wakeboarding

went for wakeboarding at marina country club with the RnM pple. 

the saddest thing is that i cannot even stand up on the water. and i drank alot of seawater. yucks. 

我们出海了！ 

 getting ready... 

now you see me...

now you don't...

with the wakeboarding dancers. derek seong is not in the picture because he is the photographer. 

on national tv

we are featured on......

channel 5 and channel news asia:

channel suria:

channel 8:

my robin #2. she treated us macdonald to thank us for our great efforts in the interview and filming. :)

darling pointed out that the captions together with my smiley dimple face was a bit of a mismatch and a bit misleading. hahahahaha. 

my relatives were really excited when they saw me on the news and they took videos of it and shared it in the whatsapp group. LOL. 

but i think the most amazing thing about this media publicity is that some of my students' primary school teachers saw them on the newspapers and the news, and sms-ed them, telling them that they are happy that they are doing well at my workplace. :)

featured on straits times and 联合早报！

i got quite a shock when my student whatsapp-ed me today morning. we are actually on the straits times front page! omg...

and this is from 联合早报:

love the jump shot! :)

catch us on channel 8 news!

the media came to the workplace today to interview some of us on SPARKS (Aesthetics) and on the 'Niche for Creative Expressions'. 

SPARKS (Aesthetics) are lessons factored inside the curriculum time, to enrich students on this four modules: Hip Hop, A Cappella, Ukelele and Claymation. 

'Niche for Creative Expressions' was awarded to us this year, because of our strength in performing arts. 

catch us on the channel 8 news tomorrow from 630 pm to 700 pm, and 1000 pm to 1030 pm. 

we will also be featured on straits times, 联合早报 and berita harian on thursday.  

medical certificate of the day (MCOTD)

pics from aces day 2013

ta da! pictures. :)

batman and robin #1 FTW!!!

thank you batman for being so supportive!

from an ex teacher

In a school where I once taught at before I left MOE, we hired a very good adjunct teacher. An adjunct teacher is a teacher who only teach. No need to do form teacher duty, no need to do CCA or any other school related committee work. In return, the adjunct teacher takes a significant pay cut. This adjunct teacher was a former teacher who deliberately chose to be an adjunct teacher so that she can can focus on teaching.

With more free periods, she spends a lot of them preparing worksheets for the entire department. The department teachers are aware of that, and the department is very grateful for her high quality worksheets, all of which take a lot of time to prepare. As a result, while she was with that school, the results went up by a lot.

However, most of the other school teachers outside the department are unaware of her contributions. If they or outsiders were aware, they would be asking why aren’t the worksheets produced by the Head of Department, Subject Heads or Senior Teachers or other teachers?

The answer is that spending the bulk of the time on teaching and learning matters is considered as low level work. It doesn’t add much value to the annual work review. Teachers are better off spending their time on their CCAs, rehearsals, student leadership programs, or other school matters that can raise their public profile in school. All these add more value to the annual work review.

There are some regular teachers who want to spend more time on teaching. But the school will give them more work that keeps them too busy or too tired to do so.

There are many teachers who after their school day ends at 2pm, do CCA or meetings till 6-7pm. There is often something going on in school till about 530 to 6pm that keeps them occupied at least three out of five days a week. There are teachers who have to put aside their regular lesson preparations because there are performance rehearsals that stretch late into the evenings several times a week, burn weekends on adventure camps for uniform groups or coaching students for sports competitions or school admin matters to deal with.

Most teachers teach about 150 to 200 different students each week. If you give them other things to do because teachers who only teach are considered doing low value work, then of course many of the students need to get tuition in order to cope. Most of my former colleagues who spend most of their time on teaching and less time on other things, tend to be ranked at the bottom group during the annual work review.

So, while the students are thankful to this particular adjunct teacher who prepared good quality worksheets on a weekly basis, they are all unaware that in order for such a good work to be done, the adjunct teacher had to take a big pay cut. She has to take a big pay cut so that she can focus on teaching, without insulted by another group of high achieving teachers who like to say, “if you like to teach only, then you should resign and go be a private tutor.”

Tuition teacher

saturday post

went to my jc friend's wedding at copthorne king's hotel in the evening. she was in the same cca as me, which is Chinese Pugilistics Club. remember those times fondly with all my members because we are all very close and we train very hard together during the wushu competition period. 

as usual i am the captain again, and i always see myself as the glue, gelling everybody together so that each of us always encourage one another when the wushu training gets too tough. 

i think that someone up there has a plan for each of us. for myself, my wushu 生涯 started when i was in kindergarten. my father started practising 洪拳 in the living room and i learnt from him. and then in primary school i was addicted to power rangers and was wow-ed by their kungfu moves. during PSLE i screwed up my results and got into chung cheng, instead of my first choice school which is anglican high. the screw up is actually a blessing in disguise because i joined the Wushu cca, and became really passionate about wushu, and was selected as the captain. 

wushu has given me a good background in performing arts and without wushu, i will not be who i am today. 

until now, i still see myself as the glue, gelling all my show choir students together, and all my performing arts students together, as well as my form class students, and also my colleagues. 

i strongly believe that with good teamwork, anything can be possible, and dreams can be achieved. 

ok i also dunno why am i so 感慨, but back to jasmine's wedding, i am really happy for her, and glad that she has finally found a guy who love her so much. congrats!!! although we have graduated in 2001, but i will never forget the fun times we had during wushu, and when all of us studied together at the air conditioned cabin in tjc until ten pm during the exam period. hahahahaha. 

let's end this post with a wonderful couple pic of me and darling! :)

happy belated mid-autumn festival!

this year, little sis birthday happens to coincide on mid-autumn festival. 

darling wanted to play lanterns on mid-autumn festival, but because of little sis birthday celebration, we played lanterns and candles today! 

i seriously dunno whether children nowadays still play with lanterns. :P

happy birthday little sis!

birthday dinner for the little sis was at carousel. super atas buffet place, and it is a halal buffet, so it is a favourite buffet hangout for the muslims. 

carousel arranged a special birthday surprise for the birthday babies by putting up a special birthday dance and giving complimentary gigantic cupcake. hahaha. 

the staff even took group photo for us and emailed to my little sis on the spot! good service!