I was formally introduced to the whole school community this morning. The original plan was for me to be introduced yesterday, but my 1 hour commute turned into a 1.25 hour commute, so I missed the beginning of the morning assembly. We made up for it today.

Speaking of morning assembly, there’s a standard practice here, that is not at all standard in the US. First, ALL schools start at 7:30. Ending time varies based on what stream a student is in and which Co-curricula Activity (CCA) that they have and when they have it. Since some students are completing the secondary curriculum in 4 years (“Express”) and others complete it in 5 years (“Normal Academic” and “Normal Technical’), they have a different number of courses to complete and the length of the day is not standard. At both KR and here, students gather in the courtyard or assembly hall at 7:30. Students sing the national anthem while the Singapore flag and school flag is raised. Then, they recite the pledge. All schools do this in Singapore. Can you imagine? At 7:30 every morning at any given school, you would find students doing the exact same thing.

After this came my introduction by the principal to all the students and teacher. He also asked me to say a few words, which I had not prepared, but was still comfortable doing. I was honest and told them that it was my honor to be among them and learning from them. I keep learning more and more about schools here and I’m usually impressed with what I learn. The teachers are very committed and the students are – for the most part – committed to their learning. They are teenagers, after all.

The next part of the morning was the silent reading time, which deviates from what I saw at KR and apparently from other schools, too. Most of the students sit down on the pavement and get out a book to read. Also during this time, the form teachers (advisory/homeroom teachers) meet one-on-one with students to talk about progress, personal issues, etc. KR has a version of this that was around the same time of day, but not exactly implemented in the same way. I appreciate the explicit efforts to allocate time and space for teachers to make personal connections with their students. I was happy to take about 10 – 12 minutes for my only silent reading. I dove back into a book that was loaned to me by a the Math HOD, Concept-Based Mathematics: Teaching for Deep Understanding in Secondary Classrooms.

Besides observing classrooms and burying my nose in books, I’ve become familiar with some of the special programs here at TSS, including the Applied Learning Program (ALP). ALP is an MOE initiative started a few years ago to allow Singaporean students to have more hands-on learning experiences. Students here engage with making solar cars and quad-copters. It’s pretty darn cool. The school has both fiscal support from MOE and personnel support from Science Centre – Stem Inc. Kr has a similar arrangement for their robotics classes. I’m so envious. Something like this would be fantastic at Northside Prep. Perhaps we can set-up a long distance relationship with the Science Center? I doubt it, but I can still dream.

Update: I stopped by the Maker Faire CCA today and took some pictures of object that the kids had made with 3-D pens:

I had said that an upcoming post would be about what I’m reading and the luxury of having the time to read, but I thought I would do a quick post in anticipation of a my foodie husband’s guest blog post, which is also forthcoming.

While renting a apartment here is *very* expensive, it’s relatively very inexpensive to eat here. The hawker centers are everywhere; we are never more than a 10 minute walk from one. I got this meal for about US$3.50:

The ‘famous’ Chicken Rice dish, with a side of bok choy and broth. All for about US$3.50.

It’s no wonder that people don’t really cook at home. We certainly have been doing less cooking at home, but that is also because of our increased commute times with having to take the train/bus (and running to catch them – see the last post). The four of us are quite hungry by the time we get to a train station and getting a meal there is much easier than waiting until we get home.

More on this and other living related items from my guest blogger, Johan…

When I told an NIE classmate that I was walking more here than I do back home, she said, “Really? In this heat???” I’m pretty sure she’s never experienced a Chicago winter…though I’ve never experienced a Chicago winter like the unseasonably warm one they are having now.

There’s no doubt that I’m walking a lot more now. Just this morning my bus app told me that I had four minutes until my bus arrived and I was still on the 12th floor of my building. As soon as I got off the elevator, I sprinted to the bus stop about a few blocks away, waving at the arriving bus driver as he waited at the stop for loading passengers. I got in a good 3.5 minutes of cardio before plopping down in the air conditioned bus. I won’t go so far as to call it my workout for the day, but it’s more activity than I usually have before 7:30 most mornings back home. I need to invest in a new pair of gym shoes for my planned and unplanned workouts.

