QED523 NIe-Folio Task

The Graduand Teacher Competencies Framework (GTCF) provides a holistic integration of the revised V3SK model (i.e. Values, Skills and Knowledge of the 21st Century teacher) and MOE’s competencies framework of beginning teachers as expounded in the Enhanced Performance Management System (EPMS).
Choose ONE core competency from EACH of the following dimensions: 

• Professional Practice 

• Leadership and Management 

• Personal Effectiveness 

Reflect on your personal development of these three identified competencies as you train to become a teacher. For example, what do these competencies mean to you? Why do you think these competencies are important and how do you see yourself developing in them?Are there specific challenges that you face as you seek to develop these competencies? Capture personal reflections such as these in a 800 - 1000 blog post.

Professional Practice
As professionals, I believe that teachers need to always set their sights on and be clear about who we are working for - the students. As such, a commitment to providing quality learning for the child is crucial. This in itself is no easy task, as it requires the teacher to have an integrated understanding of how students learn and develop in general, as well as the specific background, needs, and interests of their own students. This requires a great deal of work outside the classroom, as the teacher needs to take time to get to know each student in order to maximise both their learning and their character development. On top of this, the teacher must be able to effectively manage the classroom environment, as there would be no point in having a thorough understanding of how to approach the class (e.g. through designing a wide range of instructional materials that are intended to cater to various learning styles) if basic discipline and order has not been established. Though this sounds like a tall order, teachers must be able to juggle the (often scarce) resources of time, space, activities, and student attention in order to engage their pupils. Meaningful assessment is also important, and I believe that assessment for learning should take place as often as - if not more often than - assessment of learning. Providing prompt and constructive feedback to students on a regular basis can go a long way to promoting learning, and also helps teachers to monitor students' progress and modify their instructional activities where necessary. As such, it contributes to the development of both teacher and students, since both can grow to become reflective learners who are resilient, adaptable, and open to improvement.

Leadership and Management
Working in teams is one core competency which I feel is very important for teachers, especially with the new emphasis on collaborative learning in not just the classroom but the staff room as well. Many Humanities teachers have a bad reputation for hoarding instructional materials, perhaps because of the difficulty involved in generating and consolidating them. I feel, however, that this is a practice that will ultimately backfire - if teachers keep their information and ideas to themselves with the aim of preventing their colleagues from borrowing from the materials that they have so painstakingly created, it is impossible to gain a fresh perspective on their work. This third-party point of view can be very helpful, as colleagues (particularly those teaching the same subject) also have experience in communicating the content and concepts, and may therefore be in a position to target existing "blind spots" and offer new insights or teaching strategies that could boost the overall quality of the work. In my opinion, the ideal working relationship is one where both parties have positive feelings about each other and are open to exchanging their work and seeking constructive feedback. The resultant synergy could well make the whole greater than the sum of its parts, and the students are thus able to benefit from the hard work of two or more teachers as opposed to just one.

Personal Effectiveness
The core competency under this domain that resonates most with me is resilience and adaptability. Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once famously expressed this idea in this simple quote - "never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give up". Having had some teaching experience prior to embarking on my practicum journey, I must say that this rings true, especially at low points when the classroom feels like a treacherous jungle that is impossible to navigate, and when work just never seems to end. Lesson plans do fail embarrassingly during the execution process, and the spread of extra-curricular events (all of which require involvement) can be very tiring, especially when layered on top of the already heavy classroom commitments. At these moments, a tough spirit and positive outlook is necessary, and I've found for myself that perseverance and optimism need to go hand-in-hand in order for me to reach that metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel. and that . Given that the students whom I will be encountering belong to the so-called "strawberry generation", whose feelings are easily bruised and who tend to give up when faced with obstacles rather than attempting to stay the course, I feel that this is one quality which I would definitely like to pass on. I hope to lead by example and teach my students that reaching a breakthrough at the end of a challenging period is one of the most satisfying feelings in the world.

As for adaptability, I believe that teachers really need to be very quick-thinking in the classroom, as the successful delivery of a lesson depends on so many different variables, some of which - such as student behaviour or even the proper functioning of necessary technology - are extremely unpredictable. This means that a teacher needs to always be on her toes and ready to modify previous plans to suit the classroom context. This adaptability is really what I would consider a "survival skill" of sorts, and I look forward to exercising it during the ten weeks ahead.

"Changing Education Paradigms"

I recently watched this video - an animated piece that was adapted from a talk by Sir Ken Robinson, a world-renowned education expert - as part of my QKS520 course, and found it really thought-provoking. There were many salient points raised, but I was especially struck by the following:

1. Modern-day children are actively besieged with information from a whole variety of sources, but are forced into an artificial passivity and docility in the classroom. "We are getting our children through education by anaesthetising them, [instead of] waking them up to what they have inside of themselves."

2. Schools unfortunately require and result in a "production line mentality", where students are divided by their age, not ability, and "funneled" through a system of standardised testing and curricular.

3. Divergent thinking = "an essential capacity for creativity"; the ability to see multiple answers, possibilities, and interpretations of an issue, and to "think laterally". This ability seems to be very strong in young children, but diminishes as they go through the school system. Why?

