This being the first week of my practicum at Pioneer Junior College (PJC), my main pre-occupations were to re-familiarise myself with the school environment and culture, as well as to re-acquaint myself with my colleagues. My previous contract teaching experience at PJC from March 2012 to June 2012 certainly facilitated my smooth transition from being a student-teacher at NIE to a trainee teacher on practicum at PJC. Hence, I was immediately at home with the school’s administrative routines and procedures and could look forward to my ten weeks of practicum with much optimism.
Other then administrative issues, I was primarily interested in my actual teaching duties and workload. In this respect, I was extremely grateful to my Cooperating Teacher Mr Augustine Ng for effectively giving me full control over the teaching of Paper 2 for the JC1 students. When I was a contract teacher, I had indicated to him that my personal preference would be to teach Paper 2, although I had no objections to teaching Paper 1 if necessary. Thus, Mr Ng had basically given me the opportunity and freedom to decide the curriculum for Paper 2 and in the process, allowed me to combine my genuine interest in Southeast Asian history with my practicum requirements. Being the sole teacher for Paper 2 would undoubtedly be a highly challenging task for a trainee teacher like me, but it is a challenge that I will face with relish and enthusiasm.
Finally, I also had to think about how to establish my individual teaching style that would best fit the learning profiles of PJC students. Since the majority of these students could arguably be classified in the lower rungs middle to low ability category, their need for intensive scaffolding and “hand-holding” from the teachers could be expected. While my NIE training and personal teaching philosophy called for an approach that focused more on critical and creative thinking skills and independent (or self-directed) learning, I had to recognise that the first priority would be to establish the basic learning foundations for the students before I could realistically move on to the higher order thinking skills. As such, learning how to adapt my teaching style to fit the general profile of my students without at the same time compromising my personal beliefs in teaching would be another major challenge for me as a practicum teacher.
Project Work
During my first observation of a Project Work (PW) tutorial, I was able to pick up two key learning points. First, PJC students were able to display genuine enthusiasm and much creativity in generating various ideas for their group projects. This was clearly reflected in their lively group discussions which often ended up with additional interesting and at times even novel ideas. Previously, I had thought that PW teachers might face a daunting task if the students struggled to clear even the first hurdle (i.e. preliminary ideas). Having seen first-hand the actual classroom situation, I could reasonably be reassured on this particular concern.
Nevertheless, this would bring me to my second learning point, namely the importance of the teacher as a facilitator for the students’ group discussions. While the students were able to display much creativity and imagination, it was quite obvious that they also had the tendency to lose their focus and contribute refreshing but unfortunately irrelevant ideas. Hence, it was important for the PW tutor to constantly monitor the main gist and direction of the different group discussions so that he could intervene early if any group appeared to be losing track of the PW task requirements. More importantly, the PW tutor had to balance between guiding students in their group discussions and implicitly dictating to them the “ideal” way to formulate their ideas. This was certainly a tenuous balance at times, particularly when students got so caught with discussing different interesting ideas that they became “lost” in terms of remembering the original purpose of their group discussions, making the teacher’s intervention all the more crucial.
