Seriously, it's like a dream come true ...

Reflect on your teaching practicum so far: What have you learned from your experience during TP? What kinds of challenges do you foresee as you develop as a Literature teacher in your specific school context?

Seriously, I cannot thank the Ministry of Education (MOE) enough for sending me to Pasir Ris Crest Secondary for my Teaching Practice. Everything since day one has been like the moment when Lucy first entered into the world of Narnia through the wardrobe, amazed at every sight and sound. Everyday, I literally run from home to school, excited to face the challenges of the day, because I know that my Cooperating Teachers (CTs) and HODs will be there to render support and encourage me when I need it. Teaching Practice has really been such an enriching experience for me, allowing me opportunities to really explore new pedagogical techniques, like Directed Viewing-Thinking Activity (DVTA), and sharpen rudimentary techniques, like groupwork and lecturing.

In my school, I was assigned two Literature classes, one Secondary Three Express class and one Secondary Three Normal (Academic) class. The Express class I was assigned are very vocal, however the answers that they provide lack the reflection required. The Normal class reflects a lot, having witnessed the extensive notes that they jot down into their notebooks, however when discussions are held, they clam up.

I will now briefly describe the journey I took with each specific class. With the Express class, the period before the March Holidays was a challenging one. In the first few classes, I used DVTA to teach the class. However, I realized that the students were distracted by the video instead of connecting the video with the text. It was then I realized that my questions were pitched too high and were not accessible by the students. After intense discussions with my CT, it was then I continued using by DVTA, but I had to contextualize the video to the set text (we were doing Anita Desai's FASTING, FEASTING) and rephrasing the questions using simpler words and adding page numbers to the questions as well. After which, the students were able to engage in the prediction activities of the DVTA as well as using ideas developed through the video and applying them to the set text.

With this class, I also used a lot of Socratic dialogues, encouraging them to give the points rather than using teacher talk. Having blank slides with a question on the top, students were encouraged to give their answers after giving them a short period of reflection. Even though not all the points are relevant, at least the answers given helped to further discussions in the class, as fellow classmates corrected the wrong points that have been made. Hence, within a matter of two weeks, I was able to find my way with this class. Besides DVTA, I also used group discussions and DRTA (Directed Reading-Thinking Activity) to encourage ideas in the class.

However, things were not as smooth with the Normal class. In the period before the March Holidays, it was really very tough. Apparently, their teacher has always been spoon-feeding them with information through lectures. Hence, I realized that methods such as Socratic dialogue and DVTA/DRTA do not work with them. In fact, there were times that I had to stop the class and asked them what did they really want. In other words, I did plenty of student feedback forms and self-reflection with this class. Even the weeks immediately after the holidays, I found myself dragging my feet to this class, because I have exhausted the things I can do with this class. My CT constantly encouraged me, even offering to go through my lesson plans in detail.

After a very challenging lesson (in fact, it was two days ago), I just went back to what the students told me about their teacher's style of teaching. I thought over and over how it was possible to encourage student participation even if lecture needs to be used. Hence I decided to go with a lecture style, but my lecture slides had to be filled up by answers from the students. And the only way to elicit answers from students was through group work, where students will do close reading of the text and prepare answers in the format of PEEL (Point-Evidence-Elaboration-Link). So the next day, when I used this method, student particpation increased and I found that I could carry on with the lesson smoothly. It was at this moment that I realized that a good Literature teacher is not one who has a wonderful bag of tricks (with revolutionary teaching techniques like Socratic method and DVTA), but one who actually connect students with the text through whatever method necessary, be it old-fashioned or revolutionary.

Apart from teaching, I was also given the opportunity of marking/benchmarking Literature test papers, setting set-text questions for a Literature test, conducting a Lesson Training session on Visual Literacy, preparing a sample lesson on reading political cartoons that will be used across an entire level and cross-disciplinary projects as well. Everything has been a blast.

As much as I am excited in going to Meridian Junior College, I cannot say that I will not miss Pasir Ris Crest Secondary.