Parents, not enrichment centres, are key to result
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janet_lee88:
:hi5:MOE paints a nice picture of teachers on TV, getting people to consider joining them...yes, teachers do a marvelous job teaching the next generation. We should appreciate them.
But I just wonder if MOE can do something like taking away non-teaching matters AND do it FAST, so that teachers can stick their passion - teaching. When teachers do not have to handle admin stuff, they will be happier and also teach happily. Agree ?
Allow teachers to focus on teaching...and mark books in school after that...teachers need a life and have families too.
I am not a teacher...but I appreciate my kids' teachers especially this year. -
schweppes:
Totally agreed. That's why I enjoy giving tuition and in the centre, I don't do admin work e.g. I can choose to photocopy my own materials or get admin to do it for me. My main duty is to source my own materials and teach - simple as that. CCA is unheard of. :rahrah: Seriously, MOE should employ more teachers and cut the class size to about 12. From my experience, a class of 8 - 12 students is the ideal size. Not enough teachers? Get those retired professionals to share their expertise then. I have a friend who after reaching retirement age, is re-employed on a contract basis to do the same job with a pay cut of 30%. I'm sure these professionals will be more than happy to work with students and help to shape the next generation. In fact, students need only attend max 4 hours of study. If they've given full attention and chewed on solid food, they pack in more in half the time required in our school today. If the issue is lack of classrooms, then reschedule the school timetable. Half of the school can have lessons while the other half attend activities based subjects. Also, the rest of the time can be used for other activities like sports or arts. Get qualified coaches for the various CCAs and train up our potential sportsmen and sportswomen. For those who enjoy the sports but don't have the talent can also join under another coach. So, there will be one group of competitive CCA and another of pleasure only. For those who hates the outdoor, activities like arts and movies can be arranged. Let them learn to appreciate the finer things in life through such activities (not that the schools are not doing that but not on a regular basis). How many of us know what is the correct etiquette when attending a concert, for example? :evil:Personally, I feel that most teachers aspire to be good teachers. Decent teachers. Of course, there are some better than others, but I like to believe that most want to be good teachers to begin with.
:celebrate:
DS3 went to Shanghai on the school's exchange programme and learned much more in that 2 weeks than from his arts lessons for the whole year. Every day, the host school lined up a whole list of activities and he learnt about tea appreciation and such. Why can't our schools do it here rather than send students to other countries for that purpose? :? I prefer a wholesome and rounded education for my children to academic success only. 
We don't need to have tuition and enrichment centres if our schools are equipped to function as such. I'm sure 9 out of 10 students have piano lessons. Of course, some of them are forced to take lessons by their parents. :siam: Then, why is there only 2 periods of music lessons every week in school? Except for the recorder, students are not encouraged to learn other musical instruments like keyboard or guitar. Why? After so many years of 'music' lessons, my DS3 don't even know how to read a music score.
Honestly, I would like to see our schools evolve into institutions of learning in every aspect of the word. -
Schweppes arh.. finally found someone else who appreciates an educator's job like I do. :hugs: Good teachers are definitely not scarce cause I have wonderful experiences with many teachers some of whom do not even teach my children. That's not to mean that I've not had crappy ones. The crappy ones were so dreadful, they left scars on myself n children. We may not always be so fortunate as to get the really superb ones who can do no wrong... hey, I always say in a/any human-related profession the quality sure vary wan. They accommodate huge class size especially for the higher ability classes, cause they said the teachers n the children in these classes can cope. :faint: Both my girls' class have a tad over 40. But their teachers have been extraordinary educators.
No matter what revolutionary system anyone comes up with to supposedly improvise the system there will still be parents who won't be happy with certain things since it has been established that all children learn differently.. absorb information diff n at varying speed plus all children possess varying degrees of motivation.. differing personalities and of course the right fit. Yes, while some kids take to a teacher who is more hands-on n pro active... there will be others who totally detest having to try their hands at everything. They'd rather hide behind a book.
