A painful career

It is so hard to teach. Day in and out a teacher fights to control emotions, trying not to get provoked, not to show disappointment, not to express frustration. He/she needs to keep cool and think of the best response to a hundred different verbal exchanges each day, the best answers that can encourage and reinforce positive behavioural changes but not show disrespect to the child. I tried hard to control a relief class today because I wasn't expecting it at all, and was reminded of some important classroom norms-setting rules for class management. I paid the price for it with my strained larynx.

And it is also painful when I observe poor lessons being conducted during PE classes. Pity the poor kids who are so innocent and forgiving, to tolerate useless and unproductive PE lessons every week but still maintain a healthy respect (or is it fear?) of their teacher. I could tear up the entire lesson I observed with a blunt critique of it. It it hard to bear the sight of it, and I want to distance myself as far from the lesson as possible, and at the same time hoping to attend to the kids personally to make things better.

No I'm not giving up yet. I live for challenges, and I want the kids to do likewise. It will be a daily trial, to be challenged for every teaching period, but I will go at it, each day at a time.

You are what you eat

Better teach your kids to eat healthy next time, cos the restaurants outside sure ain't gonna do that for you. Monstrously rich (in calories) dishes and meals are appearing on the food menus in USA, and with the appearance of Carl Junior fastfood restaurants etc, such food is gonna come into Singapore very soon I think. This report says that

"Some American restaurant chains have menus that contain 2,000-calorie appetizers, 2,000-calorie main courses and 1,700-calorie desserts"

Everyone should consume around, 1,500-2,000 calories a day? Meaning that unless you want a quick fix and consume 1 dish in place of meals for the rest of the day, avoid these monstrous foods like the plague. But then again, you will fail to consume essential enough nutrients for the day by eating a single dish.

Schools are where dead trees go

School uses up an extraordinary amount of paper daily, by both students and teachers and other staffs. Multiply that amount for all the schools in Singapore, and add on to the paper consumption in Singapore's offices, and imagine how much trees have died for us.

Thing is, so much of that paper is unnecessary. Time management tips for teachers advocates that papers should, as much as possible, be read and pass through your hands only once. There's a management chart that helps you decide where to route the paper to, and eventually the ideal situation is for the paper to be deemed irrelevant and be destroyed, or filed up somewhere and not be read again as far as possible.

Save the trees!

Bees and Honey

Karen's place got this small tree in the garden that just grew a bee hive, and a pest exterminator was called in this morning to eradicate the menace.

The hive in question was about the size of a mug, and all the pest control guy did was to spray gas from a canister onto it ("Class 2 gas" he said, so now we know), plucked off the branch, and handed it to us. I didn't see the job and never did see any bees around at all.

This is the chunk that is still stuck to the branch, showing the honey oozing out of the honeycomb cells, looks delicious!

This bit dropped off after we handled the branch after a while - the waxy honeycomb is very soft. You can see that the larvae grubs inside, thank goodness they are stored separately from the honey cells.

Here you can see another view of the branch, with the flower pollen stored in the cells exposed to us.

I scrapped the honeycomb bits out into a bowl with a stick and sort of compressed the honeycomb for the honey to ooze out.

The man said the gas is poisonous but it wasn't sprayed directly onto the hive so it can be eaten, and so i tried. Chewed the honeycomb was a bit, swallowed a bit after I ingested the honey, and spit out the rest of the tasteless wax. Hockey the dog lapped out the rest of the honey happily.

Trying and failing

Overheard at ECP today while blading, a boy lamenting to his mum after a fall:

"Mamee I always fall down on the bike one..."

I would want to tell the boy: "But you can't get better if you don't try and take a fall!"

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Anyway, it was seriously overcrowded at ECP today, it was double the usual crowd size and number of tents along the beach there. I was there blading, was caught in the rain halfway, and a stretch of road between Marine Parade and Mountbatten flooded. But wow, what green clear waters around Singapore today! And it really made me wishing to be out on a kayak then.

Happy CNY!

Of course, the obligatory well wishes for the Chinese New Year. As usual, I wouldn't be replying to all those guys who sent me SMSes of well-wishes - I'm just not conditioned to send replies to these la paiseh.

