy today, and we were recounting the times in the camp. Think she really found us a fun-loving group.

In essence, the sessions werent really informative, me and YH felt that we didnt really get much out of it and were kinda disappointed. But the horte park walk was not bad, got to see plants and pluck fruits to eat. By the way the meals were good. We KEPT eating and eating.. Dinner was romantic.. we ate at the globe, with tribal lights and tables with groundsheets. Presentation of EBC was done whilst dinner.. It was truly a humbling experience to see what they had gone thru. Its really no joke seeing 15-16 yr olds climbing such a high altitude in those conditions.

In short, the symposium was good but hoped to have better sessions in future!

Going to Cameron Highlands plus KL tmr! Cant wait!

1st Week of School Experience

So the first week of school experience just flew by with the blink of an eye. In fact, it wasnt even a full week. It was merely four days and it did open my eyes to the difference in culture that a mega school has. I was posted to C primary school, a prestigous school that has strong culture and a good environment.

I went in with a rather nonchalant attitude, knowing that eventually I would be teaching in a secondary school instead. I set the tone of just going there to have fun and enjoy myself. I think I went one step further. I even networked while having fun. Seeing the other trainees stressing themselves out, I felt a tad guilty for being slack and having fun.


I taught right from the first day, first period. Not really a shock though, it invoked many beautiful memories of my time at E primary and I just loved to see the smiles on the kids' face. To really see them enjoy the lesson and learning something out of it made my day. On top of that, C primary has an awesome spanking new indoor sports hall which I went there many times during my short 4 days.


I want to thank God for posting me here to really appreciate what I had at E primary. Though it was small, I really was able to carry out the activities that I loved. In fact, I think i would dread C primary coz they were really pro-academic over sports. And as E primary is small, it was more cosy and I got to know almost all the staff with a relative degree of familiarity.



It was great to hear my friends rave about their experiences, this being their firsthand interaction with students. Many are full of aspirations, fully charged by this experience to want to change the world and do their best to make a difference in the kids' lives. Well that is GREAT, really! But my word of caution is four days is too short a period to judge. I suggest after a longer duration then they get a fairer picture of what is going on in the schools.


Passion and calling are two words that are severely overused and cheapened by alot of people. Especially so in the education industry where young aspiring people mouth them as part of their slogans. With the best intentions of their hearts, most if not all people do have those two feelings in them, but it probably eroded over the years due to many different circumstances.


For me, I think the word is purpose. Purpose encompasses both passion and calling. But beyond that, it is the knowing of why that individual is in that profession when times are tough. It is when passion is waning and calling seems doubtful that purpose will be able to transcend all these negative thoughts that lingers in the head. It is really tough in this line these days because you do not just give of your academic brain and knowledge. You give your heart and soul to it because you sincerely want to involve your life with those under your charge. I truly hope my friends are able to see the purpose in the job and know what they are in for.

To the subject of being a PE teacher: Well I feel we are like the Swiss-Army knife. We are usually used by the school to fix multiple issues and activities. We are like gym trainers and event managers and also life-skills coach all rolled into one.

The things that PE teachers handle this days are really appalling:

1. Day-to-day PE lessons

2. NAPFA Tests

3. Events Manager (Cross-Country, Sports Day)

4. Outdoor Camps (Level camps, OBS)

5. Discipline

6. Character Development

7. CCA overall in charge (Ususally sports or UG)

8. TAF programme (now called HHF)

9. Cherish Award

I think the perception of PE teachers as slackers amongst the teaching profession is as old as any other myth or urban legend out there. We are often perceived as a bunch of jocks that do not do anything else. But nothing could really be further from the truth. We get out in the sun, we set up courses for our PE lessons. We deal with discipline. We send kids for competitions, we train the kids, we organise camps and sports day and cross country.

So I really dont see why we are SLACKERS. Seriously, to all the detractors of the PE profession, if you are envious of us, dont beat us, come join us! But if you're still cynical, then why not come try and do it for a few weeks and see if shouting in open space, sweating it out, keeping and setting equipment is as easy as you make it out to be.

A firm believer of PE, it really teaches the kids the motor skills, coordination and really social skills of working and playing in a team setting. I really envy Seng Kang Primary, they have PE every day! How cool is that?

Well, I hope I would have more insights next week on my experience at W secondary school. Its not that I dont show my excitement, rather its that I know why im doing there and what im doing there. There's a calm knowing of thats my purpose. And I hope all teachers find theirs too.

NTU ODAC ATC 09

My long-awaited comeback!

This post is rather overdue as well.. Just got the pictures from of our ATC race that we did on 7th June. We did rather well.. and got interviewed by Jade Seah too! At first the race was supposed to be featured on Channel 5's Sports@sg. Well, it did. But they cut off the sections where we got interviewed! DARN!

Race -wise, this was a rather easy race but terrain was good and the sections were fun too! We adopted a rather slow-and-steady approach and by virtue of being in detail one, we lead all the way from the starting horn right to the finish line. It was good pacing and navigation. One regret was the climbing section which i didnt complete coz it was really tough due to the insufficient amount of tiles and i was smearing all over the place.

Running and kayaking was easy for us. Managed to build a healthy lead, the bike section was short too.. Albeit irritating coz of the sandy terrain.. had to push quite alot.. Then abit of river-crossing here and there.. quite fun..

This is the horrible wall which i didnt expect to flop it! I was already at the top but super no strength coz I had to take a clue that wasnt mean for me.. I was virtually crimping every grip.. No TILES!!

Thank God for the race! It was a true blessing I would say! Most importantly i enjoyed this race more.. Being in control was damn shiok! Kudos to Eve for being such a strong teammate and one who really pushed and encouraged me as well! Many more races together!