Teaching ain't an easy profession to embark on for sure. One needs heart n strength of steel especially in dealing with more learned parents of today n children who are too advanced or falling too far behind for their level, the demands of being a level-playing-field teacher is a daunting task. Some parents whose children are waaayyy advanced ask for more work or practice papers to do at home. Some call n write in to principal to personally complain the teacher is :siao:.. In one school the teacher said the management controls the output of papers to be given back home as practice since some children can manage and some cannot n complain it's stressful on the children.
It's easy to point fingers. But to educate forty over students of diff pace and personalities.. coupled with the different demands n expectations from the forty over parents.. is really no mean feat. Include teaching of morals n values to these students so they also have better EQ apart from IQ.. and not forgetting to inspire them to excel in their CCAs.. sch competitions n what nots.
We hear of parents themselves who can't manage teaching or catering yo the demands of one child n so how can we expect one teacher to please all forty over? Of students AND their parents?
Ultimately there won't be one that fits all.
By that, meaning in reference to a system or a teacher...
While there may be crappy ones out there (not limited to only in the teaching profession definitely...) let's not discount the fact there are as many great educators around who truly have passion for teaching n loving children like their own that they (the children) can blossom beautifully into adulthood not just as passionate learners but gracious citizens as well.
I may not be always that fortunate to always have good teachers for my children (I still have lil buds_chubs gg to sch in a couple years time..
) and also the many many other future generation children whom the growing number of teachers have to nurture... so I'm still all in for better resources.. more support for schools n teachers alike.. smaller class size.. or add on allied educators.. more interesting hands-on learning.. no CCA burden on teachers.. adequate supplementary pgrm so children don't need external tuition.. up to date workshops for varying subject expertise to help teachers cope with more challenging curriculum.. *pant pant*.. ..
Like I mentioned before, I'm optimistic.. because I can see that the schools my girls are in or have attended make gradual changes. They invite experts of relevant subjects for eg to conduct creative writing workshops so teachers can impart enrichment pgrm styled teaching in class n give them better ideas of how to start if they haven't already begun to do so.. Science HODs offering after school Science workshops for fellow junior peers on how to inculcate fun Science explorations in class apart from textbook content.. and this year the school level heads agree upon guide books they find good to supplement classroom content n get parents to purchase right off the booklist/bookshop.. parents are periodically invited to view childrens' work in school via themed exhibitions.. parent-teacher subject banding briefing to air doubts parents may have.. and many more. The changes while few at a time, are definitely there and I'm optimistic more positive changes will come. -
Janet, Schweppes and Buds... what eloquent posts... I'll just add a short bit that I wrote before.
Chenonceau:
Class sizes are so large there is no time to do skills practice and give individualized feedback. I am imagining that even if I myself were a Teacher, I would not be able to do as good a job as I want to. That alone would make me leave.At this point though, I do think that we are expecting too much from the Teachers without giving them enough resource support.
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buds:
Whilst your school is hustling and bustling, what is MOE doing to help the school (of course, not just your school... all schools)? Or is it all school dependent?
Like I mentioned before, I'm optimistic.. because I can see that the schools my girls are in or have attended make gradual changes. They invite experts of relevant subjects for eg to conduct creative writing workshops so teachers can impart enrichment pgrm styled teaching in class n give them better ideas of how to start if they haven't already begun to do so.. Science HODs offering after school Science workshops for fellow junior peers on how to inculcate fun Science explorations in class apart from textbook content.. and this year the school level heads agree upon guide books they find good to supplement classroom content n get parents to purchase right off the booklist/bookshop.. parents are periodically invited to view childrens' work in school via themed exhibitions.. parent-teacher subject banding briefing to air doubts parents may have.. and many more. The changes while few at a time, are definitely there and I'm optimistic more positive changes will come. -
schweppes:
:goodpost:Personally, I feel that most teachers aspire to be good teachers. Decent teachers. Of course, there are some better than others, but I like to believe that most want to be good teachers to begin with.
