Designing the PE unit plan

Despite all my rants about NIE, I got to say that the PESS programme does a great job at training new PE teachers in terms of inculcating proper attitudes and imparting the necessary skills. However, there are still some things no one told us about regarding the designing PE lessons for your school, these factors being invisible until you really get into the school and start taking in the culture there.

Are the students obedient?
My kids need the activities to be interesting for them to stay on task, so I'll have to think hard on what might interest them. 'Lame' stuff better don't try, if there's the need to do anything remotely embarrassing, I'll need to demonstrate it professionally first and explain the rationale behind the action. Relays should be used with caution too - it takes hell lot of time to arrange them in lines, and even then they will not stay like that for long. They also limit participation time, of course.

Are the kids skilled?
My sec ones? Nope. My school is not a niche school for any sports, and so kids come in with very average motor skills. Frisbee last term was a great choice because of that, as very little personal skill is needed, and learning tactical movements improve their game tremendously. Soccer and basketball is out - focus on sports that use rudimentary skills instead, like softball.

Are the kids smart?
My kids have average comprehension skills, therefore complex activities and games are out. Rules must be simplified, and instructions short and to the point, with them best illustrated and written out for visual learners. For most activities I have to give them a verbal orientation, walk through and demonstrate the tasks in detail before releasing them to it, and even then they will still be lost.

Are the resources there?
My school will have adequate equipment with some recent new purchases but space arrangement is rather odd. The hall is considered out of bounds for PE use because of wushu classes. There's one basketball court and one volleyball court placed together, an odd arrangement. The quadrangle is useful but the area cannot be prepared for lessons in advance as assembly takes place there.

Also, I learnt last term during practicum that

• Kids cannot be expected to stand at a spot quietly to listen to instructions, squatting can only work for a while, and they refuse to sit on wet grass.
• The best way for them to get into necessary groups in the shortest time possible must be conceived before the lesson, taking into consideration all factors like gender ratio, ability level, cliques, disruptive students distribution etc.
  
• Lots of space between playing areas must be allocated as a 'safety corridor' - they got no respect for playing field boundaries (Well, at least they are enthusiastic).
• No matter how good your lesson is, if the morning sun is blazing hot, making them do drills or any activities according to specific directions is impossible.
  

Very challenging eh? Well I'm gearing up for the battle right now, and will make myself finish the entire term's lessons before the 18th. As someone with a big moustache likes to say, 'Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance'!

Dumbing down education 'for the kids'

There's this post-practicum sharing session in NIE today for the lit people, and a Lit coordinator from a certain school was there to share with us her school's wonderful literature programme. I can't remember much about it, but it seems like just drama drama drama to me. She boasts about her school's musical production, scripted, composed, choreographed all by the teachers themselves. Drama classes. Drama festivals. Pilot project of introducing Media studies.

What irritates me to no end is that efforts like these are branded as being groundbreaking and innovative, a supposed improvement from the traditional chalk-and-talk classes. These people always insists that teachers today cannot connect with kids using traditional teaching methods, and will go on to rattle about how good the kids are with technology now (playing games, using MSN, blogging et cetera).

So what will kids get out of it all? They have a lot of fun playing, maybe they will end up liking drama, but ultimately how far can they take this learning into the exams? To learn requires discipline and patience, and a huge love for reading. We can't always think that kids today are all hyperactive and cannot stand reading, and therefore we need to rework the curriculum to make them learn other things instead. Any kid in any generation will be playful and hyperactive, so why the concession to students today? Why should we lower our academic expectations of them just because they use the computer more now? Why the war against reading, independent learning, and scholarship?

We should only use these things to spark and sustain their interest in things, but we should always emphasise that there is a place for book reading and learning, thinking and writing. No one will bother making things easy for them as they move along the paper chase route, and we have a responsibility to help them learn in different ways, not just those they are comfortable with.

Lazy days to come

Good riddance to the CME workshop yesterday. I sat through it without doing any of the group activities as a gesture of passive resistance. Waiting to see if the other upcoming enrichment talks during the induction period will piss me off as much.

I'm pretty much bored with such routines, lax though they may be. Somehow when things are easy, daily trips down to NIE to attend some short events can make irritate you to no end because the reason why they call you back for is so trivial. Meanwhile, I will try to finish up all my PE lesson plans for the new term before school starts, that is a must!

