Part-time administrative worker

Looking at the number of forms (blah-blah-blah acknowledgement form, so-and-so acknowledgement slip, etc) I give out to and collect from my kids these days, I somehow feel like I am a part-time administrative worker. That could well have been included in the job scope when I signed the papers, though it's pretty obvious by now that I haven't taken a close-enough look at the fine-print back then.

Can't imagine what the parents must be going through for having to sign some form every other day if the teachers are already experiencing so much frustration with them; much of it stemming from the fact that they are used mainly to shield our backsides. Grr... 10-15 minutes per day totals up to nearly over an hour for the entire week. Can you imagine how much more can be achieved with this time?

The productivity we're missing out on! I can't even...

pet peeves in the staffroom

#1 Who moved the giant hole punch?

Put it back after use la!

#2 Unwashed utensils in the sink

It's a shame that as we advocate our students to be more responsible for themselves, some teachers are not walking the talk. Unwashed utensils can remain in the pantry's sinks for up to a couple of days before someone (who should not be responsible for them) cleans them up. Can you imagine how gross the used bowls look? Do the culprits really expect the janitors to clean up after them every single time? I don't think cleaning up teachers' used utensils is part of their job scope. It disgusts me, how some fellow colleagues do not have the basic courtesy to clean up after themselves.

#3 Colleagues who have no idea how loud they are

Yup. You get unbearably loud. Sometimes.

Achievement unlocked

It took me a little longer than I expected, but for the first time evar,
I made a student cry in class some 2 days back.
You cannot even imagine how furious I was after learning that
one of my kids forgot to bring the work (again) that
he was supposed to have handed in 2 days ago and
blatantly lied that he's already submitted it. 

I felt slightly guilty when I saw him tear but honestly,
he deserved it more than less for trying to lie his way through
and thinking he'd be able to get away with it.

Personally, this would be classified as an achievement unlocked. 

I'm making good progress in becoming The Terrifying Teacher.
Way to go, AJ.

No entry too short

It's been a good 2 months since the last update.

There's been a couple of changes in my life since, both good and bad.

Let's start with the good.

When I titled the last entry as "The month of Two",

I sort of meant it in a literal way.

By welcoming the month of Feb as part of a duo.

I haven't thought it'd be anytime soon that I got hitched so quickly

but things happen, and yeah, I did.

My prior incessant worrying 

(e.g. what if I can't get used to having a boyfriend again?

or what if I can't get used to holding someone's hands once more?) 

had been uncalled for (phew...), 

because I've been having quite a wonderful time so far.

Many thanks to le bf, of course,

who's nothing but accommodating 

and encouraging towards me, 

as work has been piling up sneakily behind me

like an unwelcome ninja.

Which brings me to the bad.

Work got hectic.

Or maybe of course,

I could just have serious time management issues.

Things become alright for awhile after roughing some days out, 

but I find myself struggling to stay afloat not too long after.

I hope I'm not just hopping onto the "busy bandwagon" 

for the sake of appearing like I have important things to do

like what many others are doing.

This has got to get better.

I mean, I don't want to go on getting just a few hours' worth of sleep nightly on weekdays.

Before it gets better though, work's made me 

appreciate the weekends so much more these days.

I can't wait to meet up with le friends and bf
over the weekends for a nice catching up mostly,

And also, not forgetting, 

my daily lunches packed lovingly by Mumsy.

Alright. No more whinging.

I look forward to sharing interesting things that's been happening

at work more regularly!

#vainpotteacher

I was looking for some kid near the canteen when two P4 girls (with their P1 buddies in tow) came up to me and smiled real shyly. I've seen them around previously and would usually smile to greet them so I'm not exactly unfamiliar to them.

One of them: Teacher, you are very pretty.

Me: Aww. Thank you :)

While I looked all calm and steady on the outside, this was how I really felt on the inside:

You know people always say kids don't lie... heehee.

What do you want from me?

Sometimes, my kids do things that confuse me.

For example, they would insist that the microphone be fixed (when it's not working) and I use it so as to "protect your (mine) throat and voice" (in their words, not mine k).
You must be thinking "Aww... what sweet and thoughtful children."

But wait! It would only be a few moments later when they start to invite me to scream my head off at them (I jest, just in case someone thinks I'm really abusing them) for the ruckus that they're creating.