I like to think that, the fact these individuals have gone into teaching is because they want to make a difference. They could have gone into other jobs, but they didn’t. Of course, some may say it’s because they can’t get into other jobs, that’s why they go into teaching. Perhaps so. But let’s not devalue their intentions.
My take is this. Take away the admin duties and the rest of the wayang. Let the teachers focus on what they have to do best. And that is to teach. Do that, and I'm sure, the teachers will be able to perform at their optimal best.
A teacher – depending on primary or secondary – has to handle his own class or multiple classes, and if primary teacher, worry about 3 subjects, of which some of the subjects may not be his area of expertise. With each class numbering an average of 40 students (and some teachers have more than 1 class to handle) and the loads of marking to do, it’s no wonder our teachers are drowning as well.
Assuming the teacher has to be in school by 7am, he still needs to stay back after sch due to remedial, supplementary lessons, CCA duties, help prepare students for competitions, meetings, entertain parents’ relentless emails and phonecalls, worry about NAPFA grading and other what have you. If it’s near major national exams, some secondary sch teachers stay back into the night as well, providing coaching to students in the evenings.
And at the end, still must find time to mark an avalanche of test scripts and homework assignments. Because if they don’t return the scripts within a respectable timeline, parents and students complain.
And with all these non teaching activities to attend to, it’s no wonder our teachers are exhausted and overwhelmed.
So… how to find time and motivation then, for better lesson planning and delivery?
U can pay the teachers loads but if they are still overworked and overwhelmed, money won’t mean a thing.
If teachers don’t have to be in charge of CCA groups, that alone can help a lot. Hire a dedicated admin team to do that. Get this admin team to organise field trips, camp activities and other non teaching related matters. Free the teachers to teach.
So, I’m not surprised that some school teachers are asking parents to send their kids for tuition or other enrichment programs. Because in the first place, our school teachers probably don’t have time and resource to cover everything as well. Not with all the wayang that they are involved and have to perform in.
Just look at enrichment centres and tuition centres. It’s been said that they do wonders for students. That they are doing the jobs that the school teachers are supposed to be doing. That these enrichment teachers are the best. And why shouldn’t they?! Their job scope is simple. Just teach. No need to worry about admin matters, organise field trips….
Class size is smaller at these enrichment centres, so it makes teaching manageable and more effective. If our school teachers are given adequate support, I’ve no doubt that they will be able to deliver as well.
And in case you are wondering, no, I am not from MOE nor am I a primary or secondary school teacher. I hear the frustrations of parents and I fully understand. I’m a parent too…. and a desperate and frustrated one as well.
But after reading some of the posts here, just want to add my peace. Do cut these teachers some slack. Not all are that bad. Really.
:celebrate: -
schweppes:
I second that... :goodpost:Personally, I feel that most teachers aspire to be good teachers. Decent teachers. Of course, there are some better than others, but I like to believe that most want to be good teachers to begin with.
I like to think that, the fact these individuals have gone into teaching is because they want to make a difference. They could have gone into other jobs, but they didn’t. Of course, some may say it’s because they can’t get into other jobs, that’s why they go into teaching. Perhaps so. But let’s not devalue their intentions.
My take is this. Take away the admin duties and the rest of the wayang. Let the teachers focus on what they have to do best. And that is to teach. Do that, and I'm sure, the teachers will be able to perform at their optimal best.
A teacher – depending on primary or secondary – has to handle his own class or multiple classes, and if primary teacher, worry about 3 subjects, of which some of the subjects may not be his area of expertise. With each class numbering an average of 40 students (and some teachers have more than 1 class to handle) and the loads of marking to do, it’s no wonder our teachers are drowning as well.
Assuming the teacher has to be in school by 7am, he still needs to stay back after sch due to remedial, supplementary lessons, CCA duties, help prepare students for competitions, meetings, entertain parents’ relentless emails and phonecalls, worry about NAPFA grading and other what have you. If it’s near major national exams, some secondary sch teachers stay back into the night as well, providing coaching to students in the evenings.
