"Funtastic" Week at JGC!

If you are deterred by the exorbitant fees by Julia Gabriel Center, I strongly urge you to consider the quality of its programme; the thoughtfulness and commitment of its teaching staff. I'm totally wooed over by the tremendous effort that were invested to make the day for each and every child who attended the 1-week long holiday programme.

The 'legendary' JGC is touted to be the go-to center if you want your child to excel in speech and drama and to exude confidence in communication skills. While some begrudged parents saw this as yet another over-hyped marketing gimmick amidst the buffet of endless cram school choices in Singapore, I would like to be on the 'yay' side to attest to JGC's quality. Let me share a little on how JGC indeed, does live up to its name.

Firstly, I thought the teachers are an enthusiastic bunch, not to mention that they spout the standard English language. Their expressive persona were so vibrant, together with the catchy tunes sang to make the little ones' heads turn! The entire atmosphere was contagiously exciting with giggles and jiggles, kids and adults alike! A lesson would typically began with free exploration time where the kids get to play with toys, instruments, read a book etc. before the scheduled class activities begin. The rest of the lesson would be filled with puppetry shows, sing-a-longs, art and craft activities etc. There was also a break in between where the kids were delightfully treated to some healthy snacks distributed by "Sally the Snack Lady"! Culminating towards the end of the day's lesson would be a series of songs led by the "Three amigos" clowns who would appear decked  in colourful  jester costume. These clowns in fact, formed  the small 3-man band that plays live music for the sing-a-long sessions. 

On the last day of the programme, the JGC staff painstakingly put together a carnival galore as a grand finale to the programme.This was the first time ever for them to stage such a carnival event and I must commend them for the effort put in! There were a couple of "carnival booths" with interesting activities for the kids. Each kid was given a carnival card which he or she is supposed to get it stamped at every booth visited. I personally liked the 'music jukebox" booth where kids get to choose their favourite tune performed "live" by a clown! The clown basically hid behind a makeshift structure with curtains and when the performance starts, the curtains would be drawn and he would begin singing while strumming his guitar! 

I thought that most of the booth ideas were rather novel and the teachers had to design and create the booths' items and materials from scratch using simple materials! My boy, hubby and myself really enjoyed every single bit of the carnival and we were rather emotional when the carnival ended and when it was time for us to depart. Just before we left, I checked with one of the teachers if the regular enrichment programme follows the same lesson structure and activities as the holiday sampler programme. The teacher told me that everything remains except for the characters i.e. the snack lady and the clowns whom were inserted as part of the holiday programme. I thought they should include these characters as well in their regular programmes! As we stepped out of the centre, each child was given a "ice-cream balloon" as a souvenir gift. I thought it was a really innovative idea to secure an inflated balloon to a paper cone and to pass it off as an 'ice-cream'! As a momento, we also received a photograph of our family which was earlier taken at a 'photo booth' (one of the carnival booths).

To sum up, I would be going back to JGC, only if there's a regular once a week session available for ILT, who's currently hitting a year old!

** Again, above are based on my own personal opinion on JGC. Do share if you have any experiences with the centre as well :)

Rethinking the Way we Think

;This year's Redesigning Pedagogy Conference held at the National Institute of Singapore (NIE) is back with a bang, centering on the theme of "Thinking: Time for a Rethink". The Conference has since made its debut back in 2009 and for every year, had successfully achieved its mission of congregating the greatest minds in current pedagogical research trends and practices and diffusing these invaluable knowledge to the rest.

It's unlike most conferences where you would expect keynoters to dwell on rocket science - the selection of papers are mainly focussed on the research-practice nexus. I think this is the main selling point - To apply pedagogical researches in educational pyschology, behavioural sciences, teaching and learning environments, cutting-edge ICT tools into teh context of the Singapore classroom. The volume and quality of discourse really reframed my thinking and perception of education, in particular, the process of learning and what it means for someone to "learn".

Apart from gleaning best practices for transfer to my area of work, as a concerned parent, I pounced on this opportunity to harvest insights to guide ILT's development as well. As one would expect, the Conference saw the recapitulation of a couple of well established themes dominating the educational landscape such as digital learning, flipped classroom concept and collaborative groupthink. A couple of educational luminaries' works i.e. Vygotsky, Piaget etc. were also revisited to rethink how some of these classical theories/principles may be re-applied to the 21st Century classroom.

In the opening speech delivered by Ms Indranee Rajah, Guest-of-Honour for the event, three tenets of this year's Conference theme were highlighted. Firstly, educators must genuinely believe that all students can think. Extending from this fundamental belief, proper structure and conducive environment scaffolds must be developed to  facilitate thinking. Of course, it would be rather superfluous to make the former comment and leave the students to exercise their own thinking. Without proper scaffolding, most of the students are not able to elicit and reflect on the quality of their own thinking. Henceforth, the last tenet emphasised on getting educators to model the thinking process i.e. to teach students "thinking aloud" or to verbalise their thoughts. Having said all these, it's definitely an uphill task that all educators are facing. If you would have noticed, gone are the days where educators focus on domain-specific teaching i.e. teaching of Mathematics/ languages/ Sciences etc. Instead, there is a phenomena shift to focus  on teaching and assessing pedagogical process skills such as meta-cognitive thinking in the form of self-assessment/reflections; design thinking and even reasoning skills i.e. using Paul's Reasoning Model.

Indeed, my mind was invigorated by the intellectual discourse throughout the 3-day conference. Radical research findings were surfaced amidst a pro-conservative educational setting. For instance, someone shared the notion of playfulness as a character trait correlating to better learning and consequently, better academic achievements. Another speaker also highlighted the importance of language as the key to unlocking our minds to participate in 'interthinking'. In a nutshell, language acquisition has a great impact on how human thinks in a group. When an individual conceives an idea, he or she would have to effectively communicate the idea to someone else and that person must understand what is being conveyed before the idea becomes "knowledge".  Building against this backdrop, the speaker then emphasised on the importance of "exploratory talk" or the quantity and quality of "talk" that goes on in a group discussion.  Someone else even suggested that conformity to school system leads to the demise of creativity in our students.

This is a lengthy post. Yet, I would like to encourage parents to rethink the entire notion of learning. Learning is not synonymous to education. Having a stellar education record doesn't necessary means that a child can learn effectively, make sense of the complex world and grapple with the reality. The only way is to teach your child to learn about learning and to think about thinking. These will almost guarantee his or path to success in life  and to remain resilient in the face of adversities.

P/S: This blog post reflects my humble opinions and they are in no way, affiliated to any other sources.