J and I are in Melaka!



Life has been chaotic in Singapore, but not in a bad way. The past few weeks felt like a marathon, both at work and at home. Finishing projects, clinic trainings, and the cleaning up at home in prep for some renovation. And the ongoing Hanen parent workshops that take up my weekends.

Finally getting some stillness and quiet away from normal life now, chilling in a poofy, comfy bed, waiting for J to get up so we can go for breakfast. I need these moments so that I don't feel like life is passing me by.

“Depict your sorrows and desires, your passing thoughts and beliefs in some kind of beauty—depict all that with heartfelt, quiet, humble sincerity; and use to express yourself the things that surround you, the images of your dreams and the objects of your memory. If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor or unimportant place.”

-- Rilke

Watched the latest movie adaptation of Romeo and Juliet with my sis, and really liked it! It's just so beautifully done. The setting! The clothes! Romeo! Haha. And sigh, the language.

I have missed beautiful language. Makes me want to pick up a random Shakespeare text (or worse, re-read some part of Lymond for the umpteenth time).

This has some of the most beautiful sap ever in literature.

And no matter that we knew the ending,

we still screamed when Romeo stupidly drank the poison.

I mean, seriously. Annoyed me to the bone, the pair of them.

for true education

Put here for keeps:

notes

- We should be creating happy, motivated, creative human beings. -- This should be one of the major goals of education. I feel like most local kids don't have a single one of these three attributes. At least not the ones I encounter.

- Constant monitoring in schools -- how is this a good thing?

- Grading is useful for large classrooms so the teacher knows where a child is on the spectrum of learning, but it has become a label instead, with detrimental effects on confidence and actual performance. One-on-one teaching does not require grading systems. Alternatives to grading system: Pass/Fail (i.e. whether you got the topic/subject or not and move on, or you keep doing it until you get it, or... decide it's not worth pursuing and move on?)

- Expect children to be the best, and they will surprise you. Think well of others (of children), and they will respond in kind.

- Each person has different awakenings: spiritual, intellectual, physical awakenings -- so if a person finds it hard to get something at one point in time, they haven't gotten their awakening yet?

- Education is meaningless if divorced from the sacred.

- The socioeconomic class issue in relation to education -- so many issues. It's making me think of that time I was in California, Palo Alto, and learning about the multicultural environment there, and how some African-American communities insist in having exclusive African-American schools. In a school where they are not labeled as poor students based on the colour of their skin (consciously or not, explicitly or not), children do a lot better at school. They learn better. Also, being immersed in their own culture, as opposed to the mainstream white culture, helps them learn better as well -- because the learning matter pertains to them! We always underestimate subtle factors like this.

- The Flynn effect

- How are we defining success? What are we chasing, what are we making our children chase?

- Let children explore what they're naturally inclined to do, they will excel. Happiness is when one is allowed to flourish in what one is good at doing.

- When the food comes, put away the books. Be with the food. Why are we multi-tasking so much! Be present. We should get back to doing things well, one at a time. Multi-tasking is detrimental.

- Two people live in wonder: children and philosophers. -- Shaykh Abdullah Bin Bayyah

- Boredom is important for creativity. We need down-time.

- St Thomas Aquinas: Every culture needs the people who do nothing but contemplate. We need them. They are the Socrates-es of our time.

- Why are you so afraid of losing your job? Make one! Employment used to be only one part of life.

- Also, I'm currently running Hanen parent workshops, and it's making me think about the 4P teaching process we use to teach adults, i.e. Prepare, Present, Practice and Personalize

Prepare = an experience that relates to the reason why learning something is useful or important
I feel like this is integral to create motivation for learning anything! Shouldn't we do this more with kids as well? A "prepare" strategy may show how a problem exists in the world, and therefore the need to address the problem. E.g. The world is polluted, and it creates a lot of health problems -- shouldn't we therefore learn about pollution and how it comes about? Of course, the trick as teachers is to "Prepare" in an impactful way.

Present = the transfer of information from a knowledge source to students
This is generally what most of us understand as teaching, or education. But even in the Hanen workshop, it says that we should spend only 20% of our learning time on this! And it is the simplest part of the whole learning process -- I'm thinking that if you were to tutor anyone, what's important is that, you "prepare" them for the content. After which, for the "present" portion, you could virtually leave it to the individual to find the knowledge source i.e. read up, research -- goodness, isn't this PBL? It was exactly what we did in my SLP course, which explains why I loved it so much and I feel it worked so well. And why not try it out for children or young adults? Let them build their thirst for knowledge! I feel like my time in RG had some elements of this, actually, and I pride on the fact that most of us we were essentially independent learners. If anyone asks me of my time in RG, I often say, we had relatively mediocre teachers (maybe an exceptional few inspiring ones), but we were essentially studying by ourselves. We mugged ourselves and we mugged well. The Present portion is the one that needs the least skill to execute.

Practice = applying what was learnt in the Present portion
This is where the teacher really comes in. This is the time when an individual's skills and knowledge are polished and refined, with help from feedback from the teacher. And mistakes are allowed; no, mistakes are necessary. I feel that this portion, which should make up the bulk of learning, hardly happens at all! D: Because, ultimately, this requires a lot of customized attention and feedback. It requires a one-on-one format, or at least a small group one -- and what teacher in our school system gives that? Sometimes, our really poor students will get it, cause they are so poor, we start paying attention. But what about the average kids and the potential-for-greatness kids? They don't get to polish their skills, when they should be able to! They don't get specific feedback. And mistakes aren't encouraged, they are frowned upon -- when it is necessary for learning.

I feel like I have had such poor or minimal experience of a true "practice" portion in learning, and it explains why training for my clinics in my adulthood is such a horror. I've always been an A student, did relatively well at everything -- I have had zero experience of anyone truly giving me tips to do better at what I was already okay at doing. I have never had tuition ever, either. The fear of failure is something I'm always still learning to overcome, I think.

Personalize = independently applying into real-life
This portion sort of circles back to the "Prepare" portion, and links the learning matter back to meaning and real-life. The teacher's role is to facilitate and assist the student, who at this stage should be quite enthused, in putting their skills out there in the world for a greater purpose. This is probably the most exciting part of being a teacher -- you realise that you had a little part to play in making something dynamic and awesome happen in the world.

Found some practical tips on how to learn language 

(I've recently revived my drive to get through Harry Potter in Arabic!):

-- and realised that, basically, all he suggested were speech language therapy techniques! 

hello. my profession is cool, if I can say so myself.

you don't need language parents. 

the best option is a speech language therapist 

to carry out language stimulation in a foreign language.

man, is this planting ideas in my head or what.