Words

Joe called me in the middle of my volleyball game yesterday. Apparently some creep's words had gotten into his head. Joe, being the thinker he is, sort of "over-pondered". Then it dawned on me how sometimes someone words, no matter how unimportant the speaker is or how unintended they were meant to be, can sometimes have a huge impact on us. Reflecting on what baby told me the other day of how he pondered over the words i said and also other episodes over this past week, I was sort of awakened. A dawn of sorts. Of what? I still do not know... Pondering Pondering. Ms Wang told me the other day before I left school that a lot about teaching nowadays is about "reflection". Reflection logs aside, I think there is some truth in it.

Team Singapore Hopefuls...

Today is the first time our class played together! Thanks to Winnie who organized the games. Games today: Capt Ball followed by vball. Had fun, caught a tan and a good cardio session. Phew... My class is sooooo FUN! Justine and yours truly. Poor Justine had her hand in cast cos of bike lessons.

My fabulous team!

Lawrence with his million-dollar smile. What did he realise the second before I snap? *shrugs*

The final score that saved the entire universe from the clutches of the evil empire.

Language Trouble..

Just days ago, I chanced upon an article in NTU's newsletter. In it, there was an article about how this NTU undergrad Gary wrote on his blog and subsequently protested to the NTU people about lecturers who have problems speaking proper English. As if to give a 'balanced view' there was another article in the same newsletter from a girl who thinks that Gary himself should not complain since (apparently) Gary's blog posting were overflowing with grammatical errors and such. This girl went on saying that just because the lecturers didn't speak good English doesn't mean they have no substance. She seems to have missed the point.

In order to teach, one must at least have a good command of the language in which the lesson will be conducted in. What's the point of teaching when your students cannot understand what you're trying to say? We're not talking about abilities here. No doubt, many of these foreign people we have in our schools are very qualified. But are they qualified to teach? I have my reservations on this. I had more than my fair share of lecturers who cannot speak English that people can understand. I'm not finger pointing and I understand it's not their fault. Are they brilliant? I bet they are. Can they teach? I doubt so. The girl who did the NTU article went on blabbering about how you can actually learn a lot from these foreign lecturers. No one questioned their ability to research. Their ability to lecture the masses is however questionable.

Just yesterday, there was a Concept Map presentation and there were so many pronunciation mistakes spotted. I believe I am guilty of it sometimes and it dawned on me how important teachers are. Many of our pronunciation mistakes were actually learnt from our bio teachers. Words like "corpuscles", "respiration", "mitochondrion", "classify", "intestinal", "efferent" vs "afferent"... It's just sad that i did not have the courage to correct the mistakes of my colleagues who made the mistakes. Perhaps i should. Perhaps we all should and not let our asian manners be a stumbling block to better English in the curriculum.

Hints that you might be a teacher...

1. You know over 1000 reasons for being late

2. You can work a copy machine better than the manufacturers

3. Your laundry piles are sorted by chalk and no chalk

4. You can tell if it's full moon without looking at the sky

5. You have a pet named after a scientist or historic figure

6. Cringe when you hear "You got 3 months vacation, your job is easy"

7. Use the alphabet song everytime you look up a phone number

8. YOu attend over 30 birthday parties in a year

9. All the pens you own have two sides, red and blue

10. You wake up during the night chanting, "I have the perfect lesson!"