Saying Goodbye to SST

Today I decided to write this post to mark the end of my stint in SST. I do not dare to walk down memory lane again - did that as I was packing my table - as I realize the immensity of things accomplished and experienced while being here.

So many things can happen in a short span of time and so I believe that it will be a totally new experience for those still in SST and for those joining SST.

I wish all of them the best in what they do and we can still keep in touch via my personal email.

Adieu!

Fluency vs Accuracy

Someone who is very experienced in teaching, shared with me that fluency in language learning is built over time and that accuracy can be mastered very quickly by just-in-time teaching, and that teaching grammar should be incidental. Perhaps I am taking things out of context but this idea might not be well-taken by the curriculum planning division, especially the English unit, as the latter appears to be advocating explicit teaching of grammar.

This line of thought runs in concordance with how I was taught when I was schooling as I felt having the foundation did help. Nonetheless I also knew reading many storybooks helped and I was a voracious reader (not so sure how I developed this habit) and that helped with my fluency, I guess.

So how do we strike a balance between fluency and accuracy? Do we need to strike a balance? Or is one more important than the other? Or are both equally important?

I am not so sure but I am very interested to know how we could develop students' fluency and accuracy in innovative and effective ways.

The Expendable Future: 2015

A student passed me a book titled "The Extreme Future: The Top Trends that will Reshape the World in the Next 20 Years" by Canton, James (2007) this morning, puzzled with the typographical layout of the text. In the prose, boxes that give top jobs in the 2015, 2020, 2025 and 2030 were interspersed among the text.

"What is the author trying to do here?"

That is a very good question to ask and I requested to borrow the book for a while so that I could perhaps ponder whether there is any intended outcome.

While browsing through the content, I came across this paragraph:
"You can see this model alive and well in some organisations that believe there will always be someone to fill the boots of those who cannot cut it. This is the attitude of the dinosaur organisation. This is a future that is based on a short-term naivete that there will always be job applicants, that talent is always abundant. This illusion of abundance will lead to the inability of an organisation to grow and develop new talent, and it will eventually spell disaster" (p. 113).

Very strong words being used.

Something worth thinking about, perhaps. Or not.

Anyway, back to the student's question. The connection as I could grasp really is about the kind of talents the economy will be looking for in the next 20 years. This information is interspersed to provide, I think, a break from the prose, with something for the reader to look at, kind of like a magazine.

Other questions pop into my head as I was going through the text:
1. Why is it that within a span of five years, top jobs could vary and shift so quickly?
2. How does the author derive these top jobs, if as mentioned by many, that these jobs are not even available yet? It sounds contradictory to me?
3. Who foresee the needs for such occupations in the future?

Many of these occupations do look alien to me and even sound alien to me, mainly because I am not so into some of the fields mentioned.

Haha, this could spell disaster for me, isn't it? Am I going to become quite irrelevant in the years to come?

实话未必好听，但是总比听谎言好。。。

做了这么多年的老师，从未受过那么大的考验。那一句话听了让我十分心寒，因为我从没想过自己竟有如此大的影响力。

谎言虽好听，但往往无法让人知道自己该在哪一方面寻找突破。如果是如此，倒不如不听。

Coming to the end of Term 1

Time seems to fly on certain days and crawl on slowly on others, but this I can say for sure, weekends whiz by, leaving me breathless.

I cannot believe we are coming to the end of February in 2010. It feels like so many things have taken place and I am still trying to collect and collate my emotions as I plod along this journey.

As I look at how far we have progressed, I am amazed by what is done and yet mindful that we have to take baby steps at time.

We must all learn to prioritise and find a way as we plod along.

Let's do this together!

Lunar New Year

15 Days 喜
Red Packets 新年
House Visiting 合欢齐庆
Relatives 身体健康
Get 狂食
T 步
O 步
G 高
E 升
T 龙
H 马
E 精
R 神

Eventful Week

It is amazing how time flies since the epiphany of the fragile nature of life.

I have not fallen sick for quite some time but I think my body finally succumbed to the viruses which attacked my two sons.

I have had an eventful week, family matters, school matters, well, we just have to manage them as we move along.

It is kind of sweet though how some students thought they had gotten me sick when I shared with them how I felt about their behaviour in class. They wish they had that power but seriously, they should consult their Biology teacher to know how one could succumb to illnesses (hahaha!)

To those who sent me their well-wishes, I am grateful because I believe their good thoughts did something to the universe and broke my fever. Thank you.