And at the end, still must find time to mark an avalanche of test scripts and homework assignments. Because if they don’t return the scripts within a respectable timeline, parents and students complain.
And with all these non teaching activities to attend to, it’s no wonder our teachers are exhausted and overwhelmed.
So… how to find time and motivation then, for better lesson planning and delivery?
U can pay the teachers loads but if they are still overworked and overwhelmed, money won’t mean a thing.
If teachers don’t have to be in charge of CCA groups, that alone can help a lot. Hire a dedicated admin team to do that. Get this admin team to organise field trips, camp activities and other non teaching related matters. Free the teachers to teach.
So, I’m not surprised that some school teachers are asking parents to send their kids for tuition or other enrichment programs. Because in the first place, our school teachers probably don’t have time and resource to cover everything as well. Not with all the wayang that they are involved and have to perform in.
Just look at enrichment centres and tuition centres. It’s been said that they do wonders for students. That they are doing the jobs that the school teachers are supposed to be doing. That these enrichment teachers are the best. And why shouldn’t they?! Their job scope is simple. Just teach. No need to worry about admin matters, organise field trips….
Class size is smaller at these enrichment centres, so it makes teaching manageable and more effective. If our school teachers are given adequate support, I’ve no doubt that they will be able to deliver as well.
And in case you are wondering, no, I am not from MOE nor am I a primary or secondary school teacher. I hear the frustrations of parents and I fully understand. I’m a parent too…. and a desperate and frustrated one as well.
But after reading some of the posts here, just want to add my peace. Do cut these teachers some slack. Not all are that bad. Really.
:celebrate: -
I believe the message has been totally misread and we are going off tangent. Why would we want to criticize teachers for the sake of criticism? Why would we not appreciate our teachers who put in a lot of effort in their individual capacities? Are we nuts?
The appeal is to MOE to better the management of teachers and not a criticism of teachers’ ability per se. If people are not managed well, they DO NOT perform, simple as that. I cherish the individual teachers who go the extra miles but guess what? They will burn out like the rest after a while, how sustainable is that fire if conditions are not right? Just like if your children are not managed well in their studies, we do not conclude that they are dumb, do we? So please do not go down the wrong track, better management is definitely missing to result in frustrating parents who have to DIY or outsource so much but we are just not sure where is the missing link, at school policy level or MOE policy level as I have always heard school saying they are constrained by this and that.
I believe MOE’s style today is empowerment of school. Great because it leaves room for creativity by individual principals. However, what is missing is probably a good review of the processes. In empowerment strategy, it means you only care about results and do not look closely at processes and I believe cluster heads are put there to monitor results as well. Commercially, this is done because we only measure profits in business venture as key, others are frills but the outcome of education is not academic results alone. How about the physical well-being of a child, the social well being of a child? We are sending them into workforce, not just banking them into banks like profits. We assume academic results will automatically show the other 2 are well? Wrong. I know children who top the PSLE chart but physically can be breathless to do some simple exercise and the children are simply unfit, not suffering from illnesses. Socially there are many inept children amongst us. Fantastic in academic results but when they open the mouth, they piss people off. Honestly I think physical and social well being is something parents should focus on in partnership with the school but if they are focusing so much in driving academics, little or nothing will be done in those areas. As it is now, I can see in my nieces merely focusing on academics, physically or spiritually they are more unfit than their aunt as they have no tenacity and strength to last through an activity with me physically and socially, zero when it comes to relating to elders, only good at twitter talk with friends on no substance stuff. Granted, this is how they de-stress from academic pursuit… I see my siblings only worry about their academics largely and hair turns very grey, nothing else. I am just still defining the problems…the spirit in children is missing and that is a major KPI.
Now about the teachers’ talent management issue. We send such missing spirit children into the working world and some become teachers. Putting this aside for now, we look at the difference in an educator viz-a-viz a teacher. An educator is an all rounder, a teacher a specialist. I am sure MOE knows the difference. principals, HOD and Form teachers belong to educator. Subject teachers are subject matter expertise. These are 2 distinct career paths but probably not offered for optimal performance. Every teacher looks like a be-all to everyone now.