Dear children, in the words of Adam Lambert, What Do You Want From ME?!

2 things from final practicum

My absence from the blog this time round not too long ago was exceptionally long (or at least slightly longer than all the previous 'fake hiatuses' that I've tried to put in place) due to my final teaching practice that was just over on Friday.

Now that the whole 10 weeks is over, I can't be any more glad to announce that I'm finally a beginning teacher! 

It's been an utmost period of trying and learning in the past 10 weeks. What I've learnt about being a teacher in this seemingly short 10 weeks seemed to have easily outweigh all that textbook knowledge that the uni's been trying to drill into our minds for the past 4 years.

I've experienced stress like I've not gone through in a very long while when the practice had just begun. While it was mainly individual responsibility (or group ones at most) back in pulau ntu, I now have to be responsible for the learning of so many little kiddos, whose minds are just like sponges, absorbing and picking up whatever information that is lying around, without going through much of a 'filtering process'. The thought of imparting the wrong grammatical, mathematical or even scientific concepts to the kids terrifies me. I would repeat a theory 10 times if that would help them remember a concept better, but what if the language I had used somehow caused some misinterpretation somewhere along the line? And what if that error stays in their minds for the subsequent 9 years, or worst, for the rest of their lives? How can I ever make it up to a kid who grows up thinking that one-tenth is greater than one-half? I can't! It's not possible to 're-write' the information on their minds like a DVD-RW.

It may be a little hard to imagine me in such a stressed mode since I'm usually too darned well-known for being lazy laid-back, but honestly, the pressure of having to do such detailed lesson plans on a frequent basis and preparation of lesson resources made it impossible not to feel the stress. On hindsight, I guess some of it was really self-imposed though.

So, blabbing aside, here's just a very quick summary of 2 of the more important things that kind of stuck:

1. You must fail before you can succeed

It really was a tough act (still is), trying to juggle lesson plans, classroom management and collection of homework. When I thought I had one of these three balls well under my thumb, something had to go wrong with the other two balls, somehow. It was so common that I would get one piece of positive feedback but two negative ones in return and that made my heart crumble a little each time. It was demoralizing, and I was disheartened, to say the least. I probably wouldn't have been that bothered though, if I hadn't been making adjustments to make things better, based on feedback from different sources and that made things a lot worse - it was still no avail despite already having act upon feedback - it could only mean that I really suck at this whole teaching business. Or like what I came to realize later on, maybe I'm not the only one who faces this problem. Sometimes, it takes more than one feeble try to get things right... this overused cliche's been repeated to death, but people will not fully grasp the meaning of it until he/she's experienced countless failures before finally seeing the first glimmers of success. I'm really glad to announce that I'm finally seeing the first signs of light - looking forward to the time when I will finally become an awesome juggler.

The Power of Affirmation

By virtue of my major at university, teaching English should have been the most enjoyable, if not easy of the three subjects that I took while on practicum. But it wasn't the case, not in the first few weeks at least. I'd never imagined that I would enjoy teaching Math and Science so much more than English. At one point, I felt so horrible that my kids did not understand the simple grammatical concepts and activities that I'd tried to conduct during lessons (mainly because I did not fully understand what the class ability was yet) that I began dreading going for English lessons altogether; feedback from my mentor was bad - whatever I tried to do was truly beyond the children's comprehension and they simply didn't see the rationale of things. Finally, I broke down in front of my mentor one afternoon, who must've really been taken aback at my supposed fragility. In contrast to the negative feedback that I'd been getting for English lessons, I discovered the powerful influence of affirmative words from other mentors for my other subjects. In short, it was an instant ego boost. It felt good to see personal efforts being recognized and paying off and that gave me some motivation to want to improve on my delivery for English as well. With some words of encouragement from Jenny and tips on how to improve my lessons, I later went on to enjoy the teaching of English again so much more. The learning point of this would be for me to remember what a little affirmation can do to boost oneself - Dear Ms Chang, please don't ever forget to praise your kids to affirm their commendable behaviour!

Apart from learning the 2 important lessons that I've just mentioned, I've also learnt to become (very) good friends with the risograph and photocopier; actually began having daily conversations with them so as to coax them into working well.

