T1 W8-9 and School Holidays

Swamped with a thousand and one things to do the last few weeks, it's been quite insane! Sad to say I've prob forgotten a lot of the funny things that took place, which is a real pity, so I'll just make do with whatever remains in my memory. Updates:

T1 W8 (Tue)- Stayed back to see my group of council nominees rehearse for their rally. They wanted to perform a dance and skit using "Sorry Sorry" so their mentors and myself were giving advice on how to make their rally more effective and to make their dancing more slick and coordinated. Wasn't easy and I can only say not everyone is cut out to dance so I found it strange that they decided to do a dance item. In fact some of the teachers did comment like, "What has their dancing got to do with being a councillor?" Was tough for me to answer cos I also saw no link so I could only reply them that it's to help them with teamwork and creativity to get the students' attention.

Wed - Rallying day for both my groups of council nominees and I ended up helping my other group to create a rap cos they decided to all do raps for their rally but there was nothing to link them together so it was very incoherent for me and showed no group effort. Was quite proud of myself with the raps I came up for them to start and end their rally with considering my time constraints. So here it goes!

Start: Yo good morning MJC! We're your council nominees! We're gonna rap for you today and this is what we have to say!

End: So that's the end of all our raps! We wish to serve you, that's a fact! So keep our numbers in your mind - 21, 23, 24, 25! [that's their numbers to represent them)

Sat - Remembered this incident when I bumped into an ex-MJC student from the recently graduated batch at Tampines Mall. I had no idea who she was but she suddenly called out to me, "Cai Hong!" Haha, apparently she still remembered the chem song I first created for their batch and many others also remembered me for that song rather than the other songs, which surprised me cos in a chemical sense the other songs were more meaningful and had more content.

T1 W9 (Mon) - 10S417 (Dbl tut) - had some time in class so tried to hype them up by having a competition on redox (I called it the 1/2 equation challenge). Think they had fun and my friend who walked past my lab also said she saw they were a lot more active than they normally are (cos I told her how they normally are in class) so my efforts paid off. =)

Tue - Did the same challenge with 10S103 and it was quite an exciting fight all the way to the end. I was suanning one of the groups who still got 0 after 7 questions that if they still ended up with 0 after the last question then they would do a forfeit. Somehow after that they managed to come in 1st for the last question so we didn't get a chance to see haha. Was a battle of the sexes also cos there were 3 groups of guys and girls each and in the end a girl group came up tops and there was a bit of bantering amongst the class ppl. =p Oh, and I was also pretty annoyed that they took their time to come to lab so I implemented my new rule of standing at the back of class if >5 min late and stand outside the class if >7 min late starting w.e.f. tmr.

Wed - Tut with 10S103 and ironically, many of them turned up for the tutorial at 1.03p.m., which meant they were 8 min late for tut so I told them I'm sticking to my guns as said and sent about 2/3 of the class outside. They took it in good spirit though I must say cos when I greeted the class, they greeted even louder than usual. It was tough on me though haha cos I had to project my voice loud enough for them to hear and need to keep an eye on those in the class and outside but it did help to quite an extent cos they were generally very punctual after that and most of the time they were even earlier than me! Anyway, I told them I'm sorry I had to do it but sometimes certain things need to be done and I wished them a good day and told them it was their day cos it's 10th Mar (103) and they were amused by it so we're all cool. =)

Council Election Day - The day where all the council nominees turn up to make their final rally speech and also show their videos to the cohort, some of which were really creative. There was a particularly memorable speech and I really enjoyed listening to it. It was funny but yet impactful and had the crowd cheering at many points. Awesome!

Stayed back till about 10pm after voting results were out to discuss about who were going to be in the 8th SC. A really tiring night! =s

Thur - Last H2 lecture of the term and I went up to present my briefing regarding Problem-Based Learning (PBL). Basically we had two tasks and I was quite happy with the tasks created cos I felt they were quite interesting and they were relevant to real-life problems. Perhaps some might say it's a biased view cos I created the poem for one of the task and was in the video for the other task but honestly I felt they were both fun to solve for the students. We also finally showed the edited video that we filmed about 5 weeks ago.

It started with a segment from a Youtube video showing cars sliding along icy roads and crashing into each other cos they couldn't stop then later it cut to the part that we filmed in MJC. Basically, I was wrapped up in winter clothing (jacket, earmuffs, gloves, scarf, beanie) sitting in my chem bro's car pretending to have just crashed and this news reporter came up to me to asked what happened and I said in some weird slang, "I don't know! It must be all this ice! Somebody should do something about it!" We even had special effects where we got another teacher to drop paper confetti in front of the video camera to simulate the snow. It was a hilarious video and the kids were totally entertained and I was joking in my briefing that the person in the video wasn't me cos after all, how could they see who it was with all that winter clothing? =p

Tut with 10S417 - The kids started joking about me in the video and I said it was for their entertainment. I also joked with them about the bad acting and that I hope I don't get a Razzie award (an award for terrible acting) for it. =p

Chrystal - Today's lesson was about setting a personal vision and I started by sharing with the class the A Level results of 08S416 because I found their profiles v similar in terms of their L1R5, O Level Chem grades, and even the gender distribution. They were quite shocked by some of the results so I took some time to explain to them the profile of the students and why they didn't do well (btw, I didn't include any names to avoid possible sensitive issues since I could rem who had what results). I also explained to them my rationale of the way I'm doing things this time - why I'm so meticulous in recording their results (down to the point of recording my comments that I wrote on their scripts and the mistakes that I see in their tests/assignments)so that I can keep track of them and nip the problem in the bud if I foresee problems. I also suggested that they see me for consultations asap so that they can clear up their doubts early in JC1 when they still have time and energy before CCA and PW kicks in. Also spoke to the class about setting a personal vision and how I understood my strengths and changed my ways of studying after I aimed to do well in university.