Am appreciating the holiday, the Bah Kwa, and the chance to pig out and gamble at the same time haha. Are we watching movie/visiting anyone's place (or mine?) on Monday Xia? Not much plans but seems like a few movies are worth watching these days. Maybe I'll go skate too. Read the texts I borrowed on PE teaching, make notes, study for friday's test.

But mahjong will take priority this holiday season...huat ah!

Waste

NTU/NIE generates huge amounts of waste everyday from the use of disposable utensils in its canteens. I was handed 3 plastic bags buying a meal at MacDonalds just now, not to mention that the silly Fillet-O-Fish is now packaged in a paper box to disguise the down-sized burger.

Singapore is just talking for the sake of making noise when they address environmental issues. If they really want to reduce waste, why use disposable utensils, install paper towels in toilets, hand out tons of plastic bags, and make recycling things such a difficult task for people? Reduce waste by not implementing these practices, and consumers will just adapt to them. I'm sure no one will kick up a big fuss about not using disposable utensils or paper towels, not for long anyway. Make aunties bring their own groceries bag, etc etc. It's not that hard. It just need a change of mindset.

A genie wish

Have you ever thought about what you will like to have if you have one (let's not get greedy here) wish from a genie?

The movies tells us to be careful of what we wish for, for more often than not, greed for material things doesn't solve everything. So I'll wish to be the violinist in the world, a Paganini or Ernst incarnate, if you would like.

I often dream that if this wish is ever fulfilled, I would spend a day each week or month busking on the busy streets, playing solo Bach to the masses and donating earnings to charity. I think the solo violin's sound is so starkly powerful, that no one need know solo Bach to appreciate the lyricism and the force of its sounds. The world can do with some incidental moment of pleasure and delight, and I myself am one of those who love to be delighted by the small trivial things (usually the acts of children) that sometimes just happen to be seen on the streets.

Alas! If only I can still play my G major scale in tune!

Come on, World!

End of e-learning week (holiday), time for a new week! Ready to take on the softball assessment, sports physiology test!

Badminton training updates

First of all, I wowed myself by managing to match a badminton kaki in a singles game yesterday, something I never thought imaginable because his defence is rock-solid and he can send smashes back up to you sky high consistently. It looks like my lessons paid off!

I also did very much better in playing net replies, but it still is one of my weakest part of the game, and i usually overdo the delicate shot if I have to bound up hastily from the backcourt to play it. I am thinking that perhaps if I string my racket at a much higher tension when the current strings break, I can automatically put more control into my shots, albeit with a reduction in power. It is proven that modified sports implementations (such as kiddy-sized rackets for kids) help learners improve much faster and does not result in an unreasonable transition time in the future in getting used to the 'real' thing. Need to get my neuromuscular coordination in order first to produce good technique, before modifying it when using other rackets with different string tension.

And come practicum, I will be able to play badminton with kids for 2 more times each week, woohoo! Might have a chance to do coaching too, because the coach for the school only comes in 2 days out of 3. Hoping to be consistently better by the end of this year!

The future of kayaking in Singapore

Recently the papers carried the news of PUB's plan to turn canals and waterways of Singapore into pretty places where people can hang out under the "Active, Beautiful and Clean Waters" project. Paddlers will tune into this piece of news and rejoice at the paddling opportunities in the future, especially with the building of a viewing gallery for rowing competitions at Lower Seletar. A few other reservoirs mentioned that the there will be walk-in kayaking rental facilities offered to the public too.

All these developments actually still regards kayaking as a miscellaneous recreational activity in which people can take part in for a bit of paddling fun, and not proposed to create facilities to develop kayaking sport as a whole. I'm sure SCF will laud these projects for the good of paddling sports, but then is it intending to educate a country of inland paddlers? Maybe it will be admirable if a whitewater stadium is in the works, but not otherwise. It might help canoe polo to take off with the establishing of a few permanent canoe polo courts, such that more independent teams can be formed because there is a training ground for them.

Serious paddlers should save to buy foldables and tour the world in them - there's no future in paddling in reservoirs.