So yes, 10 weeks of learning, and more to go.
Let's go Ms Chang!

impromptu lunch date

Lunch: stir-fry pumpkin with dried scallop and mushroom, pan-fried salmon, (pre-boiled) saute cauliflower with oyster sauce. Lotus root soup with some other starchy root, dried dates and pork.

For the most part of my practicum so far, I've been having my lunch in the staff lounge more often than not. Today, I decided to join my colleagues for lunch in the canteen. I ended up spending half the time in conversation with a little girl whom came up to say Hello at the hawker centre some few nights back, and I learnt so much about her in the very short 15 minutes. I don't know how she always manages to spot me since I haven't taught her at all, but she's always a joy to talk to so I'm not complaining. 

Even if she's telling me what's yummy in my lunch box and what's not hur hur.

I got more than what I'd expected during lunch today. 

Maybe I should try to do this more often and get to know my other students better too.

the end of something good

After living what seemed like the new Dolce Vita for the longest time, my last vacation as a student finally came to an end two days ago. Looking ahead, I'm quite certain that my next prolonged period of idling won't be here anytime soon. 

And so, I'm feeling quite thankful that I'd been able to busy myself in the past few weeks with lots of catching up (with the same dear old people, of course), checking out ulu cafes, taking long walks around places that I never really got to stopping by previously, etc. Instead of having to meet deadlines or fulfill other academic obligations like we've been doing the entire semester, I was granted the luxury of learning to take things slow. Really slow. 

A slice of Antoinette ($9++) at Antoinette's

I learnt to take sips instead of gulps, nibbles instead of gobbles (of course, my Kindle made it a lot easier to do that), and pictures instead of mere snapshots. I made sure that nothing was too serious for me to fuss over, had plenty of time to mull over some issues in my life and it turned out to be such a wonderful time. 

Milk chocolate mousse cake infused with earl grey, topped with a bubble that oozes of tangy raspberry coulis when burst. The unusual sweet and sour combination worked quite well for me; both flavours balancing each other evenly. 

(I still think the bubble looks like a giant nipple though)

Oh, and this year, I finally learnt how to wrap bak zhangs at Grandma's place.

Wrapping's the easiest part of the entire process; preparation of the ingredients and cooking of the dumplings after they've been wrapped is so much more tedious. With quite a lot of difficulty, I finally managed to make mine decent-looking when tied; Aunt mentioned that the ones I'd wrapped look really tiny, just like the ones Mum used to wrap when she'd first started.

There were a little leftover ingredients so Aunt suggested that I bring them home so that Mum could do some wrapping too. I helped out with the preparation of the ingredients early morning (e.g. cleaning and shelling of salted eggs, chopping of mushroom, garlic and onion) and managed to wrap a few more bak zhangs before scooting off to NIE for a meeting with my practicum supervisor.

I thought my last weekend of the vacation was kind of ruined when I did something regrettable Saturday morning; spent the afternoon kicking myself in bed when I should really have been out windsurfing or making more out of the precious weekend. 

Thankfully, I reminded myself that I have the power to turn things round (it's all in the mind!) and things got so much better in the evening. Post-tuition, I met up with a smaller-than-usual KTOWY (everyone will be coming home soon though :D) at Zhen's for a barbecue dinner. The food items bought and prepared by Zhen and her family were marinated and grilled to BBQ perfection; Boss' meat joystick was a big hit (ok, sounds slightly inappropriate), Ah Long's beancurd tarts were delish, and the bak zhangs I brought were just to make numbers lol. Good food is often paired with awesome company and we had much of both that evening. Boss provided us girls with a breakdown of the different types of guys we're likely to come across (generally) in life and I suppose my favourite's the "gong dua dai" kinda guy - sounds cute, no? Don't judge me for picking a favourite based on what it sounds like please. We played In-Between too, for lack of better games, and my luck was unbelievably horrible. I make a mental note whenever I start cursing or saying swear words (raising self-awareness ahem), and records show that frequency is highest when I meet horrible drivers on the road, followed by times when I drop my sail while windsurfing, and finally, when I play In-Between wtf.

Sunday was great too even though we didn't have the best of winds; I had a really enjoyable time surfing and it's also partly because of the trash-picking that we did before that. 

