"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.

Refreshing the Fundamentals

I'm not sure if anyone of you have heard of the newly-minted Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), but I have. A couple of days ago, while scouring the internet for some information on training frameworks, I happened to stumble upon the new agency, launched apparently to wield the spectrum of early childhood education and development matters. Indeed, I must say that this is a laudable attempt to integrate childhood learning principles and outcomes with the more social aspect of provision of childcare services.

Early childhood education landscape and the childcare scene had recently hoarded the limelight at the "Our Singapore" conversation. Concerned parents fervently shared and prayed that their two cents worth would be somehow heeded by the authorities. As part of the panel, I too, would like to weigh in on this issue.

Personally, I thought that we should probably start to reflect upon our own expectations for our children and cut the government some slack. Yes, things may not be all together rosy yet, but at least the authorities came out to address the issues plaguing the childhood education system upfront where they could have swept all the dust under the carpet. I think we must admit that the policy view point, it is no mean feat to unfix the damages done and to mitigate the situation right away. I thought at least the authorities have the fortitude to pick up the pieces and run with them from now on.

The refreshed Kindergarten Curriculum Framework (KCF) is another notable attempt by the authorities to delineate and promulgate the desired outcomes of learning for the pre-schoolers, coupled with key support structures and learning environments to support their holistic growth and development. I'm especially thankful for the parents guide that was published to inform us of the guidelines. My only qualm is that while the concept of the frame was well-conceived, I'm not exactly certain how this piece of document could be operationalised. Nothwithstanding, I'm sure this has put us on the right footing to a certain extent.

Another point to highlight, I must consider myself fortunate as I'm literate and I'm in the business of training and education and hence, I can better appreciate the policy nuances surrounding this entire issue. Think about others who may not really understand the impact of providing quality learning environment and education to their children at a young age, they would never be informed of the promulgated framework. They might not even know the existence of the ECDA! I thought that the authorities should reach out to this segment to educate them via other means than expecting parents to access the information by downloading the parents' guide on MOE's website. I suspect some parents may not be well-informed of the changes. Go on, reach out to them so that we deprive no child.

Above are purely my personal opinions. Please feel free to share yours too if you happened to stumble in!

The 'A's and the 'E's!

It's the time of the year again for the Annual Learning and Teaching Seminar held in NTU. This year's theme is on assessment and feedback.

So, is it "assessment FOR learning" or "assessment OF learning"? Well, I guess Singaporeans are attuned to the idea of learning for the sake of clearing the examinations. The outcomes of learning encapsulated in the form of a paper qualification is very much coveted and hence, little emphasis has been placed on the quality of learning processes to get people to that end. I'm not suggesting that we should disregard the learning outcomes in any way; but we should discern the true meaning of of these outcomes. Graduating with a degree does not qualify the internalization of knowledge and practices in the field of study. Often so, the availability of opportunities to scale professional experience and development in different work contexts greatly impact and shape job performances and employability.

The Guest-of-Honour just unveiled a new concept as I was typing away - "Assessment AS learning". Here, the assessment component is embedded as part of the learning process. A very good assessment tool to exemplify this concept would be project - based assessment. This mode of assessment is pretty much formative in nature and as members of a project team, you get to concurrently learn and to be assessed. In addition, teachers, who are the project supervisors, serve as "knowledge source" pertaining to the project discipline(s). Apart from assimilating knowledge from the teachers, the students themselves are great knowledge pool for interdependent learning when they tap on one another's "expertise" and prior knowledge to synthesize or construct meaningful knowledge to address the issue at hand.

I would like to coin this new concept as the "3-in-1 mix" where you would find the three tenets of education namely, "teach, learn, assess" - all rolled into one! Well, guess I would stop here for now. Do take some time to mull over this if you are a parent... And please expire your views...I would be glad to hear from you!

When you lose that mobility...

Ever since the jolting announcement by MAS to impose cut-throat restrictions on car loan amount and tenure, I've learnt to appreciate and savour every single moment of convenience brought along by my car. The mobility which I've enjoyed thus far has buttressed itself in my daily life and dissociating it from my life is almost close to impossible.

We are well aware that the current COE prices have skyrocketed to astronomical figures and that the current land infrastructural system may not be able to support the burgeoning volume of vehicles plying the roads. Furthermore, the quality and reliability of public transport system remains yet another contentious topic often raised in kopitiam talks. I am not dismissing these issues lightly. Transport woes are closely tied to societal dynamics and I thought that there may be a host of confounding factors contributing to the current state of affairs. In my humble opinion, a suite of policies addressing different factors may be developed and introduced to target the issues. In addition, each policy may assume a more gentler tone and when collectively implemented, would achieve similar desired outcomes too.

