Secondary Mathematics Teachers' Seminar

From end of last year, I have been leading a team of 2 other Math teachers in the implementation of the Mathematics Syllabus in 2013. We tried out the new syllabus in our school by identifying one class and teaching the curriculum to them. The focus that MOE wants is more on learning experience rather than just chalk and board. It hasnt been easy as we had numerous meetings in Teachers' Network, Grange Road as well as meetings in school to discuss on what interesting lessons we can come up with. Nevertheless, slowly but surely, we managed to pull through and complete our project by documenting all our lessons in a CD. And because of the hard work my team has put in, I accepted the invitation to share our experience with the Secondary Math Teachers in Singapore through a seminar at NUS High. I thought, "might as well since we have already all the resources..."

Surprisingly, the guest of honour was my ex-principal from Greenview, Mr Sin.

During the break, I had a chance to catch up with him and talk about the past and present. Our keynote speaker for the seminar was Prof Lee Peng Yee. For those of you who remember, Prof Lee Peng Yee's name appear in many of our Mathematics Textbooks. After my morning session sharing with the teachers, I had a chance to speak with him and talk to him more about what he mentioned during his speech and how we can adopt that into our present day education.

I had a great time learning from him through our conversation. To be honest, I was amazed by my own guts to approach such 'big' shots and talk to them. But my desire to learn more from people was so strong that I didnt really bother about my 'face' or whatever. I just had to grab the opportunity to learn as such opportunities do not come by often. The other amazing thing I noticed was how Mr Sin and Prof Lee came early for the morning session and stayed throughout by waiting for the next afternoon session, considering how senior they were in the education circle. Most 'VIP' would usually come late and go off early as they need to rush off somewhere, someplace...but they were different and that amazes me to see such great humility and dedication from them. During this whole day seminar, we had morning session from the west and south zone schools while the afternoon sessions were from the north and east zone schools. So in between, me and my colleagues had lots of time to spend at NUS High so much so that I brought along my marking of prelim papers. We probably had about 5 hours!

Our session in the afternoon was not as good...as we were all tired already. But still, we did what we could and shared.

Nevertheless, I was proud of my colleagues and was glad to be able to do this with them.