Giles' ESE Reflection

Hi everyone! Well, first off, I must say that from a personal point of view, I'm glad we had an 'extended' ESE period of 2 months instead of the usual 1 month. A single month is barely enough time to get a feel of things in the school (this is particularly true for newbies like myself, I believe), let alone form proper bonds with your students and fellow teaching staff, for a truly Enhanced School Experience! Fortunately, I didn't have any holiday plans, so the ESE didn't disrupt anything for me. Many of my friends weren't so lucky :/

I was posted to Yio Chu Kang Secondary School (YCKSS), and I'll now attempt to share with all of you regarding some of my experiences there! :)

School Environment

One really unique thing about YCKSS is that unlike virtually any other secondary school, it utilises a homeroom system! Some key benefits of this would be (feel free to disagree with my reasoning):

1. Students are generally not as noisy during change-of-period.

In other schools that I've been to so far, change-of-period can usually be heard from the neighbouring HDB blocks! I believe the reduced noise levels at YCKSS can be attributed to the fact that the students expend some of their energy moving from classroom to classroom throughout the day, and also don't have to stay couped up in their classrooms for long periods of time!

2. Vandalism/spoilage levels in the homerooms are almost non-existent.

Despite the fact that each homeroom is equipped with a projector, visualiser, speakers, an interactive whiteboard and a full set of IT controls (this is very impressive, by the way), there have been no reported cases of vandalism in quite some time! Window panes are also intact - something which my own (more 'reputable') secondary school could not boast about at all! I believe this is because the students are not left alone in classrooms in between lessons to wreck havoc; students have to leave the homeroom when their teacher leaves!

3. The teacher is able to keep his/her teaching resources in the homeroom.

This simply translates to teachers having to carry less items (big protractors, set squares and dictionaries) to and from class.

On the down side, students take about 5 mins on average to get from one class to another, sometimes more, losing valuable curriculum time in the process. Further, if you have more teachers than the number of homerooms, the latter have to be shared, which can be irksome. Finally, I believe that the homeroom system naturally causes a time-tabling nightmare! :x

Student Profile

The student population generally fit my expectations. The only thing which surprised me was the large number of international students in this school, somewhere in the region of 20%! This made for some interesting sharing sessions and interactions.

Thought-provoking Lessons

Other than my assigned 8 (55 min long) periods a week, I was fortunate enough to be able to observe an additional 12 periods each week, thanks to both my accommodating mentors :) One of these classes was a secondary 1 NA class. It's hard to describe the exact problem in words, but I'm pretty certain all of you will know what I mean when I say that I wish we could do so much more for our NA kids all over the country. To me, they seem like the most untapped source of potential. So many of them could achieve so much more in their lives, if only we could give them more (of the correct type of) attention and care!

Change in Perspective of Literacy Teaching and Learning

In the past, I'd only been prepared to have to teach slightly modified activities for NA kids, as compared to lessons prepared for their express counterparts. I thought that would be sufficient, but I was mistaken, as I found out in my time at YCKSS! On a regular basis, my mentor spent so much time on classroom management that not only did he have to simplify the activities for the NA class, he also had to cut down the amount of content he could cover! Putting the two together, I would say that the NA kids got significantly less taught to them over the same period of time (even though many students were just as capable as the express kids!). It really wasn't my mentor's fault I feel - there was just too many disruptive kids and he had to deal with them! I guess I have to be prepared to do the same, at least until classroom management for certain NA classes becomes less of an issue :)

Areas in Which I Wish to Learn More

I'm quite interested in learning about anything any of you might have to share! Particularly in novel and interesting ways of teaching English content! :))

I look forward to seeing all of you in class.

Giles Lim :)