I had my first day at TS school yesterday. I was sad to leave KR because it was becoming familiar and I enjoyed working with the teachers there. I had become attached to my attachment. The folks at KR gave us a generous send-off with lunch. Afterward, Alex and I shared our reflections on our time there.

I wrote most of this post on my commute to TS. Now that I am at my desk, I can go ahead and publish it and get in some ‘exercise’ for my mind now. I get to observe two classes today. I hope to head over to the other side of the island in the afternoon to go to NIE’s library to pick up some books and read some papers for my project. I recently started a post about the time that I get to spend reading and and reflecting on good education writing. I’ll post more about that luxury later.

Completing this Fulbright affords me the time to read relevant and interesting work by other teachers and scholars or teacher/scholars…or maybe I shouldn’t try to make the distinction between the two because teachers ARE scholars. Anyway, I digress.

Because teaching is so demanding, I don’t always have the time to read what other educators are writing about regarding teaching and learning. I read what I can from practitioner journals like Mathematics Teacher, but even then I usually scan the title to see if they directly relate the classes that I am currently teaching. As a math department at NCP, we have made a more concerted effort to read math-ed related books as part of our PLC and they provide great fodder for discussion, even if what we read is not always applicable. This year, we are reading Jo Boaler’s Mathematical Mindsets, which I had read last summer. Her research and conclusions for math teaching closely align to our department’s vision for teaching and learning. We were only a few chapters in before I left, but the rest of the department continues to read it and process it in my absence.

I picked up a few books at AST’s library last week and am reading them as quickly as I can (which is not very fast) before I have to return them in two weeks. One is Motivation Matters and Interest Counts: Fostering Engagement in Mathematics by James Middleton and Amanda Jensen. Just one chapter into the book and I was reminded about what I love about teaching. Part of a teacher’s job is to motivate her students. There’s more to that than merely using encouraging words. The kids of mathematical tasks we present to our students, the routines, activities, interactions, and overall culture of the classroom impacts student motivation. Students’ past experiences and future expectations impact their motivations. Their school and home environments, including their peers (of course), impact their motivations.

The messages that teachers give students about mathematics greatly impact’s student interest in math and their motivation to learn it and to learn its relevance in their lives. When the goal of doing mathematics is to get the right answer, a lot of students can be turned off if they can’t do that easily. Instead, the goals of a mathematics classroom can be communicating and building knowledge as a community. I aim for that in all of my classes, but I’m sure that I fall short some days. I don’t give up, however. I have seen some evidence of the community building and communication goals in math classrooms here and I hope to see much more.

I’m also looking for that kind of learning in the graduate class I attend weekly, which is a curriculum theory class, not a math class. One night after this class, on our walk to the bus stop, I asked a classmate if the participation in the class was typical compared to the other classes she has (or is) taking at NIE. I wanted to know if students participate in the same manner (which is not very much) when the teacher asks a question. That class participation is essential for the goal community building – no matter the subject. (I probably participate more than others and I am ever vigilant of my status as a foreigner. I don’t want to come off as a know-it-all westerner, but there comes a point when the professor asks a question and I can hear the proverbial crickets in the room and it forces me to raise my hand to contribute.) My classmate was confused by question. She clarified, asking whether “ability level” of the students was consistent across her classes. I was not referring to ability at all. I merely wanted to know if students were more comfortable participating and offering their insights in other classes, compared to the one that we took together. This quick conversation resonated with me and what I have been seeing in classes. Apparently, she was equating participation with ability, which is too often the case in many mathematics classrooms. Only the smart kids speak up. I strive to make sure that ability is not correlated with participation and I continue to gather resources that can help me build a summer curriculum which can do that.