Ended the evening with a cousin's wedding dinner and here are some snaps:

with Mumsy

YF

and Yihao! Like he mentioned on Facebook, it's been the longest time since the 3 of us took a picture together.

with the 'little melons'.

Mum and Dad :)

Weddings usually leave me going "Awwww... they're going to spend the rest of their lives together now. How sweet is that..." in my mind, but this one made me have cynical thoughts; maybe I've been thinking too much about the impermanence of life, love, and such of late.

And that marks the happy closure of my final vacation as a student.

Final practicum's finally started on Monday; things have yet to get busy (very soon though, I'm sure), and I'm really happy to be here - I hope I'm not speaking too soon since it's just the 2nd day so far. It feels wonderful to have my own workstation (finally!) and have superiors acknowledge my presence on the first day of work. Not to mention I have really nice CTs too; one of whom gave me a 'welcome gift' on my first day:

I'm feeling really blessed right now.

To show my appreciation for all that I've been bestowed upon,

I should really stop paying just lip service and start working hard! :)

yummy way to get started on the topic of pie charts

Looked through the photos in my phone earlier and came across this; it was taken in the last or second last maths tutorial for this semester and I'd almost forgotten bout it till today and it's a little incomplete actually.

Guess the main trouble you'll face is preventing your kids from eating those M&Ms before the pie charts are constructed and calculations are done.

Useful in revisiting Percentage too!

Maths these days

Maths tutorials have been a whole lot of fun so far; my tutors have been most willing to share their experiences. We learnt many new teaching methods/strategies to introduce the same old math topics to students in more engaging ways and I'm really looking forward to putting all these strategies to use soon.

Before I go any further, I just want to say that the learning of mathematics these days is vastly different from what we were exposed to in the past; instead of focusing as much on rote memorization (that was very much how we learnt about maths back then, wasn't it?), the focus is now on the development of students' process skills which will come in useful in problem-solving. Instead of learning mathematics in an isolated contexts, students are now exposed to problems that are more relatable to their daily lives so that learning will become much more meaningful for them.

Also, instead of diving head-first into abstract representations of mathematical concepts these days, teachers let students play and explore with 'concrete' math-learning materials (that's where the fun begins) before using pictures to represent them and finally moving on to the abstract representation.

Here are some of the 'concrete' materials that we've been learning to make use of in our tutorials:

DIY unit-cube and cuboids that I used for one of my micro-teaching sessions; making 2D representations of 3D-models on isometric dot paper (P5).

Tangram pieces in the shape of a crane; something that we were required to fold when Grandfather Tang's story was being read (P2). 

Tangram square. 

Coloured counters to reveal patterns when counting.

Coloured wooden blocks; surface area.

3 corners from the same triangle; proof that interior angles of a triangle add up to 180degrees.

Geometric strips; teaching properties of figures (e.g. parallelogram, rhombus, etc)

There are more, but I think the ones that I've shown up there are enough to prove my point.

The other point of this entry is really for me to rant.

I'm getting increasingly irritable by some of the comments that people make about primary school mathematics like "maths problems are getting too difficult these days, I only learnt this in primary (insert appropriate level) back then", or "workbooks like to make things complicated for simple calculations; e.g. add in redundant steps, it's so confusing!", or "don't know if the kids are being tested on their English abilities or mathematical understanding"; people who have not been pedagogically-trained but think they know better.

Debunking these comments:

"maths problems are getting too difficult these days, I only learnt this in primary (insert appropriate level) back then"

以前警察穿短裤.

I'm sorry that you think math problems are getting tougher (it's true, at least for people like me who've gone through the older ways of learning) these days but times have changed (and so has the syllabus; not all though) and we need to keep up with these changes - that's the politically correct thing to say, of course. In order to keep up with the global pace and develop our students into critical and creative young people able to generate alternative solutions for an old problem instead of following the previous solution blindly (i.e. do for the sake of doing, without understanding), we cannot continue with the old rote memorization way of learning where students just do drill-and-practice sums all the time. 

These 'difficult' problems have been identified by many education researchers as useful in helping young students develop essential thinking and processing skills that will greatly aid them in problem-solving, and have not been presented to students just because teachers enjoy watching students (and parents too, for this matter) stumble on them.

"workbooks like to make things complicated for simple calculations; e.g. add in redundant steps, it's so confusing!"