Anyway, my car will be due in 4 years time. Initially, I still harbour the slightest hope of getting another car after the deadline, albeit a 2nd hand one. My slightest hope was extinguished by the abrupt motion put forth to bring a halting stop to the fleet from flying off the car showrooms. I can almost imagine our poor fellas swatting flies over at the showroom! Having a car for me is never a luxury; it's a convenience, especially when you have a little one-cum-a stroller in tow. But I must also agree that convenience sometimes breeds indolence and I'm guilty of that too! So, I'm not sure how I would snap back to the good o' times of squeezing into jam-packed public transport entities. Ironically, it seems as though I may be regressing vis-a-vis a developed and robustly advancing nation state!

Well, the only consolation that I have is that ILT would be 5 years old by then and hence, our circumstance then would not necessitate the ownership of a car. At press time, I am still cracking my head to think of an ingenious way to circumvent this ruling. Do share with me if you have a trick or two up your sleeves!

P/S: Please note that I am sharing my views and opinions in my own capacity as a concerned citizen ;)

New Year New You

We say this almost every year without fail. A brand new year always comes with fresh resolutions, new tasks and goals to achieve and for some of us, a new wardrobe :) Yet, there's always a tinge of self-denial to excuse ourselves from failure to fulfill these resolutions year after year. A new year brings with it the very prospect of starting everything on a clean slate, albeit sweeping the unfulfilled ones under the carpet, sometimes, for good. Gradually, the act of committing new resolutions on a new year has eroded to a state of no more than mere lip service. How often do we reflect upon our journey for the entire year? How do you rate your journey for 2012? Did you achieve what you are supposed to achieve? Did the experiences in 2012 surpass your expectations for the year and bring your life to a whole new level?

We are just an hour and 10 mins away from crossing over to 2013 and I'm thinking about my resolution for the coming year. Often so, we resolve to striving with sheer human efforts I.e. intensifying exercise regimes or shrinking the waist pouch just to indulge in that long overdue holiday in Europe. While I do agree that goal setting does have both therapeutic and motivational effects to propel and help refocus your life, setting unrealistic goals or setting goals for the sake of setting them just doesn't get you anywhere or would even cause your life to regress!

As for me, I just wish for wisdom to be bestowed upon my pea brain:p Now is a good opportunity to reflect upon my life, face and conquer my fears, revisit the hidden desires and dreams, redirect my priorities and savour the little pleasures and cherish the moments that life offers. Also, don't let guilt or regrets catch up with you. They are part and parcel of life and they can only make you more resilient! Alright! Let me throw myself back on the sofa now to receive 2013 with thanksgiving for the people around me and the things that I have and are going to possess :)

Happy 2013.

FTWM: Rid yourself of the Guilt!

The day finally came for me to report back to work. I have assumed a new identity for almost five months ( and counting...) and have pretty much enjoyed the role thus far of being a pseudo-SAHM. Perhaps I have crossed the line. As the days draw nearer for the parting, the struggle to detach myself from my current role grows more intense than ever. Every FTWM goes through this "rite of passage" - experiencing the joy of labour and basking in the newfound moments of motherhood to the eventual and inevitable separation from that little bundle who could barely flip yet. Of course, you can always choose to extend your time with your little one but the end is always in sight.

Transitioning into motherhood has had a huge impact in my life. It has transformed my perspectives and redefined my worth and values. But all these didn't occur with a snap of the fingers. Certainly, there were episodic outbursts of resistance- resistance to change. My hubby and I struggled to keep our sanity by setting a routine to systemise things. Even with the skeletal routine in place to frame and guide our actions, there were still room for uncertainty and nothing was cast in stone! The constant actions and reactions really threw us off balance as we struggled against the inertia of caring for a newborn.

We only began to see brighter days when we were more accustomed to the rules of the game. Only then were we able to enjoy the company of the little one, and not be bogged down by the mundane chores. Caring for a little one is no easy feat. There are times when I just want to go on an escapade and reminisce the good old days. I just want to go back to work and now that my workplace is finally beckoning me back!

For those FTWMs out there, I can totally empathize with your reluctance to go back to work. We probably feel consumed by the guilt of not spending enough time with our kids and not witnessing their milestones. I have this to say: set your sight farther and look at the larger picture. Jump out of the mindset of creating limiting blocks of " five days work week" and " weekends" and compartmentalising the activities that can be carried out or ought to be carried out on weekdays and weekends. Most of us dread Mondays and embrace the Fridays. We tend to narrow our perceptions and think that our time with our kids is finite because of work commitments. Why don't we start seeing our days in continuity where weekdays and weekends hold equal importance for us to spend quality time with the kids? Notice I mentioned "quality" time. It can be as short as five minutes to say a prayer with your kid. SAHMs may be the objects of envy to many, but some of them may not be spending time wisely with their kid. Consider a SAHM who only does household chores all day, just chauffeuring the kids around and letting them watch TV on their own. There is no value-add in any way. So, instead of devising ways and means to work less or to not work at all, why not look at things in a different perspective. See that you are just going away to work for the benefit of the family and that ultimately, will be back every single day to put your kid to sleep or to merely see them. See life with your kids as a continuum; you don't have to limit time with them only to the weekends and to lament about going back to work the next day on Sundays. The bottom line: don't let work monopolize your situation and free yourself from this seemingly bondage.