Looking forward to my first driving test on Friday (wish me luck!), and a Phuket trip coming Monday to Thursday to bask in the sun and allow me to feel lazy without guilt. Will want to watch Shrek 3, Ocean's 13, F4 Rise of the Silver Surfer, and Transformers; why does good movies all come together? I suppose I should look forward to the short paddling expedition next weekend too, though leading a trip is quite stressful.

Back to the old days...

I'm going for a meeting to help lead a kayak expedition for my Odac juniors this afternoon, it was supposed to be led by Bings but I had to take over because he cannot commit anymore. Roland will be coming along and we will go to the bouldering gym later too.

Yesterday too, I went for canoe polo training for the first time this term, and will go again on Sunday evening, cycling there and back too. And I haven't done that for like half a year or something.

I've changed a hell lot from a year or two back, and I'll hardly be repeating this coincidence of doing all these activities I used to enjoy week in and out altogether again. I now climb once in a while just for variety and am not interested to paddle in local waters anymore. I think the upcoming canoe polo national champs will be my last, after which I will sell my entire boat kit away. I wouldn't achieve anything by staying in the sport, and it will eventually be too hard just to go for trainings.

My life priorities have shifted tremendously toward far-sighted goals. Somehow that makes day-to-day life much less exciting or even dreary, like I feel I'm too tired to play nowadays. Even the thought of going on holidays doesn't really excite me now - I'm sure going somewhere will be fine, but I know that I'll be perfectly happy just lazing around and make the day go by leisurely. Is that 'bad', or what.

Civics and Moral Education workshop

... is a freaking waste of time. It makes me wonder if people shifts to a job in the MOE HQ just to get a good time, because they are clearly very incompetent teachers. All the instructors for the different groups uses the exact same lesson plan, and they said they are there to teach us creative CME lesson delivery. They can't bluff anyone with their lack of presentation and management skills, peppered with cliches motivational phrases and useless activities that seems to be designed only for us to keep ourselves away by doing something.

Such workshops are seriously crap, and the instructors really should wake up and realise that they have been cheating for a living all this while. First, they should ditch those group activities in which mahjong paper is the essential pedagogical tool for showing the groups' collective wisdom when asked to present on certain topics. Come on, no one is freaking learning anything by contributing like this. And then, maybe ditch that stupid thing called powerpoint too. If that all there is to MOE's creative use of ICT (which they expect teachers to design and produce for every lesson day in and day out, nevermind that teachers have many other tasks to do in real life?), it is pathetic.

Demonstrate the concrete activities that kids can enjoy and participate in and ditch that philosophical crap on principles of CME and its design rationale. Show me the 'real and authentic' content which can actually be presented in class and stop asking us about why we need to set a proper tone of environment et cetera. Having gone through 2 years in NIE, we all know how to recite those meaningless catchphrases and big ideas; why ask us to tell them to you?

Tragedy

PE student-teacher killed in Johor camping accident
Posted: 15 May 2007 1557 hrs

A 27-year-old Physical Education student-teacher has died in a camping accident at Mount Ophir in Johor.

Mohammad Rohaizam Bin Tumadi, a first-year Postgraduate Diploma student-teacher at the NIE died from injuries received when a tree fell on him during an early morning downpour on Tuesday.

He was given first aid at the camp site and at first light, was taken down Mount Ophir to emergency services which had been activated.

Mohammad Rohaizam was then sent to Tangkak Hospital in Johor where he was pronounced dead.

The accident happened just one day before the end of the Outdoor Experiential Camp, a compulsory seven-day module for all first-year Physical Education student-teachers enrolled in NIE’s teacher preparation programmes.

The camp is to introduce PE student-teachers to Outdoor Education as a teaching tool.

There were 65 participants in the group at Mount Ophir, which was one of three training camps. - CNA/sf

---

I cannot imagine the terrifying scene at the campsite at dawn, my juniors having to confront death and reflect upon their own mortality in fear and horror. As someone keenly involved in the outdoor scene, I am interested to know the particular circumstances surrounding the fatality, but right now I am only a senior who mourned for the loss of a life in the wilderness that I wanted to share with everyone else.