Build the foundation/basis for more advanced thinking in children. Over the course of our education, we have come to become so good with the basics (or at least we think we are) and have absolutely no problems with simple operations (e.g. addition, subtraction, etc). Process of learning/acquisition may seem to have come very naturally to us, but I can assure you otherwise; it came along together with the countless drill-and-practice exercises that we've completed back then. Forget that students thinking and our thinking (as adults) are at very different levels/stages, in terms of processing capabilities, and we assume that they think the same way as we do. But that is not the case. They need lots of scaffolding (step-by-step instructions/guide) to progress from one level to the next. We see redundant steps in workbooks, children see a step-by-step guide. 

Why not simply use the rote memorization method, it worked okay for us, so it must work okay for the kids these days too, you may say. Because in the past, it was mainly just doing without understanding. Example, can you explain why must we 'bring' the '3' up to '7' when we do our working for 76 X 6? Are you thinking something along the line of "because that's how I've always been doing it" or "because that was what I was taught?" Not understanding, blindly following. The answer that I was looking for should actually be related to the concept of Place Values and Regrouping. 

Spend more time now to spend less time in future.

The steps are not redundant; can present to students alternative ways of deriving a solution, and over time, students will learn to judge for themselves which are the most efficient/effective ones.

"don't know if the kids are being tested on their English abilities or mathematical understanding"

I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I definitely agree that language used in problems posed to students should be within their language competencies so that they are able to understand what the question/problem is talking about. On the other, I do not seem any harm in stretching our students slightly beyond their abilities across the curriculum because learning should not take place in isolation, i.e. what is learnt in English class should not just be relevant during English lessons, but should come in useful in subjects across the curriculum. It really does make a good opportunity for teachers to teach students new vocabulary. That said, I absolutely do not agree with using language in maths problems to 'trick' students; or using it to have the same effect for other subjects within the curriculum. 

The worst thing parents/tutors can do is to tell children that "these steps are stupid/useless" and insist on your way of doing things. Here we are, trying so hard to build up positive attitudes towards mathematics in children and by saying the negative things you do about math teaching and learning, you've just successfully destroyed whatever we've tried to construct. 

And yes, it makes me very upset :(

End of rant.

Probably a tad too early to say this, since I'll only be going for my final practicum in July, but I really can't wait to start teaching!

I can't help but feel a deep sense of dread waking up every morning at 6 after a slightly-longer-than-3-hour sleep, and I really hate to have to translate the lesson plans that I have in mind onto word documents and sending them to my CTs (one of whom is too busy to entertain me, most of the time anyway) for formality's sake. Oh, and not to mention feeling demoralized when CTs go through lesson reflections at the end of lessons; especially when everything that you thought wouldn't go wrong went wrong. 

Other than that, I'm getting better at speaking to my P4 class of 37 students and P2 class of 27 young children. I've been really lucky because both classes haven't been giving me too much problems (discipline-wise) and they're more or less responding better to the instructions that I've been giving them. I'm learning not to spoon-feed the kids so much like how our teachers used to, and my colleagues have been helpful in suggesting ways to do so. It's really not easy to try to remember everything that's been said and apply them in our lessons, but I'm getting the hang of it. I think.

No learning journey's ever going to be easy, and the same goes for whatever shit we're going through now. It's only going to be tougher this 5 weeks (and the 10 weeks next year) since we're all hoping for good grades, but once it's all over, things are going to be much easier and we'll be able to better enjoy the teaching process (amidst all that fire-fighting work) for sure.

Push on, everyone! :)

And so, my 6-month long break finally comes to an end

After spending some of the grandest times of my life in HK/Indonesia/China/Taiwan/India in the past 6 months, it's finally time to get down to some serious work, regretfully. The third installment (out of four) of our practicum 'debt' was dished out to us on Monday.

first-day-of-school outfit

So far, it's only been a week, but things are crazy enough to drive me up the wall. There seems to be an endless amount of lesson plans and presentation slides that have to be completed. It's the first time that we'll be receiving a grade for our efforts (or lack thereof) so it shouldn't come as a surprise that all of us are feeling so stressed up about the darned powerpoint slides, amongst many other things. 

