my artistic photo of wai dek looking spaced out. not so prompt with submitting assignments but very responsible when it comes to his niche, the AVA. or so i heard. haha

sann and sarah. sarah, you did brilliant with your rendition, okay. don't worry about the technical glitch. join Singapore Idol 3!

mustafa's natural acting and hilariously exaggerated mechanisms kept our show from turning dreary. and the best thing of all is that he's my junior from AMKSS!

Jin yu looking impatiently at Mr Ganesh, our head of the Student Development and Welfare committee (some euphemism for discipline). no lar, i just took things out of context. anyway, jin yu is ridiculously burdened as the president of the student council. yet, she manages to stay cheerful and takes things in her stride. her spunk is admirable manz. there's a lot in which i should learn from her.

the three huo bao commentators.

the ex-YJCians whom i encountered never fail to "boast" about how lazy and unmotivated they are. actually, not bad what. sure, i feel like slaughtering some of them who perpetually don't submit their work but this tardiness isn't something exclusive to YJCians. I don't feel that AJCians are so much more hardworking than YJCians that one can notice a significant difference. then again, AJCians who took my subject combination notoriously did poorly in all subjects. so perhaps i can't generalise because the example is too isolated.

the one thing that these ex-YJCians neglected to mention is that they are nice people. Nice may be a trite thing to say, especially for a GP tutor but i think it cuts down to the core. yup, they are nice people lar.

I feel very lucky to be able to say that I love my YJCians. yupz.

call me desperate for an ego boost but it's nice that my ex-students remember my birthday. or rather, it's nice that arie remembers my birthday since i think i have only told her before. haha.

i can't believe how i spent my 26th birthday. stuck in the council's room, frantically fighting fire with my councillors due to erm their lack of solidarity, cutting movie tickets, cutting cardboards, varnishing

i really felt like i was one of them. digression: they actually know Heaven Knows by Rick Price, okay. oh my god. talk about the advent of the internet!! i don't know man. is it because of my non-threatening physical appearance or are teenagers really bolder than those from my generation? i kena suan left, right, centre lar! i tell you, even when i was being cheeky towards my physics tutor, i also didn't have the audacity to tease him to such an extent.

not to say i mind lar.

this may sound quite sadistic but i found that i actually miss times when i was engaged in a group project and was working hard along with my teammates. the camaraderie, the ku zhong zuo le feeling, the fact that you are working towards a common goal with like-minded souls.

the teachers' day committee members had it worse. i stayed with them til 11.15pm (oh my god!) to hear them finalise the details for tomorrow

i have the fullest respect for my councillors. they take so much crap and grit their way through it, always conscious of the fact that they are sandwiched between their fellow YJCians who think that they are mere puppets and their teachers-in-charge who give last-minute instructions. and the whole council is disunited

why put yourself through all this when all people will do at the end is point out and criticise the things that you didn't do well? when your own people won't even back you up and give you the support you need

yet, some of them are willing to assume responsibility and stand by one another, often at the expense of their studies/personal lives/families

zhixiang said that he's taking all this as a learning experience

i hope his idealism doesn't die off. and this is the least i can do, as a powerless teacher-in-charge.

News Broadcast Project 2006 (Part 3)

my ex-students are so capable lar!!

News Broadcast Project 2006 (Part 2)

News Broadcast Project 2006 (Part1)

it has been a rough thursday and friday

at this point in time, some of my kiddos still don't understand Conclusion, Reasons, Evidence and Assumption. it is not as if i haven't harping on this structure all this while.

though i don't think they are at fault either. after all, i am their 4th GP/PW tutor. The longer i teach, the more i realise they haven't been taught a lot of things

the thing about me is that i don't bother to conceal my feelings. so, teachers and students alike have been asking me to relax and not to take work so seriously, that it's okay just to try your best

i understand that and appreciate all the concern but i guess i feel a lot of guilt over

~the fact that if Mr Sim (HOD) were still teaching them, he would be able to help them better
~the fact that i have to ask them to spend so much time on their PW when they aren't doing so fantastic at their A level subjects
~the fact that there is only one of me and i can't give them the personalised attention they need. and that some have given up on their EOM

yes, i know. there's no need to compare myself to Mr Sim but still....

anyway, i will stay sane and resilient because i refuse to give up just like that. haha

hmm, it's quite concidental that i met jingwei over MSN and his parting remarks were "Jia You. Jia You. Jia You."

he explained that if you repeat something often enough, then it will come true.

i raised my eyebrows but couldn't hold back a chuckle. haha.

abstract photo of the day: this was taken outside esplanade. erm, the point of this photo is the graduates taking their photos.

this was how rude of the vandal lar. but well, i have a soft spot for graffiti.

Ryan Star - Losing My Religion (Rockstar Supernova)

witness to how sad my life has become

i somba (promise) i didn't pose for the camera. furiously marking the AQ responses away.