Looking at the bottom of society

Not all is well in this garden city.

I went back to NIE for 'lesson' today, and what we actually did was to sit around talk about our experiences during Practicum. The more entertaining accounts are, sadly, those from the lousier schools, and my classmates will tell us one atrocious things after another about the school or the students.

We all know there are schools in which teachers hope they wouldn't end up in, and parents hope their kids wouldn't be sent to. These places are hotbeds for discipline problems, with the recalcitrant students influencing others to defy the school authorities by example. These are the places where the police comes regularly, where parents get called down to office often, and where hope of academic excellence rests solely on the effective enforcement of discipline on the students.

We can't blame teachers for wanting to avoid these teaching hells, where maintaining discipline is the biggest task and lessons can pass without time for any teaching to be done. The kids often have families with their own set of overwhelming problems, and we can't expect to change them too; I only hope that intellectual maturity will set in soon to make them think right.

And I look at this dismal state of affairs and I realised that often, I'm there to help shape their character for the better, more than anything else. Schools are only interested in examination statistics, so it's up to us teacher to do the only thing we can do for them.

A visit to the library

After a visit to the TCM clinic at Changi hospital lsat thursday, I decided to waste time at the library before meeting a friend for dinner. It has been a really long time since I visited one, and of course I didn't really thought that it was a 'waste of time'.

In fact, I was so excited that I spent more than 2 hours inside browsing voraciously without looking at the time. I scanned out for useful books on teaching, grabbed various poetry anthologies, browsed books on various sports, and hoisted almost 20 books altogether to the nearest chair to peruse. In the end, I photocopied a few pages from a few books for some interesting tidbits, and borrowed five in the end.

Here's the most interesting one: I found this book titled 'Roses, Origami and Math' by Toshikazu Kawasaki on the bookshelves holding teaching literature -

This origami master teaches one how to fold various geometrical shapes as modules to form bigger structures, and attempts in some arcane way to introduce maths teaching in the art of folding. Take a look at another of this mind-boggling stuff (to me at least) -

It is just oddly cool, isn't it? Anyway, here are some roses of Kawasaki's original rose; this book teaches a modified version with much more petals that I am still struggling to understand and fold.

Pretentious papers

The Straits Times is only good for mere entertainment, and perhaps its report for foreign news. It is good enough to put up a professional front of honest journalism, but when home news is concerned, it doesn't take much for anyone to see how selective they are in news reportage, and how it works hand in hand to promote news with other agencies for Singaporeans to hear and take note of. In this way, they literally create news out of nothing.

And I hate writers such as Andy Ho, with his long-drawn insistent diatribes (such as the one on Wifi mooching) which goes on for days, trying to shove his own brand of logic down everyone's throat. Read his article today on why plastic bags are good too, wihch uses a long stream of evidences to justify his claim. Persistent, pedantic, and utterly irritating. Someone needs to kick his ass and tell him that the issue is about 'Bringing your own bag', and not plastic bag versus paper bag! For letting such writings published, the editors have to share in the blame too no? Let's not start talking about the other silly bimbotic column writings by Sumiko and others too, the lists goes on and on.

So. You have a paper with a great design and good syndicated content; however, the poor quality of local column writings exposes its weaknesses. That, and its work in blatant newsmaking for agencies and authorities, along with the lack of multiple perspectives/prejudiced reportage in considering the really important social issues here, really shows the discerning reader that it is a paper not to be trusted.

Why the NAPFA test have to go

The compulsory fitness testing under the NAPFA scheme is an outdated harebrained idea that continues to plague physical education at the secondary school level; here are just some of the reasons why it should be scrapped -

• Growth and maturation issues - I'm sure a lot of research goes into devising the test and making sure that the average person in each age category can pass the test, but with adolescents maturing at different age, how can the test be fair?
  
• Impossible to train for test- it is not possible to see improvements in fitness by formally working out in PE class once a week for an hour! How can boys be expected to do pullups when none of the usual sports taught in PE classes can improve upper body muscular strength significantly? So why devise a test where the subjects either pass comfortably or fail without a chance?
• It promotes lousy lessons - teachers make students run rounds and do calisthenics and blame upcoming NAPFA testing for the sessions (it cannot be called lessons anymore), even when everyone knows it is useless. New and contract teachers will learn from these negative lessons and take it as the norm. It promotes sloth and laziness to teach game skills.
• Curriculum time is misused - preparation for testing means that curriculum time for teaching physical skills is lost.
  