I came to Singapore to learn in their schools, from actual people. I have learned a great deal about their school system through my being here. Not all of what I learned is applicable to my project, but the context of my learning is important to my project. I’ve learned more than I could ever learn by merely reading about the schools online or in books. Much of what I have learned has come through conversations with teachers and other educators. A main feature of the system is the ‘streaming’ that occurs after grade 6, when students take the PSLE, Primary School Leaving Exam. It’s even more high-stakes than Chicago’s Selective Enrollment Exam for high schools, but I can relate on some levels. After selecting their top 6 choices of secondary schools, a student’s PSLE score determines both where they are admitted and to what stream: Express – they complete secondary school in 4 years, pass O-level exams and move on to Junior College; Normal Academic – they complete the curriculum in 5 years and move on to Poly-technical Schools; or Normal Technical – they must pass the N-level exams and move on to vocational schools. A student’s future career path is mostly determined by the end of 6th grade. This streaming was started several years ago in response to high dropout rates. It did a great deal to curb the dropout rates and keep kids in school until at least age 16. Now the system has added more flexibility to the streaming with Subject Based Banding, which allows students to take some subjects outside of their stream. This is relatively new strategy needs to be analyzed as it is in its first or second year of implementation for some schools.

As I dig more into my project, I’m reading a lot, but I’m talking even more to teachers, lead teachers, master teachers, curriculum developers, principals, assistant principals, my faculty advisory, my NIE professor, my classmates, and my fellow Fulbrighters. I’m working to analyze and synthesize all my learning into my own project and into this blog. This is kind of learning outside of reading messy work, but it matters, so I’m going to keep at it.

Each time I find myself working/living/existing in a new place or situation, I can’t help but recollect other times I have voluntarily placed myself outside my comfort zone, and tried to make the unfamiliar more like the familiar…or at least more comfortable. Moving to Singapore to complete this Fulbright fellowship – this migration for opportunity (using the vocabulary words from another blog post) – has certainly put me in a new place, literally and figuratively. Like other times, it’s disorienting, but ultimately it forces me to grow and learn in ways that I’d never imagined.

My first year teaching was at Harper High School in Chicago. I moved from SW Ohio right after undergrad to start my teaching career. I remember in an interview with another school, I was told that I shouldn’t teach in a CPS school because they had assumed that I ‘couldn’t handle CPS students.’ They were wrong. I enjoyed the time I spent teaching at Harper and it wasn’t the students who influenced my decision to leave. It was a few intractable colleagues in the math department who refused to collaborate, who did not want to try anything new, and who were forced to have even congenial conversations. That was what forced me to find another working environment. I had fun in the classroom, even though it was a completely new environment for me. It was easy for me to find my groove – planning lessons and assessments, delivering them, interacting with students, and cultivating my nascent practice in reflection on my teaching. Teaching is fun. I had much to learn in my first year of teaching and I learned it on-the-job. Each day of teaching was new and exciting and interesting. I’d come home exhausted, but wanting to go back for more the next day. There were times when I felt overwhelmed, but I was always grounded in the task I had to do – teach my students mathematics. With little guidance other than the textbooks bequeathed to me, I set about pursuing my task everyday. I knew what I was going to teach, how I was going to do it, and the trajectory of what I was teaching. I had found a rhythm to my work and my life through my teaching. I was again thrown off that rhythm during my first Winter Break when I had two weeks off. On the Sunday night before I returned to school, I remember worrying that I didn’t remember how to teach.  That proved to be a ridiculous fear, but it still crept up on my during my first few years of teaching after that.

Fast forward several years and two schools later when I took a leave from teaching to be a Teacher-in-Residence at Northwestern. I was thrilled to have been chosen and to join the research team at SESP. I had (and still have) a great deal of respect for the work that many of the researchers and professors do there. I got to peak into the world of educational research for a year. As interesting as the work was, it was also an unsettling time because I didn’t have the familiarity of teaching to rely on; I didn’t have the regularity of a teaching schedule. I remember thinking, “Where am I supposed to be at 1:24 pm?” The pace of research seemed slow, too. Everything had to go through an IRB request or have a literature review done first. In teaching, students show up at 1:24 pm whether you are prepared or not. The clock’s crusade in teaching can be unnerving, but it can also be quite the motivator to be prepared and to accomplish something. That something is usually a completed lesson or test or stack of papers to grade. It took me some time to adjust to not having an imposed structure to my day and using that freedom and flexibility productively. Fortunately, I had my research team to guide me.

