Lionel's Reflections

Taking a break from the relentless counting of summary words, I thought it'd be a good idea to start on this, seeing how I wanna take the upcoming weekend to have a brain-break.

The experience with the school admin was an amazing one. They are consummate professionals at their job, calling the 6 of us in for induction one week before we were due to report, and settling most admin matters very quickly. We were greeted with tables in the staff room already labelled with our names and teaching subjects.

One good practice by the school is that they NEVER assign any relief teaching periods to trainee teachers, and instead tells us to focus on planning and delivering our lessons. The Principal also took time to interact with the trainees, meeting us informally over lunch to talk, on top of the formal meeting, despite his busy schedule.

Colleagues are welcoming, and always ready to greet you with a smile. There is a lack of resource sharing between teachers in the EL department though, although that isn't debilitating because most teachers have a ready pool of resources built over time. The upper secondary levels have an in-house Resource Book that works much better than the textbooks we've examined. The colleagues here are always ready to accept us into their activities, and there have been numerous times I've played soccer with them after school, and taken part in staff events like walks to East Coast Park. Events like Sports Day, Alumni Dinner, the Biennial Drama Fest at Jubilee Hall added to the interaction opportunities and workload.

Workload was fine, busy as expected with all the lesson planning, but manageable thanks to my two brilliant CTs -- one is SH for Lit, and the other is a senior teacher who served as HOD before going back to full teaching load. They gave me the latitude to plan and conduct my lessons, providing me valuable feedback. I had some crazy schedules -- 8 teaching periods on Friday! Total teaching hours was probably the most among the trainees, but that's probably due to the nature of the subjects I'm teaching. Triple periods for English, double periods for Lit. No single periods; which I think is a very good practice. Probably the best and most intense learning experience in this one year at NIE was spent with my CTs in the classrooms and before/after the classes. My CT even checked my file and signed on it!!! File checking at age 26 =p

Curriculum-wise, one thing sad about the school is that there is no one offering O Level Lit at the Sec 3 level this year, and slightly more than 10 for the Sec 4 batch. Current rules state that if one takes bio, then one's not allowed to do Lit.

Down to the school culture. Expectations are high as is expected from a school of such standing. For the third consecutive batch, the school has attempted to fail a practicum trainee, X, calling in a moderator. Luckily he/she cleared it, as most of us believe it is not due to his/her incompetence, but more due to the main CT, who manages to be the most hated figure in school by students and staff alike. We've more or less agreed that X is downright unlucky, but it has certainly been an incredible learning experience as we ploughed through lesson plans together trying to plug all the holes that the CT poked.

As for the students, I got on well with all the classes I taught, and loved the way they responded to my lessons most times. One thing that makes me not really want to head back, that I've shared with my CTs as well -- the students think they are very smart, too smart in fact. If they were from Really Good Schools, I'd give them the chance to 'slack', knowing they'll do well anyway. But here they don't do well, so this misplaced sense of arrogance is really quite irritating at times, especially when they brag that they will be able to work hard enough in time for exams.
All in all, this school is really 'happening', what with so many CCAs involved at the national level at least. Academic expectations are high, but thankfully the administration gives freedom to the teachers to work at their own paces. Granted though that the teachers are self-motivated as well, this is a kind of equilibrium that does not come easy. Office politics are thankfully avoided as teachers are simply too busy to indulge in rubbish like that. A good place to come to, with priorities in the right places, if you like a supportive school environment. Kids-wise, they are much harder to handle than expected, and there's a general expectation from the school to go gentle on them most times. Hard to balance at the start.

That's about it for now. I'll add later if I think of any... See ya guys back in the Far West!