I want to say that I'm coping well, but I probably won't say that now because I'm really not. Not for now anyway. Hopefully though, I'll be able to get used to the hang of things in another 2-3 days. 

As for now, all I want to do is let out a big scream.

so busy I can cry.

At (busy) times like that, I wish I'd learned how to better multi-task.

school daze

Growing up, Mumsy never forgot to remind me what a bad girl/student/daughter I was whenever she could, and that always made me feel like the worst kid around. I know exactly what's it like to feel as though you've self-esteem issues but I also now know she probably didn't mean it back then and she's just behaving like most other Singaporean Chinese parent; always ready to lecture and never giving enough credit to the kid. 

Anyway, the stipulated 5-week teaching attachment of my second year ended 2 weeks ago. Like last year, I had to take time out from our long mid-year break to spend at my allocated schools. But unlike last year, where we merely observed lessons at a primary and secondary school for a week each, I stayed put for 5 weeks at a primary school and got to interact much more with pupils this time round. 

And learnt what an angel I was. So, I went back to Mumsy, wagged my finger and asked her, "Why were you so unhappy about me back then?"

I mean, how could I be such a bad kid when the naughtiest things I did in school were merely throwing tiny chunks of erasers into the front of my classmate's (notice I didn't say "friend") blouse to shut her up when we got into heated arguments about who should give out worksheets, and sticking fallen feather-dusters' chicken feathers into some girl's ponytail because I got bored of the teacher's monotonous droning during big-book reading.

And I guess to Mumsy, academic results = good/bad discipline. Not exactly the best equation you can put together and I shall not go into the things that I had to go through when I scored something less than a perfect 10 for spellings in my lower primary school days, but you can be assured that they didn't leave very pretty marks on my arms/legs/other-unfortunate-body-parts.

So... enough digressing and back to the teaching attachment. I was made to observe two Primary 3 classes, one a higher-ability class and the other a lower-ability one (and yes, pupils are still separated into classes according to their learning abilities) for about 2 weeks before I decided "NO. No more observations or I am going to fall asleep in class with the kids." And I got to teach for the first time, finally. 

Then I found out that teachers do not merely impart knowledge to their pupils. They also have to complete many administrative tasks, break up fights/squabbles among pupils, take charge of CCAs, sit for endless meetings, finish teaching the syllabus even when there's a lot of interruptions in the forms of workshops/concerts/celebrations/etc, speak/complain to parents about their children's attitudes/work, mail out good behavior cards, be in charge of concerts and celebrations, account to the principal and vice-principal when pupils misbehave or do poorly in tests/exams, bring pupils out for excursions/field-trips, put on a fierce front even though you are really at your wits' end and crumbling inside/dying from suppressed laughter, and of course, have trainee teachers come into your class to disrupt the flow of lessons.

But all thanks to my CTs (teachers whose classes I'm crashing) and the two classes, I now know slightly more about teaching, managing and engaging primary school kids than what I used to (basically zero knowledge). I learnt that the same trick may/may not work for 2 classes with different learning abilities, primary 3 pupils love it if you can include games and videos (something interactive) in your lessons, there are only two favourite colours (pink and blue) and this is reflected in their choice of schoolbags, they react strongly to the words "boyfriend" and "girlfriend", lowering your tone gets their attention and signals an ominous occurrence, bimbotic behaviour starts at 9 years of age, some children speak faster than they can think, some children stand up to answer questions even before they thought about the answers, boys can have higher pitches than girls when they are 9, the points-reward system works quite well. 

No other term would be more apt than "eye-opener" to describe my 5 weeks at the allocated school. Apart from all the nitty gritty teaching-related/classroom-management bits, I also heard about different 'horrors' that some of the permanent teachers had went through. When my CT told me of pupils who would hit teachers or throw chairs at them, I thought she was kidding. Only she wasn't. I've heard of such things happening in secondary schools and ITEs, but primary school, aren't the students a little young here for furniture-tossing? Oh... and if you're interested to know what you can do if you ever get caught in such a scenario, don't laugh now... sit on the chair quickly before the kid can raise it! Apparently it works quite well.

And this is probably the Nth time I'm saying this, but you know how some teachers threaten to call parents occasionally when the pupils misbehave? That doesn't work so well in this school, but threats to call the police work like a charm, most of the time.