Softball games

Recently I have been flaring up over silly issues when playing softball games during my sports module lessons. Once, I got angry that 2 good pitches of mine was called 'ball' by the umpire (meaning it is not thrown to the right batting zone) when they were 'strikes'. Today, I was upset that I knew I could reach a zone safely before the fielder tagged me out, that I didn't even bother to slide in. I got to the base plate, stand there, the fielder got the ball a bit later and tag me, and umpire called me out, what the hell.

In addition, I absolutely hate myself when I missed catching fly balls when playing outfielder, those 'ball-from-the-sky' which ought to be caught. I get sore over missed strikes too (my batting record is pretty good and so it betrays everyone's expectations when I don't do well) and also when I pitch bad balls and give batters a walk. And I'm irritated every session by the imbecilic play of a classmate, who lacks the most basic of skills, constantly loses her attention, and cannot be depended on at all.

There seems to be so much disappointment when a ball is missed in this game, such are the consequences, that's probably the reason. So much is at stake somehow, a gravity to the situation with every pitch of the ball. There's much more to this game than meets the eye.

Mosston's learning style spectrum

I am intending to peruse 'Teaching Physical Education' by Mosston and Ashworth, detailing in full Mosston's ideas of the learning style spectrum. Not only does it describes the different approaches characterised by each style, it also specifies the objectives that these will serve, the prerequisites necessary for implementation, and also the method to go about using them, with examples. Totally, absolutely fascinating. I have no doubt that any teach who devours this book and can use each of the learning styles appropriately in different situations, he or she will be an expert teacher instantly.

I think knowing these different styles in teaching intimately should be the focus of a teacher's education, rather than the propagation of certain preferred teaching approaches. For example, I see NIE's preferred 'reader response' approach to teaching lit appreciation as being pretty useless in a lot of contexts; you can't seek to invoke students' independent thinking without first imparting fundamental knowledge, which is often best facilitated by using the 'command' style or 'guided discovery' style of teaching. In other words, you can't always be biased towards student-centered learning and prejudiced against the teacher-centered approach.

Interestingly, I think that the classroom is an environment where student-centered learning is can be better mediated. In PE, teachers tend to use the command style because there is a lot of spatial and temporal variables to control, plus sometimes there is the need to enforce pseudo-authority by being the last word on everything to prevent chaos in the class.

Free recitals!

Once upon a time, when I was still an undergrad or even earlier, I had frequently attended the SSO concerts but regretted the dearth of chamber music performances in Singapore. I made sure I caught all significant quartet performances and solo instrument recitals. I could still recall Emerson Quartet's performance here a long time ago, Chan Yoong Han's courageous feats in his series of solo recitals, and the recent Bach cello suites by Jian Wang.

But do you know you can attend recitals now regularly for free? At the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, you can hear good student performances at their new performance venue in NUS, click here for the listings! I was quite impressed by some of the performances during their last recital 'Cellissimo' at the Esplanade, and you should hear them too.

Accountability

One of my main concern at working out in school is to be in a system in which there is no accountability. In the corporate world, I think usually the word is used to indicate who should be taking the blame, as in when you are responsible for this, you will be accountability for mistakes in this area. A more positive definition will be the responsibility of achieving success in some assigned area to oneself.

What happens when there's no accountability? Ultimately, it means that every action will be pointless, because there isn't even a measure of what success it. That stems from the lack of expectations and standards, leading to the lack of achievement and 'success'. To have any action beneficial, one must be able to define what 'good' is first!

But too often, physical education is an area in which teachers are persistently unwilling to set standards for themselves, assess their own actions, and be accountable for success or failure. There is a lack of accountability for the student's physical growth and development, and a lack of accountability to the people who pay them to do the job. And strangely, such accountability is neither encouraged nor requested from MOE themselves. And so many PE teachers have the leeway of doing whatever they like in class, without worrying about success and failures or the need to explain for these.

I'll probably end up disillusioned and unmotivated to carry on PE teaching if I land up in such a (very typical) school system - after all, what are all my efforts for? I might feel that I am doing my best to help students grow up well, but it wouldn't work if the students themselves do not hold themselves accountable for their participation in PE classes, because they have the notion that PE is a 'useless' subject matter. To fight for accountability from all parties, I hope that the only solution is not for me to become a PE HOD first.