Fast forward again to now, several years later, and I’m taking another leave from teaching, situating myself in not only a new work outside of ‘regular’ teaching, but also in a new culture, in a different country. At our Fulbright orientation in DC last August, we were warned that we will feel overwhelmed at times, that we will see and learn more than we could ever possibly use, and that we may even want to change the focus of our project. I have felt all these things and then some. Before I left for Singapore I was confident in what I had to do to complete my inquiry project and had a clear sense of direction with it. Now the pendulum swings in the opposite direction as I feel less focused and less confident. The more I learn about the Singapore education system, the more I want to ask “why?” and dig deeper, and this usually diverts me from the goal of completing my inquiry project. Even though I was warned, the temptation to digress is strong. Besides the additional stimuli of my new circumstance, I am readjusting again to having little-to-no structure in my day outside of the classroom observations and I don’t have the drumbeat of teaching to keep me on track. I’m getting better at staying focused without the comfort of the stringent schedule.

In the past when I’ve felt a little professionally distracted, I’ve had some excellent colleagues who have helped me discern my priorities and stay centered. While I have my Fulbrighter colleagues here, they are working on their own inquiry projects. I’ll see my faculty adviser in two weeks and I hope to have a semblance of structure in the questions I have for him. That conversation will be helpful. Thankfully, I have my educator-husband who is forced to listen to my ramblings and helps me stay on the straight and narrow. He’s a fantastic sounding board and gives me valuable feedback. If I haven’t already written about his support of this whole adventure, then I’ve left out a very important piece. Everyone deserves to have such a supportive life-partner like him. I’m also doing quite a bit of consultation with my colleagues in Chicago. While they are holding down the fort, they are also helping me lay the groundwork for the summer program that is the focus of my inquiry project. Beth and Robert are Co-chairs of the Math Department now and dealing with administrative issues. Per my requests, Gaby is trying out some online Desmos activities in her Algebra class so I can decide what might be appropriate in a summer program. If nothing else, this Fulbright experience affirms my proclivity for collaboration, in whatever form I can have it.

Some good news is that I did get to spend about 30 minutes talking to/teaching a class this week. The teacher asked if I would talk about STEM related careers. Via Facebook I reached out to NCP alumnae who are in STEM careers or on a paths to them. A handful got back to me and I was able to share what one of my former students does as a futures trader. The kids loved it and the teacher was impressed with my former student’s clarity in his writing, emphasizing that to the students. I’m hoping for even more teaching or co-teaching as this fellowship progresses. We will see what other teachers will allow.

Look! I’m kind of teaching!

Look! I’m kind of teaching!

Absent any other opportunities to get back to a classroom where all the magic happens, I’ll continue to work on my inquiry project. There’s a quote that goes something like, “You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy.” I’m still working on the educator corollary, but it has something to do with taking the teacher out of teaching and still being a teacher. If any reader out there can help me out with this one, I’ll be very appreciative.

An advantage (of many) of having our kids in an international school is that I get even more perspectives on education and schooling as I’ve never been part of an international school community before. Of course, I only get the parent perspective, as opposed to the teacher one that I am getting at KR, but I’m still learning quite a bit from the tidbits that I get from the evening reports of my girls.

My Primary 3 student went on a field trip to a hawker center this week with her class. (Johan, as a legit SAHD, was a chaperone.) I had assumed that the purpose of the hawker center trip was to test local cuisine and to have a fun outing with the class. I was wrong. The students were assigned the task of interviewing the proprietors of the food stalls to learn more about human migration, which is the sub-theme of their Unit of Inquiry, “Where We are in Place and Time.” Each person in the groups of 5 had a question to ask, for instance, “Where are you from?”, “Why did you come here?”, and “Why do you make the food that you make?”, which was Hazel’s question. Apparently, the interviewee did not understand the question, so Hazel didn’t get an answer. She took it in stride, of course, and still enjoyed eating some local food with her classmates after the interviews. She learned plenty from her classmates’ research, however.

When reporting to us about the trip, she said that people migrate for a reason – either an opportunity or a challenge. I said, “So, that’s kind of like us? We migrated to Singapore.” In my mind I was thinking it was for my own personal/professional challenge of fulfilling a Fulbright Fellowship. “Well, yes, kind of,” she said. “But we came for an opportunity. People that come because of a challenge leave that country that they are in because of a challenge like war or famine or something bad happening in their home country. We came here because you had an opportunity, not because we *had to* leave our country.” Point taken.