• Students are not motivated to be physically active - who likes PE when it seems like strength training every time? The tests is also demeaning and embarrassing for students who do not do well in them.
  
• It promotes cheating - schools need to get decent passes, and some want the awards for doing well in it, therefore cheating is the only option. How is it possible for a school to get such a high passing rate considering the average obese student population in each school?
• It distracts everyone from the true aims of PE - which is to promote lifelong involvement in sports, a healthy lifestyle, character development through sports, support for the sporting industry etc.
  

My sec 1 kids are taking in next term, how? Here's what I'll do -

• Plan skill tests such as agility tests, balance tests etc that are interesting and can encourage the students to be motivated in trying their best in future tests.
• Plan minor games that promotes active movement of the students with game objectives. Making them run around is better than making them run rounds.
  
• Exercise circuits are tried and proven to be quite engaging, even though the students say they hate it.
  
• Teaching technique - in jumping, running, stretching etc.
  
• Plan for variety! One week of each type of activity.
  

All these are done to introduce students to different types of exercises and components of fitness, and also to give some semblance of fitness training, for what it's worth. Any other ideas? Let me know!

Settling in

My posting is confirmed, and I'm staying in this school after practicum is over this Friday. There's a note over a table with my name on it, to be claimed by me when I return next term. My HOD is going to try send me to MOE rope course training in early June, and maybe even climb Mt. Kinabalu with the kids in late May. And I'm going to rack my brains thinking of the SOW for the rest of the year (so that equipments can be bought in time).

We went over to another school just now to pick up some old fibreglass kayaks that were kindly donated to us. A PE teacher over there is apparently very chummy with my HOD, and he used to teach in my JC too. He's about 40 years old or over, and still talks about being observed and assessed, about wanting to just teach PE full-time only, things I thought only beginning teachers will complain about. He also just submitted a resume to an autonomous school to try for a transfer. Whether successful or not, such moves will bring about unsettling consequences. I thought, wow, what will make me want to move around somewhere else if I'm at that stage? I never even thought that far before actually; right now I only hope that I will slowly pick up enough game skills to teach different sports confidently.

Well, back to my present circumstances then. Think about upcoming SOW, plans for my ODAC, lesson plans et cetera...

Don't spoil my music!

Damn it, the current prime time serial drama on channel 8 is freaking irritating for randomly throwing in snippets of classical music every few minutes; the producer ought to be shot for abusing great music like this. It's not that classical music cannot be fun, but I'm a purist and I decry any attempt to mix high art with such low-class entertainment. Argh.

See the sea...

There is an screening of a sea kayaking video this Friday evening the 11th of May at National Stadium Theatrette - This is the Sea movie show is organised by kayakasia, probably the only dealers in folding crafts on the island.

My kayaking buddies are mostly going for it, but I'm kind of reluctant. Have been lazy to go out these days, and actually I bought This is the sea 2 online previously, and I guess watching that will keep me satisfied. I think the event is ultimately a chance for paddlers to meet up, and excellent idea really. But somehow, I have no desire to see people and talk about paddling anymore. I'm too much out of the sport to be interested in just talking about it, and not sure who I'll want to choose to interact with too (definitely not those people who like to compare their paddling adventures).

I think I used to enjoy this type of thing, but quietly, some things have changed.

Poetry

In planning some revision lesson for literature classes, I looked at a lot of poems recently, and dug out poetry that I bought over the years to search for those which might be more palatable to the typical neighbourhood secondary school kid. There are the funny silly ones at Giggle Poetry, serious ones that I typed out from this book Teaching with Fire, and of course the classics like Wordsworth and Blake, which I decided the kids will probably find too 'cheem'.

Reading so much poetry these days makes me feel rather more thoughtful and retrospective - poetry does tend to make people feel rather melancholic, these little written pieces of bittersweet realities and dreams. Let me share with you one here from Czeslaw Milosz - although it is a blissfully happy poem, it still conveys a zen-like contentment rather than exuberant joy.

Gift
Czeslaw Milosz

A day so happy.
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was no thing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that once I was the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.