On my last day, I had lunch with my CT and two more colleagues at Holland V. We ate and talked about the pupils, and their parents. And then I felt a deep sense of dread, knowing that I am definitely going to be stuck in some helpless situations in the near future when I finally have to deal with parents... I need to start racking my brain for solutions to them. Anyhow, you will not believe how irresponsible some parents can get. Parents who are drug addicts, pedal contraband cigarettes, receive financial assistance from the school but drive big cars to collect the money... just to name a few examples. In such instances, it seems totally irrelevant to be angry with the kids if they are the ones giving you problems in class. You really won't be surprised to find out why they ended up the way they are. I can't help but feel sorry for them, and right now, I can't help but not do anything else. 

All that sharing by my CT and colleagues made me realize how lucky I've been, growing up. And it also made me realize how little I know about the world of students. I won't be wrong to say that I've been leading a very sheltered life in all the schools that I've been to in my life, but not witnessing any traumatic bloody fights doesn't mean that they don't happen... and this attachment's shown me what an ignorant twat I've been. I'm looking forward to my next attachment, and since I definitely will not be posted back to this same school, I'm going to look forward to facing an entirely different set of problems in the next one. Till then, I hope the kids that I've worked with in this school will study and play hard!

ps: I miss being called Miss Chang... a little.

Filler.

What's in Miss Chang's lunchbox today?

I'm into my second last week of internship now, and so far, I am very thankful that things have been rather good despite the very draining markings and early hours.

Today, I had my first official (ungraded) lesson observation with the lower-ability class that I am attached to for the past 3 weeks. Not surprisingly, being the nervous wreck that I was, I sped through the first few slides of the chapter on Graphs unintentionally; thank goodness it wasn't graded. My CT mentioned to me briefly post-lesson that things got better as time went by, and I was sooooooooooo heartened by her comments, even though there are still a lot of improvements to be made. Next up, I'll be doing the life cycles of chicken and frogs with them next Thursday (I'm very excited to teach this topic!)... and as a tuning-in activity for them for the chapter, each class has been given 10 live caterpillars each to look after; so that they will be able to observe the different stages of growth of a butterfly. I can't wait to hear them squeal in disgust/delight tomorrow when the teacher assigns pupils to bring them home hurhurhur.

Anyway, I just want to end by adding that my CTs are two very cool ladies. One of them went for Jay Chou's concert over the weekend with her 17 year-old son!!!

Picking up the beads again...

While I was at Kaka's place for the last time last week, I saw a whole bunch of interesting stuff that his mum was going to give away. Items that were either too much of a hassle to bring back to Hong Kong since they could easily get them there, and I saw this:

It's the most colourful abacus I've ever seen, and all that colours make me really happy! I asked Kaka if I could have that and he said okay, so here it is on my study table right now. I used to go for abacus classes at the community centre when I was much younger, probably Kaka's age, and I remember enjoying those classes a lot.

I can vaguely remember what I've learnt; but I guess I sort of stopped at subtraction back then. Looking at some online tutorials, I'm hoping to get back some of that memory, and also learn how to multiply and divide with the abacus.

Anyway, I think it's really a great way to get kids interested in mathematics; the interactiveness of it all. If only there's a way to get most of them kids in schools to learn how to use the abacus, I suppose it'll help sharpen their minds much more.

No more mess at the create post page

I meant to update more but my "Create New Post" page was in a mess for the past few days; icons disappearing and so on. Looked online for the solution (apparently it's a singnet problem?), and I finally managed to get the page to load normally again after some online help that's been circulating.

Anyway, two of my tutees have finally gone back to Hong Kong on the 23rd; they're not coming back for the next few years so the odds of seeing them again are pretty low. They're my very first students in tutoring, and I have been really lucky to have been able to teach them, even though they can be super annoying at times. I've heard of stories whereby students don't click with their tutors, or parents that are really demanding and stingy from friends, and I can only count myself lucky that I've had it much easier than them.

we were having breakfast together at the dining table; that's kaka after trying to imitate a dog's way of eating... sigh boys.

My tutees' mum has been nothing but nice to me, always offering to prepare breakfast/lunch/snacks for me when she knows that I haven't eaten, never fails to give me tuition fees on time, hands out treats on special occasions (mooncakes, red packets, dumplings on birthday celebrations) and even gave me a big box of Rocher. She left me her HK number and welcomed me to look them up if I happen to visit Hong Kong in future so that we can go yum-cha together.

the Chans and me, at the balcony in their Tanjong Rhu condo.

