That little girl who is a proud owner of a black n97 mini goes by the name of Kelly W. She was born on this special date - The nineteen of December - and lives in a cozy house located in the sunny island of Singapore.

Like it or not, this is a place where she pens down her thoughts, feelings, and memories. & all those nonsensical things at times.

Without say, she appreciates tags and hellos; do leave a note for her before you go. (:

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Hi 45ers,
Its been a long time I sent the class a mail, although I this idea kept coming to me
since I know
I would not be teaching you this year.
Believe it or not, I feel a lost of my part as a teacher now that I do not get to do
classroom
teaching. A lot of my ex-students met me and said I still looked young (compare to
my age). If
there is any truth in what they said, other than being kind, it must be because I
have been
interacting with young people like you. Your curiosity and enthusiasm in learning
keep me
searching for better ways to make teaching more engaging and lively. Your
occasional slackness in
studying also stimulate me to think of strategies to attract your attention again.
I can tell you
in my 20+years of teaching I have to keep learning and changing myself to keep up
with this.
Every now and then I found the students were so different from their seniors five
years ago. The
world is changing fast.
Are you the most interesting and responsive class I have taught? I am not sure,
perhaps not. I
am not sure among the so many classes I have taught, there is any one class the most
interesting
and responsive. They all have up and down, some times good, some times bad. But
you are most of
the time good. :) I often see this as a blessing to teach motivated and capable
students like you.
But it also make it more difficult to stop teaching such wonderful students.
I have taught in Jss for 18 years and sometimes I wonder why I am not in the Alumni.
I never
doubt my commitment to the school. Most of you may not know I was the IC teacher
for Basketball
teams for 10 years (1995 to 2004). Those are the happier time for me. Unlike now,
there were
only 2 teachers in charge of 4 teams. We won a total of 9 national champion and
numerous zonal
honors. Since 2005, I was appointed by Ms Tham as the Sc HOD and I focus on the
teaching
programmes for Science. I wish I had as much success in School's science results as
I did in
basketball. Unfortunately we did not.
When I joined the school in 1991, I reported to school on 2 Jan, during the flag
raising ceremony.
There was no induction for new teachers. All I got were the timetable and the
textbooks. I was
the only trained Physics teacher then and was given 7 graduating classes, 3 pure Phy
and 4
combined. Not knowing the importance of exam results to Singaporean back then, I
just took the
job and taught as I did for 3 yrs back in HK. Surprisingly the results were not
bad, if not
impressive. Most encouragingly, when I asked one of the students after the exam
whether he could
handle the difficult questions, he told me " Mr Lau, I can do for you taught us how
to think."
Since then, I always try to teach students not just the content, but also how to
think, how to
solve problem in a logical way.
Unfortunately, with the school's ranking system introduced in the 90's, all schools
are chasing
after the MSG. People are competing over the 0.1 difference in MSG. Parents will
choose another
school just because their L1R5 is 16.3 and ours is 16.2. Let me test your maths, if
a class of 40
average MSG should be 2.4, but one student got a F9, how much will the MSG be
affected? Ans: the
MSG will be down by 0.165. So one student decided to give up on the subject will
make the teacher
look inferior to many others. No wonder a lot of experienced teachers are
demoralised. And some
teachers will try all they can to improve the MSG. In some schools, they ask
students to drop
subjects. Some tell the students not to absent in the exam. Some just rush to
finish the
syllabus and drill and drill for the exam, forget about passion and interest.
I never ask any student to drop Phy or absent from exam. To me, it is a waste of
many hours if
you have learned a subject for two years and in the end not even taking the exam
seriously. Its
okay to get a B4, although it is below the class's MSG. It is a reward and
recognition you
deserve to get. Who knows you may need that B4 in PHy when you apply for something
in the future.
However, if you studied the subject for 2 years and prepared for the exam and
eventually got only
a D7, you have only yourself to blame. In O level, you can get a B3 with minimum
effort for any
subject.
No secret, JSS is not doing very well in O level in the past two years, including
last year. My
obervation, our bottom students are very rebellious and do not know what they want
in life. Our
mid-ability students are very lazy and have little initiative. And our best
students (yes,I am
talking about you) are not hungry enough to get the best results. Last year Joan
did it and she
got 7 A1s. How many of you has planned and are determined to repeat what she did?
I can easily
see more than 10 of you with the ability to get 5 or more A1s. But are you working
on it. JSS
students always thought having 3 A1s is a big deal already. But what is it? A1 in
MT, Maths, Add
Maths? This is what most students in the better schools are achieving. There is
not much effort
needed. Nothing you really need to study hard about. So how can you say you have
tried the best?
Hard working students will as well get A1s in content subjects: PHy, Bio, Chem,
Geo, etc.
So dear students, my last batch of students, please set your goals and targets early
now. To get
7 A1s you need consistent work. You should be consistently doing well in the
foundation subjects:
EL, MT, Maths, Add Maths and also doing regular revision for the content subjects.
If you are
not, find out why and get help. Form study groups to help each other. Set a time
table together
to monitor each other.
There are also many student leaders in your class. Don't just stop at carrying out
your duties.
Make your influence to your peers in other classes to get them study. Studying well
is a payback
to the school and your teachers. Don't be the one F9 in class to make your teacher
look inferior.
Wow, I did not realise this is so long. I hope you are still reading.
If you need any help in Physics or any other areas, do not hesitate to see me or
send me an email.
I may not be checking this portal email as often so you can send to my gmail
account(lauwc1997@gmail.com).
Again I miss you all. Hope I can take a class photo with you some time this year.
I wish you a happy CNY and all the best for the many tests and exams in this O level
year.
Love,
Mr Alvin Lau back to top?