Maggie brought marking too. she finished her stack way before i could see the light at the end of my tunnel

Ashley was marking too. she also finished her stack while i was valiantly fighting to edge towards my end.

i didn't ask to be a GP teacher. i see the potential for fun lessons, yes (if i don't boggle my students down with too many comprehension passages. haha) but i really want to be a sec sch teacher. hammering my students that they ought to memorise their valency table and learn to balance equations.

am i just plain ungrateful? hmmm....

Fireworks Festival 2006

It doesn't bode very well for my photographic skills when my personal favourite after last night's conquest is this:

haha. but the whole process was fun lar. while i know that the following photos aren't much to marvel at, it's fine because i had fun and that's all that matters.

contentment--an euphemism for mediocrity? heh

Thanks Maggie for inviting me

NDP celebrations at teck ghee cc

the kind of sacrifices i make for my students (read: wake up at 6.50am to support the band performance at 7.30am)

i'm so noble.

sandra (left) looking intently. i also liked how the background of trees and HDB flats complemented to form a Uniquely S'porean photo. haha.

I will let the photos speak for themselves. CBSS band rocks!













this was such a refreshing photo of chiahao (left). normally, he would open his mouth widely, show off his "beautiful white teeth" (some King Solomon Mines quote) and do the Peace sign. Not that i'm complaining but when 95% of his photos turn out like that, boredom seeps in. haha.

A mood portrait of mika (right). it looked uncharacteristically her. because she always seems so cheerful (read: noisy!), i actually raised my eyebrows and hesitated for a moment whether this gal was mika.

sometimes, i wonder if jia wang (self-made professional photographer at CBSS) ever gets tired of covering school events. his equipment isn't exactly light, manz. but i guess it's a pleasure to capture the different facets of your kids on camera. it's nice to feel that i'm helping them preserve their school memories-treasured memories that they will dig up years from now and talk fondly of the good old days-never mind that they would probably forget that mr heng took them. grins. and i think it's the most direct way of communicating to them that i believe in what they do and contribute to CBSS. if i didn't think that they were doing meaningful stuff, i wouldn't bother to snap pictures of them in action, right?

an unexpected source of satisfaction that i never thought i would derive from teaching. so, although it can be rather exhausting trying to hunt my teens on MSN just so i may transfer them a copy, i will continue to do so.

happy National Day holidays

Ironic - Alanis

Hi YJCians, if you are lurking here, just to say that we will be dealing with Irony and metaphors soon. here's Irony, a music video by Alanis Morissette. a song hugely popular for my generation. revealing how dated i am. hahaha

yah, the sarong i was talking about in my previous post. hilarious, right?

it's quite scary leh. this photo was taken without my knowledge. students have power over the teacher these days. hahaha

well, this week has been nothing short of memorable

wed, i gave 114 an Attitude & Tone in-house assignment and what was meant to be a 30-min routine daily work dragged on to 50mins? one hour? as they couldn't get down to attempting the questions. some expressed that the lesson was boring. true, i grant that but hello, there's a block test on 21/8 and i'm just trying to get you to pass.

so, we were all in a foul mood. my lousy mood aggravated by the fact that i was wearing a silly sarong in an attempt to spice up the activity for the second hour, which was to extract main ideas from these INTERESTING passages on travel.

oh my god. i made myself a clown for nothing.

then, i went to 125 and forced 5 people to attend the final of the JCDC. and i was stupid enough to prolong the agony by forgetting (twice!) to include the appropriate number of smiley faces, which amounts to participation, in the plastic bag. sigh~~~

thurs, delivered my 1st lect to half the JC1 cohort on Sci & Tech. why wasn't i posted to a sec sch? why did i have to do this? super ironic because i found GP lectures to be ultra BORING and never in my wildest dreams did i imagine that one day, i would be delivering one of THEM.

basically, i stripped for no apparent reason because most people didn't see the atoms on my very INTERESTING tee

oh my god. oh my god. oh my god. these are the things that people are going to remember ten years from now lar. and they will reminisce about their JC days and when the topic comes to me, they will say:

that Mr Heng v funny leh. remember tat lect in wic he tink he like superman

my only consolation is that i'm rather thick-skinned. hahaha

fri, lect went more smoothly. better at asking guiding Qs and eliciting responses so that the hapless students i "arrowed" upon won't fumble and look silly

not that i'm being arrogant or what but i declare the lesson with 125 a success!

i managed to get them to craft an individual AQ response piece at 4pm! and people wanted to do the task well, since some chose to continue writing after the time limit was up and others wanted to submit on monday

i got people excited about doing work. how brilliant was that!

not mentioning the best part of it all--their answers. maybe the examples can be better elaborated but basically, they all understood how to structure an AQ response. Not too shabby at all.

i think this was the first lesson in which i felt a deep sense of satisfaction.

i'm helping people to improve. how many people can lay claim to that?

minna san, ganbatte yoz!