For FTs and HODs to manage well, they should only focus on ONE subject which is their expertise and do management largely.
Subject teachers focus on subject teaching, research of teaching materials and manage admin of CCA. This role is typically for new teachers and eventually for senior teachers with a calling for knowledge transfer only. I feel for a subject teacher to be effective in teaching, he/she still has to be integrated with the children’s life outside a subject, hence CCA. Not much difference from effective parenting. And if a person is very competent in a subject, multi tasking is definitely possible.
I think in current practice, MOE and schools try to train every teacher as an all rounder. This is definitely not possible on 2 accounts. Firstly, current education system trains them to be specialists in studies like my nieces. Secondly, for those who manage to be all rounders are loaded in the wrong way like a Form teacher can be teaching 2-3 different subjects for a few classes and still have a form class. This is an over stretch of the superman and superwoman. The first problem results from our education system. We just have to recognise that we have been training a large pool of people who cannot multi task very well (partly due to vicious cycle in the problems ofne system) and hence we have to design jobs that they can manage. The second problem is a management issue on resources but why the problem is there could be multiple reasons:
A. Management training is weak, even the smartest need a good coach in mgt skills. It is more of an art than science.
B. Specialist picked to do management work and cannot be converted easily (job mismatch but view it as promotion). No doubt everyone is promoted to their level of incompetency but fitting a square to a hole or vice versa is called mission impossible. Talent management fails here.
C. No support of resources and information for effective management. I hear teacher resources from MOE is always an issue that P has NO CONTROL, then what is there to manage? The teacher supply dept in MOE can be improved if this is true. There just seems to be some process optimization required.
D. No effective transfer of good practices from school to school(eg. Buds’ school, all the good stuff seems to be stuck there and not flowing out) perhaps schools are reminded that they need to be competitive? If this competitive wall can be torn down, I think everyone will benefit as after all we are talking about educating a nation here, why compete and not integrate? maybe some schools can be identified as pilot sites for testing processes and then they will be launched into their own satellite groups of schools…like big brother to siblings with siblings rivalry eliminated by perks of integrated results?
Lastly, please do not go away thinking we want a cookie cutter system but if schools can be well run like Mcdonalds world wide(globally one and locally unique at the right level) I don’t think parents will be complaining.
PS: The teachers teaching in private and diluting their focus in school is definitely an issue. They are tired in school and they scream and shout at the children due to lack of rest. Everything is interlinked. Of course for them to teach outside, it may be money is not good in schools and work is not satisfactory as well. So where is the missing link? We only know the children at the end of the chain suffers. -
Last year, 2 HODs from DS1 school left ( one left in July, the other left when the Nov hols started). They set up their own tuition center and I enrolled DS1 in. The group is small and they are still very passionate about teaching and DS1 enjoyed the class very much. Through some conversation with them, they were pretty much stressed when they were teaching at the school. One of them told me she could wake up at 2am, heart beating, and thinking if she’d done her lesson plans etc… imagine that kind of stress.
If MOE and the school principal can look into reducing these admin work, I think the teachers can do a little bit better. I simply think it isn’t easy being a teacher now. -
silverhorse:
That's probably part of our leaders' plan. Teachers are given bare mimimum...probably enough for a B+. In order to improve your KPI, you keep having to improve your customised teaching material so that someday u will become an appt holder and do lesser teaching.Last year, 2 HODs from DS1 school left ( one left in July, the other left when the Nov hols started). They set up their own tuition center and I enrolled DS1 in. The group is small and they are still very passionate about teaching and DS1 enjoyed the class very much. Through some conversation with them, they were pretty much stressed when they were teaching at the school. One of them told me she could wake up at 2am, heart beating, and thinking if she'd done her lesson plans etc.... imagine that kind of stress.
If MOE and the school principal can look into reducing these admin work, I think the teachers can do a little bit better. I simply think it isn't easy being a teacher now.
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