On Tuesday evening, we met up with some folks from KR at Gardens by the Bay, which is adjacent to the famous Marina Bay Sands. We discovered the Children’s Garden, the Adventure Trail and the Tree House. The girls didn’t have their swim suits so they didn’t get to take advantage of the humongous splash park, but they had fun frolicking on the trail and climbing in the tree house. We promised we would go back. We want to  to explore more of the bay and garden anyway. One restaurant’s name there pretty much sums it up: Majestic Bay.

The other Fulbrighters and I went to the US Embassy on Friday afternoon. We met with representatives from the Public Affairs office. They shared what they did and we shared what our projects are about. We also got some pretty sweet swag.

We weren’t allowed to take our phones into the Embassy with us, so we had to take pictures outside. Yes – it looks like a fortress.

This past Saturday was filled up with morning cleaning and an afternoon with a playdate for Lulu. Her friend from school, Bibi, came over for a swim and to play legos. Bibi is from The Netherlands, but lived most recently Bangkok. They hit it off in their class as the two newcomers. I can only imagine the teacher’s introduction: “Lulu, Bibi. Bibi, Lulu.”

Today we went to Little India for some exploring and sight-seeing. We saw and quickly toured a famous Hindu temple. None of us understood the rituals that were being performed by the leaders or the participants. We watched with respect, took a few pictures and then moved on. Our girls had questions about the statues, but, unfortunately, I couldn’t answer all of them. I don’t know much about Hinduism, we left it at “they pray differently than we do and that’s a good thing.” “Wow,” said Lulu. “There church is a lot different than ours.” We had gone to Mass in the morning, so it was fresh in her mind. “Yes,” I said, “but they don’t call that a church. It’s called a temple.”

Nearby was the Mustafa Center. It is a five-story building filled with retail goods. They girls have never seen anything like it. They were happy to make it out with new Barbies, which will be lovingly added to their collection back home. Will those Barbies be migrating to the US because of an opportunity or because of a challenge? I’m sure my third-grader will have an answer.

When I first found out that I was awarded the Fulbright fellowship, most people assumed that I would be teaching in Singapore. And, for some Fulbright programs, that is the case. Fulbrighters in academia are usually visiting professors who teach at the host institution. When I say that my purpose for being in Singapore is for learning and research, some people were surprised or didn’t understand what that could mean.

My understanding of the Fulbright DAT program is each participant involved in the program (including Fulbrighters, host teachers, host institutions, host students) is both a learner and a student – simultaneously at times. This understanding has been reinforced for me over the past couple of days. Even in a recent example of an interaction in a classroom with a student at KR, I found myself reiterating my purpose in Singapore.

I had been sitting in on the second session of a Robotics class. I had actually learned what an Arduino board is; how to read the color-coding on resisters; how to connect an LED light, the resisters and the cables; and how to read a code in order to make the LED light blink. After I successfully set mine up and before I set it to go, I was walking around the classroom to see how the students were doing with it.

Student 1: Teacher, did I do this correctly?

Me: I don’t know. We’ll see if it works in a second.

Student 2: Why do teachers always say that: “We’ll see!”?

Me: I don’t actually know if it will work. We’ll have to see.

Student 2: Why are you here?

Me: Well, why are you here?

Student 2: I’m here for learning.

Me: So am I.

Student 1: What??? (his eyes wide) I thought you were a teacher?

Me: I am – shouldn’t teachers be learners too?

Student 1: shrugs shoulders and nods his head

Earlier in the day, I sat in on a PLC meeting with four other math teachers. They had very little exposure to Desmos, so I was ready to share the love. I walked them through the process of creating activity builders, but I also encouraged them to search for some and either bookmark them or edit them to make them their own. We only had one hour to chat, so it was really a brain dump – I unloaded as much as I could. I hope I didn’t overwhelm them, but it was hard to hold back.

My host teacher had used Desmos in her class, but had not used activity builder yet, either. I sat in two classes in which she was using the slider feature to get students to ‘see’ how the parameters in the vertex form of a quadratic determined the location of the vertex. I appreciate how she was getting the kids to make the discoveries on their own.