On the last tutoring day I had with them (that's 20th July), I got them some pastries from Emicakes and she insisted that we sit down together to eat them. I gave all of them a big hug before bidding the final goodbyes. Never thought that the time to part will be so soon; I guess I was sort of caught off-guard. Will definitely miss having them around...

On the day I turned 21, I headed down to Orchard Plaza for my monthly waxing appointment... and, visited the tattoo parlour (8 Volts) next door. I've been contemplating (for the longest time ever) on what my first tattoo should be, and I finally settled on Ai (love), amongst a tiny dolphin and a nautical star.

My artist, Jeremy, printed out the stencil and transferred it onto my right hip after applying some cooling lotion; it left behind a purple-blue outline of what and where my tattoo was going to be. I looked at it in the mirror abit, and decided it was a little too big for my liking. Got Jeremy to print a smaller stencil and he wiped the original one away. Once I gave the green light, he got the tattoo chair ready and had me lie down on my side.

He started off with relatively shorter and less painful 'strokes' as he did the outlining. It felt like something really sharp was digging into my skin and I squirmed in the chair for a bit before I got used to that sensation. The shading wasn't as painful because he used a needle with a rounder and thicker tip. He talked to me so that I could keep my mind off the pain a little, and was constantly checking if the pain was bearable for me.

We were done in 45 minutes and he took a few pictures of my freshly inked hip. I thought it was quite cool how the Ai character was imprinted on the paper towel with my blood as Jeremy wiped it away. After so much talk about it, here's a picture!

can't reallys see all that blood eh?

It's healing right now, but a few of my shirts and shorts have been stained; the wound gets wet everytime after I shower. I've been trying to pick at the dried-up bits but I think it'll take me a few more days before all the scabs fall off.

Headed down to JB the day after with some windsurfers and it was a food-filled day.

my slice of carrot cake with a candle. cute.

KTOWY night-out on Thursday and I had a big surprise. I thought we were having dinner at Lagoon Food Centre, but I saw them in the little pavilion instead. They'd prepared some food the whole afternoon and cabbed down carrying all that barang so that everyone could have a good time.

I just realized WJ got cut off.. hee

I know they really put in a lot of effort in all that preparation and I feel really lucky to have them love me like that!

look at my sushi 'cake'! they did it all by themselves!

I couldn't stop smiling after seeing the 'cake'; I have really cute friends who come up with the most creative ideas.

all smiles here and tears moments later... haha. got a hair-cut, if you can see!

Instead of a cake-smashing session, they decided that it's a better idea for me to finish up a sushi with a wasabi-smeared bottom. The group was definitely generous with the wasabi and I could feel my nostrils and throat on fire after I managed to shove it down my throat on the third attempt. JM managed to capture the super unglam moment on video, no less. Maybe I'll put it up one of these days; so that you can hear me scream in protest.

it was a great amount of sushi; I had whatever was leftover from the night for lunch and dinner the next day.

We ended the night in crazy snapping frenzy; rushing for timed shots, jumping around and lots of laughter in between and games with forfeits like sushi-eating, sushi-eating and sushi-eating hurhur. I love you guys!

Oh, and I just discovered the Macro function on my camera after SK asked me about me some days back. Here's a mini dream-catcher that JM got for each of us during his recent Taiwan trip!

There's parent-teacher meeting for my new kid in school so she's taking a little longer than usual to get back home. So here I am, sitting on their porch, enjoying the lush greenery, chirping birds and buzzing insects surrounding me. It's my 5th time here and I'm still amazed at how magnificent this place is, in terms of it's size. It can easily pass off as a hotel, with that swimming pool and grand porch. A pool in the house, it'd be perfect when I'm having my late-night swim cravings.

How do people get so rich, seriously. Not just rich, but mad rich la.

Anyway, it feels like the house is pretty much cut off from the rest of the world out there; hidden by all the trees that line the perimeter of it. Seems like a perfect escapade from the busy urban life; like a holiday home... How lucky of the residents of this bungalow to be able to retreat back home to such a lovely place everyday.