As a teacher, I certainly hope to be able to fully engage my students and cater to their specific interests and learning styles. I certainly do not wish to push them through a syllabus which they have no emotional investment in, and am fearful of falling into the trap of creating a "mechanistic" drill-and-practice routine in my classroom. While I acknowledge that academic achievement is important, I feel that the teenage years are possibly the most exciting in our lives, and I want to stretch my students; to foster a real love of learning; and to build them up as people, not mere grades-generating machines.

QED526 Reflections (Week 4 - Classroom Environment)

After going through the material on Blackboard, I felt that my most significant takeaway from this E-Learning lesson was the importance of the classroom environment in not just fostering a positive learning space for students, but in enabling them to develop social-emotional skills.

As a student, I never really paid much attention to my classrooms - I generally felt that my learning was more dependent on my teacher and peers rather than the physical space I was in. However, looking back, I realise that some classrooms definitely did engender more positive attitudes towards learning, and these tended to be the ones that veered away from the traditional configuration of horizontal rows and bare walls. My favourite classroom was the one I had in Secondary 2, as my school organised a classroom decoration contest and gave each class a small budget to buy paints and other decorative materials with, and gave us free rein to work as a class on a design that we could call our own. The result was a bright and welcoming space, and each of us even got to paint an icon that we felt represented ourselves as individuals on the back wall. While this contest was only carried out once (logistically, it was a nightmare - the school wound up having to hire professional painters to repaint the entire building at the end of the year), I really felt that it helped to foster camaraderie amongst the students, and our "personalised classroom" created a sense of pride and symbolic identification in us. To this day, it remains one of my most cherished memories of my secondary school years.

Moving ahead to what I as a teacher could do to nurture a sense of class culture and develop social-emotional skills in my students -- I think my best teaching experiences took place in classrooms that were lively; not just in terms of my students' behavior, but in terms of the space itself. I like having my students sit in interior loop arrangements, where they can move quickly from sitting in rows (during the times when my teaching strategy is direct instruction) to groups (when collaborative learning methods are used) by simply turning around or joining their tables together. This ability to quickly transit from a teacher-focused to a student-focused environment reflects my own personal pedagogical approach. I feel that these arrangements naturally allow for camaraderie to be built, since students are always aware of the co-dependent nature of their learning, and frequent group work helps to build social ties. Furthermore, in terms of social-emotional learning, students will quite naturally develop skills such as social awareness and relationship management through collaborative learning. I would thus hope to design my future classroom as such.

QED526 Reflections (CJC Video)

3 things I have learnt from the video:
- Need to be observant to students' needs and understand where they are coming from
- Tolerance and understanding is key, no matter how difficult the student or the situation
- A problem child never exists alone; need to engage the rest of the class in your management strategy (e.g. laying down rules for the class as a whole and enforcing them across the board consistently)

2 things that I hope to apply in school in future:
(this somewhat overlaps with the things I have learnt from the video, so I selected just two that I really wish to be able to do)
- Maintain a calm and firm demeanor no matter the situation
- Always wait and assess things over time, don't jump to hasty decisions or actions

1 thing that struck me:
- "Every day is show time" -- how true! One of my favourite quotes is about how teaching is essentially a performing art, and this quote from the video really reminds me of it.

QLK520 Reflections

• To what extent do you think you will be able to apply what you have learned in this course to your future teaching career?

1. Please answer in terms of the communicative skills you have learned as well as the "blended aspects" – the online and F2F elements of the course.
2. Support your answer with examples if possible.

Prior to this QLK520 course, I considered myself as an above-average communicator, especially in the area of written communication. Years as a Humanities student have made me comfortable expressing myself in writing, and since English is my first language, I have always been fairly confident of my ability to communicate verbally as well. That is not to say, however, that the course has not been useful for me - on the contrary, I found the modules to be rather enriching on the whole, and found the section on oral communication particularly helpful. By getting a chance to prepare short speeches on topics relevant to my future teaching career (such as matters of school discipline) and then deliver them to the class, I felt that I was able to improve on the essentials of oral communication, such as tone, pronunciation, and pace of delivery. The feedback from my tutor and peers was also useful, although I would say that the most eye-opening experience was being able to watch my own speech on video, since that really highlighted the nuances of my communication style that I previously wasn't aware of. This included my posture, physical gestures, eye contact, and even the pitch of my voice. I've now realised that I tend to speak rather quickly and use fillers in my speech, and that my physical gestures can sometimes convey a lack of confidence, particularly when I am unable to make eye contact with the audience. These are some things which I will definitely bear in mind and do my best to avoid while in the classroom in future.

As for the "blended aspects" of the course, I felt that it was a good idea to offer students the freedom to choose whether they would prefer to take certain modules online or face-to-face. However, I feel that if I were to do the same with my classes in future (i.e. upload materials online for their independent study) I would centralise all their online module requirements on a single web-host to avoid confusion. While students are indeed becoming more IT-savvy, I feel that easy access of course material and submission of assignments remains imperative, and I would therefore restrict the number of online platforms to just one.