Journeying Together

One of the things I enjoy so far, is to embark on these journey with them. Surprisingly it wasn't stress that I was feeling so far...In fact, there's a certain joy to be on this journey with them. Hope this journey with them will bring us to a destination where we could all cheer and pat ourselves really hard for our good job when the end of the road is here....

Looking forward towards this journey together with them. Let them like-minded as well...

Pseudo-Policewoman: The Opening Chapter

Been assigned NPCC as my CCA and hence I'm currently attending the officer course for teachers at the Police Academy for 3 weeks.

Perhaps because I'm a woman and has never served the army before that I find almost everything amusing and fresh. Some might think of me as a weirdo, but true to say I do like the idea of regime in the armed forces.

So here's a sneak peak of the things that kept me entertained as I spend my 1st week at the police academy:

1) My Rank - Inspector: something that really amused me for the simplest reason, I had been conferred the tittle just because I was a teacher officer. What amused me more was of the few times ns men who saluted and greeted me 'Good morning/afternoon ma'am" on the grounds of the academy.

2) Meals at the Cookhouse: A place whereby we always had to queue up with our trays and we'd be served by the cooks our various servings. I was told by the guy officers in my course that food here tastes worse than their army days.

3) Live Firing: The part of the course that I enjoyed the most - Firing the .38 revolver at the range. My 1st time handling real fire arms. Hopefully it isn't my last...Had the honor of shooting with a charming markswoman (fellow honorary officer who's a cadet during her student days) whose record score was 192 out of 200 =D. Our course manager mentioned she shoots more accurately than any NSman ;)

4) Marching: Soemthing that I found fascinating as well. NSmen (past, present or future) may grimace at the sound of this, but again I found it fascinating to have to march in ranks of 3 whenever we were moving from one place to another within academy grounds.

5) Arms Drill: Handling a real M-16 rifle!!! So exciting!! But just my unlucky that I had to call in sick that day =(

6) Sword Drill: Was again awed by the smartness of a marching contingent with the sword

7) Fancy Drill: Was privileged to visit a gold unit school. Saw the cadets in action practising for their fancy drills at DHS. Teacher officers had a crash course with the kids in doing some basic fancy drill moves too. Was impresed with the kids with their demo display of some the moves. Really salute them and those men from the armed forces during their fancy drill display during national day parades!

So much for the opening chapter of my 1st week at the Police Academy.

More updates coming up. Till then =)

Klutzy Teacher - A sequel

The klutzy teacher has survived a friendly a match of captain's ball againsts the kids. Next she's put to a challenge of another friendly match - soccer against the alumni. What will the score be this time??? Hmm....

I Am A Chemistry Teacher

Every secondary school teacher in the nation is assigned 2 teaching subjects and mine are: #1: Chemistry and #2: Biology. Been marking test scripts recently for both my subjects and I must say marking scripts for Biology can kill. All the long answers without relevant points. Not to mention horrible handwriting at times or arrows here and there when students write all over the page =.=

Marking chemistry scripts are so much easier. The nature of the subject makes it have less tendency for students write long essays for a something as short as a 2M question.
Bless my soul that Chemistry is my 1st teaching subject.

Exam Stress

In my days as a student, at least once a year during major exams like MYE or EOY, I'd always be down with some kind of illness one way or another just before the exams. My parents call it the pre-exam stress.

Somehow this predicament never escape me even now when I'm working as a school teacher. MYE is in 2 weeks time for my kids and I've just recovered from food poisoning a few days back and now it seems like the flu virus has hit me.

Sigh~~ let me just survive this 2 weeks and hopefully I'm able to break out of the vicious cycle of falling sick before exams in my years as a school teacher...

A Teacher's Shopping List

Popular Book Co. will be a teacher's frequent shopping spot.
My shopping list as a beginning teacher:

- button magnets (for teaching chemistry - low-tech animation)
- (many!) files (there's lots of filing of resources to do)
- a bell/buzzer (classroom management)
- ten year series (teaching resources)
- a dozen red pens (an essential with all that marking!!)
- stamps (to avoid repetitive writing of comments e.g. "seen", "untidy", "late" & "well done")

That's all for now. I suspect the list might grow with time....

IT-unsavvy teacher

As science teachers, more often than not, we do include drawings of apparatus set-ups, biological drawings etc., in our teaching slides. Being an IT- unsavvy person like me, I was frustrated at having to surf the internet for free sketching software to draw my lab set-up. Of which mostly were softwares to draw set-ups of more advanced chemistry like fractional distillation set-ups & reflux set-ups. Until I found this page that gave step-by-step instructions on how to draw simple lab apparatus.

Check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_draw_a_diagram_with_Microsoft_Word

Wikipedia never fails to amaze me as always.

Strange stranger gaming experience perhaps???

My first workshop of the year - Game designing concepts organized by the school's board games club. First part of the workshop was dedicated to a board gaming session to get everyone familiar with variant game mechanics. It was an interesting gaming session I must say, especially the games were those that I've never tried at the board games cafe & the fact that I was actually gaming with strangers whom I'm meeting for the 1st time!!!

Let's start with the games that I tried for the first time during the workshop:
1) Ticket to Ride
2) For Sale
3) Take 6
4) Dividends
5) Cartagena

The more interesting part of the gaming session was the human interaction during the session. We gamed with people whom we don't even know at all...Used to think that it was possibly not comfortable or uneasy gaming with people you don't know...because you don't know each other well enough to play strategies with or against unlike with friends. Also probably less fun since people tend to be more polite and reserved with strangers or unfamiliar acquaintances.

Well, my thinking was proven to be way wrong during the gaming session. I guess it takes one gamer to click with another gamer - *grins* Right from the first game, the human dynamics was way beyond that that I could imagine; enjoyed ourselves while we played to the best of our possible abilities each move, be it getting our wins or sabotaging others.

It was equally just as fun gaming with these new acquaintances as with friends. I guess perhaps these people were just keen board gamers like myself =D

Second part of the workshop, we learnt elements of a game & designed our own board games for our own teaching subjects. Talking to other teachers at a workshop like that, plus the fact that we all enjoy board games, it was an amazing session. I was actually amazed at the fact that how the many interesting ideas for lessons could be bounced off one another during the group work. Synergy I'd say?? =D

On the whole it was a good experience:
1) to get to know about some of the other games which I've yet to try from other gamers
2) to bounce off lesson ideas with other teachers ;)

Sense of Achievement

Conducted an outdoor classroom amidst the flora & fauna of the nature reserve. During the post-evaluation & reflection, nothing beats when your boss gives you a pat on the back & tell you: "Great lesson!", "Creative use of teaching aids!" ; nothing beats when your kids show that they are captivated by what you've got to teach, actively chip in to the lesson discussion and taking the lesson games & activities seriously =D

Might sound like small perks that are pretty much nothing to people. But I must say all these made my day & I guess these "small perks" are really things that keep one going on in the career =D