After Chrystal we went to the canteen to celebrate the birthday of one of the students. During the celebration I realised what was the meaning of "TEFH" cos I saw quite a few students wearing colourful tags on the top left of their uniform with the acronym TEFH so I was wondering what it was all about. When I heard the explanation I was soooooo entertained that I just burst out laughing and apparently my laugh was so funny that all the kids around me burst out laughing also. Absolutely hilarious! Anyway I can't say it here but if you wanna know, just ask me about it. =p

Release of Council Election results - The results were delivered by one of our most popular TAs and I really enjoyed his delivery. He started out with a story about buying a house with his fiancee, how they found a flat and almost got it. Just as they were about to buy it, the seller found another buyer (I think). The feeling was like they were so happy that they were going to step into the house they wanted but the door closed on them. They were frustrated but moved on and found another house which was also nice but was much cheaper. As I was wondering what it was all about, he started to make the link that in life, you often find that as one door closes, another one opens. But if we keep being fixated with the closed door and feeling frustrated about it, we can never move on. Just like the council nominees who went all the way from signing up, to going through the interviews and rallies but eventually some of them find the door was closed to them and they need to learn to move on. I thought it was a brilliant story and it made so much sense!

Fri - It was a school holiday for us in celebration of the A Level results but I had to go to Pasir Ris Park for recce cos I was in charge of the Fast March section of our Council Training Camp which was coming up soon. But it was a quick trip as we made our way around and chose the venues that we wanted for our activities. Then it was back to school for some work before heading down to Carousel for a second round of treats for the excellent A Level results!

After that some of us headed down to Singapore Poly before we went down to HSA for an industrial visit cos we signed up for a course on Forensics. It was pretty interesting to see the various departments and the things they did - other than the criminology stuff which most ppl associate forensics with, we also saw other work such as testing of cosmetics and food for toxic chemicals and handwriting analysis, amongst other pretty interesting stuff.

Random event of the week: I rem an incident when I was walking with my CG after their recess/lunch then a student was describing how discreet their Maths tutor was and how difficult it was to get his number. Then apparently some of her classmates asked him personally for his number and she sneaked up behind them to get his number also. Her description and action was sooooo funny that I burst out laughing again and that led to another chain reaction. =p

March Holidays (Mon) - Went for the Forensics course at SP for almost the whole day. Quite interesting stuff as we learnt about kidnapping and murders amongst other stuff. I always had quite a fascination with this kind of stuff, dunno why. I rem reading about famous crime stories in Singapore and around the world in primary school though it was kinda scary also.. =s

Tue - Last day of our Forensics course and we ended early in the morning so after that I went on a shopping spree! Spent about 5 hours plus walking around the Marina Square area and spent $472 on 7 shirts and a pair of black pants. Felt satisfied cos I felt the designs of the shirts I bought were quite cool/striking and the pants was pretty cheap and slim fit, which was nicer cos I don't like those shapeless ones which look quite uncool (still have one now which I should throw away soon).

Wed - Back to school early for some intensive consultations - 8am to 1+pm. That's like so crazy huh? Hahaha. I mean it's JC1 Mar Holidays right? But I'm glad that my CG heeded my advice and I saw about half the class in 3 groups to go through their questions regarding redox and gases and also taught my 2 students going to Italy for a choir competition about atomic structure. It was pretty fulfilling though it reminded me of some of the JC2 consultations last year which seemed to go on like forever haha.

Thu - Went down to school again but only in the afternoon to get some work done before I met up with some of my friends at Geylang for some supposedly famous beef kway teow but it seemed a bit overrated to me. Headed down to the city to chill and get a drink. We went to this place called "The Loof" cos somebody went there before and seems like it's a nice place but it was full so we went to the Chijmes but couldn't find anywhere nice to chill. Finally we ended up at The Swissotel and we went to the top floor but were denied entry cos one of my friends was wearing berms and sandals lol. We spent some time taking in a wonderful night view of the city before we went to this place called Introbar to chat. The drinks were pretty ex though (cos we missed the Happy Hour which ended at 9 sad to say) but we found out the nuts was free flow and started whacking it. Then we went down to Selegie area to eat bean curd and "you tiao" and continued to talk and there was this really funny part which we all burst out laughing at but it's not appropriate to say here hahaha. =p

Fri - Back to school (again!) to do some work and also a short consultation. So funny - one of the students was talking about our school anthem and how it sounded like a National Day song and he could even visualise the airplanes flying by while the song was being played. Then I saw this post-it on another student's work which said "Ask Monk". Apparently "Monk" is the nickname she gave to her Chemistry remedial tutor. =p

Ok, gonna carry on with Part 2 (T2 W1-4) later!