A sense of anticipation

Judging from the lack of blogging activities, perhaps you can tell that something my life is either too boring, too busy, or too frustrating for me to sustain a retelling.

Recently, I have lost quite a bit of interest in most school-related activities. My lit classes are frankly quite a big waste of time, with nothing valuable for us to take home at all (the whole module should be condensed into one workshop), and I'm impatient with long-drawn lectures where points are over-elaborated. Thank goodness the silly PESS inter-class games have ended - all in all I think it is such a silly idea, this oxymoronic thing called 'friendly competition', where people just play jungle ball and whack each other for lack of better skills.

At the back of my mind, I can sense the impending arrival of practicum, and appreciate the need to read/learn/do things that really does help me to be a better teacher out at school. Despite NIE's persuasions, I think everyone should prioritise their learning needs and spend time to learn what they need to know rather than get sucked into doing silly assignments and indulging NIE in 'e-learning' week.

I don't mean to always dish NIE (they do have a very good library after all), but perhaps lecturers should always have a mind on the possibility of praxis for all the abstractions thrown around in class. They should ask themselves - what is the take-home point of my lesson today? Is it absolutely applicable out in school? Is this a directly relevant exercise?

Space

I am frequently awestruck by the weather phenomena over NIE; this is probably due to the 'viewing gallery' of the PE block overlooking the hockey pitch from which one can see a huge expanse of the sky over the greenery beyond.


A view from the library window also shows up the nimbus clouds looming over the low building.


A wind-swept sky...

Updates

Am in canteen B within NTU typing this out now - Just visited the doctor here for persistent diarrhoea (suspect it's the horrible draught that TCM prescribed to me), and had lunch. There was softball lesson in the morning, I'm gonna skip a fitness class about interval running, before having a weights training class and lecture on physiology.

Schedule and sports makes me come to school early and leave late almost everyday, so my brain's hardly on anything when I return home. During the absurd long breaks on some days, I do work and read up on PE teaching resources in the library. There's this feeling that time is running short for my preparation before going into teaching, so I want to gather as much teaching resources I can get before that.

Haven't cycled in a very long time. I tried out my new wheels only once, and I just fixed up a new saddle on it and haven't got to use it still. Want to cycle to school but the long hours and the lack of security in keeping the bike has hindered plans. Also haven't been blading for a while. Tennis once a week doesn't seem enough. Badminton twice a week isn't enough. But alas, that's probably all the time I can give to sports.

Children and computers

Much has been said about the early computer literacy of children nowadays, and how parents are losing out to them in keeping up with technology's progress. The recent newspaper report on it has a curiously celebratory tone to it, as if we all should take pride on the younger generation's intelligence in mastering the use of technology and perpetual engagement with it.

So what if kids nowadays can blog, take and post photos and videos, and talk to each other through msn and network with friendster? Does that mean they can write quality essays and shoot shorts with creative and artistic values? Are they able to harness their newfound communicative abilities towards increasing their knowledge of the world and building real and enduring relationship? Their use of the internet tend to be superficial and frivolous - it doesn't take much brains to learn to play online games, and mastering any sport is definitely as difficult.

And in the first place, their use of technology is mainly possible with an interaction with Graphic User Interface; I only respect the kids who write their own scripts for their blogs - that will be the minimum standard by any measure of competency in IT skills.

A second home

Although this semester's timetable is really sucky, with very early days and crazy long breaks, and a Thursday starting at 8.30am and ending at 7.30pm, I still (somewhat) look forward to going to school to play and read. Besides doing Softball as a module, I have been playing tennis too, and even squash and table tennis when other facilities are occupied. I also started reading up on games for PE classes, and teaching strategies that I might use in the future, borrowing a few books from the library about once a week.

In a very short time, I will have to bid farewell to this place. I will remember it as the place at which I became a very focussed person like never before, thinking, playing, reading and eating as a would-be PE teacher. I live my days here exhausting myself with back to back activities and take breaks only to recharge myself for more. I would run around pitch playing different games and suddenly stop to appreciate the vast expanse of space around me. It's a lovely place.