I also had a productive meeting with my academic adviser from NIE. He will be helping me with my project. He was an adviser last year to another Fulbrighter. He’s already pointed me in the direction of some great resources that I will be looking at over the next two weeks. He is actually a Fulbrighter, too. He has been a visiting professor to a school in the states. I love that I have someone so knowledgeable about the program and so willing to be helpful.

Tomorrow is the first day of Chinese New Year. We have learned of several customs that Chinese people follow in order to bring luck and prosperity in the new year: giving oranges – but only in even numbers; cleaning before the New Year starts to sweep out bad luck; NOT cleaning on New Year’s day to NOT sweep out the good luck; wearing red. These were pretty east to get behind – even if we aren’t Chinese. 🙂

Almost all of the stores will be closed tomorrow and even Sunday as most people spend time with family – as Chinese custom dictates that one must visit older family members, in descending order, over the 15 days of the new year’s season. We’ll be having lunch with  some friends of Johan tomorrow. That’s as close as we can get to having family to visit. We just got back from Cold Storage (grocery store) so we are set with food for the weekend. Phew!

One of the other major aspects of living here that we have learned – and continue to learn – is the bus and MRT system. Seems like each day we are taking a new bus and getting to know its route. We consider the options via google maps, but then have to re-evaluate as we get to a bus stop and see which buses are arriving first. Sometimes the multiple apps that we have to predict the arrival times aren’t right. So we’ve learned that being at the bus stop, waiting for the bus, and taking the ride is a lot different than what our phones tell us what will happen. …Sounds like a good metaphor for life learning.

I had my first classroom visit at KR today and my girls had their first day at CIS today. I’m sure that there were several other firsts, but I wasn’t privy to all of the goings-on of their day, so I’ll have to lump them all into that one.

I enjoyed my time in Ms. T’s classroom. It feels like it’s been such a long time since I was in a classroom, so it was exciting for me to see all of the teaching and learning. The students were using desmos (!) at the teacher’s desk – sliding a k value to show how the roots of a quadratic change when a constant value in the factored form changes. Students were able to see what the relationship was between that value and the x-intercepts. I love it when students make the connections themselves.

Some of the phrases I heard from my own offspring as we went home with them on the train: “School is fun!” “I got to take off my shoes in the classroom.” “I’m going to be in the talent show with my friend. She’s going to sing a song and I’m going to dance.” “I made a friend.” “My teacher is nice.” “Drama class was funny today!” I think it was a pretty good day today.

I’m grateful that my Filipina-American (Irish/German/English/French) daughters in Singapore could attend the Canadian International School. Does it get more international that that? 🙂 Just another reminder that we are all immigrants or children of immigrants.

A list of my accomplishments* since my last blog post:

• Picked up family from Changi without having to ask someone which of the three terminals is the international one, which I almost did. Luckily I remembered that I was in Singapore, which is an island city-state, so all of the flights coming in are international ones. Saved myself some embarrassment with that one.
• Got over my intestinal issues…I think. I still have not definitively determined the cause of my GI imbalance. It took a few days of eating only rice and drinking Gatorade and water, but I’m hoping I’m in the clear now.
• Applied for and received the girls’ student passes (visas) so they can attend school at the Canadian International School. We had to do some extra scrambling to get our paperwork together, and it took an entire afternoon, but I am happy that the process is over. I’ll have to go through it again next week for my own student pass.
• Welcomed extended family to Singapore from Manila. Father-in-law, sisters-in-law, brother-in-law, and three nieces cam to visit us and are still here – but staying in a hotel. Mother-in-law, could not come because her passport expires in less than six months. We were all heartbroken when we learned. All of the cousins are having fun – swimming, hanging out at malls, taking buses and trains, and eating, which pretty much sums up our time hanging out. They leave tomorrow.
• Visited Kent Ridge Secondary School again. I got to interact with students a little more on Friday more. They are doing what they call Experiential Week, which includes team building, camping, games and other events to kick off the school year and give kids time to bond. I also talked with Ms. Tan, who is graciously helping Alex and me get settled in our proposed schedules. I’ll also be observing her classes and the classes of another math teacher.

* I use the word accomplishments very loosely here.