A quote

I don't know why this thought appeared in my head:

The brave are those who dared to deeply question themselves.

(And perhaps find some answers too.)

Why laptops should be phased out from schools

This article on the phasing out of laptop from schools in the US is really thought-provoking - Do we really need technology to help our kids learn? Everyone knows that kids today are very much gadget and tech-savvy, so is there really a need to pander to their learning style and make them use computers in learning?

Old friends

Chanced upon an old friend on the bus yesterday - Yunyang was my primary school buddy during the P3-P4 years. I cannot remember if we were ever in the same class though, and I think we only knew each other by being in the Scouting group. He was in the top class up till P6, was a very good sprinter for the school and probably had the biggest calves in the school then. Given his athleticism then, his rounded face today showed some considerable bulk on his frame now, and it felt odd that he kept remarking in amazement at my muscular build now.

After school, his classmates and I will religiously make a visit to the AMK central library to read books, and most of the time end up at one of the guy's place within the central area itself to play games that I cannot recall now. During weekends, I will go over to his place in Sin Ming and play soccer with his friends at a field nearby. And there was another scout friend with us and I think we called ourselves the musketeers - neither of us got to meet up with him after graduating through.

I got off the bus the next stop immediately, but we managed to exchange phone numbers. I sent him a missed call to leave him my number, and sms him too telling him how delighted I was to have met him. For the truth is that I used to wonder how these significant people in the earlier part of my life is doing now, and think about those idyllic carefree times of my life. Nothing has changed with our chance meeting yesterday; I realised that the sweet frozen past is always preferable to the strange and irrevocable changes time can induce in a man.

Are you listening?

Is anyone keeping note of the happenings for this year at the Singapore Arts Festival? Despite me paying (attention) only for the music events, I think they do have a great program overall. There is a wonderful variety of events to choose from, and no longer do we need to import a big-name orchestra over here to play some popular warhorses to create a ticket rush at the box-office.

Instead, the idea of having a famous composer-conductor like Tan Dun to come over perform his work is a big enough draw, while still involving the SSO in some innovative music making. The T'ang quartet is also up to playing contemporary music (as it their forte) and collaborating with the theatre to create a unique environment. I've got Wei Zhe asking me about going for the Video Game Symphony too, a nice idea but just not my cup of tea unfortunately.

I'll be going for the Taraf De Haïdouks performance, a group of gyspy musicians from Romania. Their culture has inspired many dramatic showpieces like the zigeunerweisen (Gipsy Airs), and it must be a treat to watch these people perform live! I had to choose between going for this and An Arabian Passion, which attempts to create bridges between Bach and the baroque to the middle eastern music tradition, and perhaps even more.

So which one are you go for?

Disappointed days

On days (like yesterday and today) when things don't go well, my whole being is drained of energy and motivation to do anything productive at all. Or failing to be productive, I find it hard to try to relax and forgot too.

The daily frustration is always an accumulation of unfortunate incidents. Yesterday it started with the morning rain, which caused my CT to do an observation-assessment of a wet weather program. That happened too last week, and I didn't want her to see the same silly thing also; I spent an hour to conjure up a circuit training fitness plan spontaneously, asking my co-teacher to handle the current class in my stead. It was a flop - the 10 stations made it hard to for me to monitor the students, and with another class around I didn't want to disrupt their lesson too much too. Then I realised that my co-teacher had sent the previous class back to the classroom and gave the excuse that there's no place for her to do activities.

Then my lit lesson yesterday was to get the class do a simple unseen poem question, but many did not perform to expectations, and I couldn't hold their attention when going through the answers. The same thing happened just now, when my lesson was being observed. Apparently the questions were too difficult and they simply cannot engage with the task. I took my CT's previous advise on doing group work and it was a disaster - I don't think group work works at all at this level. I could not finish before she had to leave, and after she left for another class, I just ended my lesson abruptly. The class could not detect the note of resignation in my demeanor and happily reorganised their tables, spontaneously bursting into chatter again.

It feels better now that whatever what happened, the observations are done. It seemed as if I have given up on the effort suddenly in this last lap, but from here I learnt a truism about teaching - so many things can go wrong in the class, and one has to decide what should be made right, and what to tolerate.