Visit to the U.S. Embassy

Wednesday, 31 January 2018

After observing lessons at my attachment school this morning, I headed to a "Get to Know You" meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore.  The U.S. Embassy periodically hosts any American citizens completing a Fulbright foreign exchange program to learn more about our experiences, answers any cultural/social/political questions, and hear about the inquiry projects we are completing while in Singapore.  It was exciting to get to visit the embassy!

                                     

It was a very high security building with a double check-point security gate.  We were told not to bring any laptops or tablets.  I even had to leave my cell phone in my bag and leave my bag at the security check point.  Once inside we met with the Deputy Public Affairs Officers as well as the Fulbright and Professional Exchange coordinator.  We also briefly met and spoke with Stephanie Syptak-Ramnath, the Chargé d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore.  She oversees 199 U.S. government agencies in the advancement of our wide-ranging bilateral security, economic, and people-to-people cooperation.  If you're like me, then you don't know what a chargé is--so here is the Wikipedia definition; a chargé d'affaires, often shortened to chargé (French), is a diplomat who heads an embassy in the absence of the ambassador.  The term is French for "charged with (in charge of) matters."  Our meeting lasted about an hour and half.  It was great to talk to other American's who have lived in Singapore for a year or more to hear about their experiences and noted cultural difference.  Katie specifically asked how we should handle the many questions Singaporeans ask us about "how Donald Trump got elected President of the United States of America" and "what we think about that"--because we have our own personal opinions, but also the Fulbright program is a people-to-people diplomacy and cultural exchange program funded by the U.S. Department of State.  The Deputy of Public Affairs reassured us that we are American citizens who have our full right to freedom of speech and should feel free to express our own personal opinions.  She also recommended that we use the fact that Donald Trump was elected as a conversation starter about democracy.  Because living in the U.S. context of democracy is quite different than the Singaporean context of democracy.  This idea and conversation had me feeling a sense of pride to be an American citizen.  That at the end of the day, no matter how sad I am about some of the things Donald Trump has chosen to say and do, I am still thankful for the democratic freedoms and specifically the freedom of speech I have as an American citizen.

After our visit to the Embassy, Katie, Carrie and I grabbed a drink at an izakaya across the streeet.  But the time we left it was dark, and we had an awesome view (less quality photo) of the Supermoon + Blue Moon +Lunar eclipse.

Grad School Class #3

Tuesday, January 30th

We got the keys this morning to our new apartment, but are going to wait to move in until next Monday when we will have internet there.  We are excited though for a new place and new neighborhood to explore!

Tonight for the second half (7:30-9:00pm) of the grad school course "Psychology of Learning Mathematics at the Primary Level" there was a visiting professor whose guest lecture with us was "Mathematics Anxiety: Myth or Monster."  Mathematics is the most common subject in school that students experience feelings of anxiety.  Broadly, math anxiety is a term "used to describe panic, helplessness, paralysis and mental disorganization that arises among some people when they are required to solve a mathematics problem" (Tobias and Weissbrod, 1980).  There are two different constructs of anxiety: State Anxiety (A-Sate) and Trait Anxiety (A-Trait).  The concepts of state and trait anxiety have been defined by Spielberger Gorsuch and Lushene (1970) as follows:

• State anxiety (A-State) may be conceptualized as a transitory emotional state or condition of the human organism that is characterized by subjective consciously perceived feelings of tension and apprehension and heightened autonomic nervous system activity.  A-State may vary in intensity and fluctuate over time.
• Trait anxiety (A-trait) refers to relatively stable individual differences in anxiety proneness, that is to differences between people in the tendency to respond to situations perceived as threatening with elevations in A-State intensity.  

For instance, a student who is otherwise not anxious but feels not mathematically competent may develop A-State anxiety when asked to solve a non-standard mathematical problem.  Conversely, a student who is high in A-Trait will show strong signs of anxiety whether the problem is mathematical in nature or not.  

To help us understand the feeling of A-State math anxiety the professor presented this room full of math teachers with these two non-routine math problems:

In this room full of math teachers, you could feel and hear the initially anxiety-driven reactions.  He gave us a 5 minute time limit to solve them both.  Many of the teachers ended the 5 minutes with a blank paper and true feelings of frustration.  I think I've done enough of these type problems throughout my years in math team competitions to know to look for a pattern so I was able to solve both during the time period.  But I know that wasn't the point of the demonstration :) It was quite interesting though to think about how many students feel in math classes especially when they have not experienced much success in the subject area and/or have not been taught strategies to deal with the unpleasant feeling of not knowing what to do or where to start when presented with a problem that is not identical to the type of problems they have seen and practiced.  Some levels of anxiety though are good for us.  This curve illustrates the relationship between anxiety and performance:

At the far left, our mind is "asleep".  When we do not encounter any situations, we do not perform.  In order to function we will need increasing awareness.  Some anxiety is good, for example, doing homework and taking tests make our mind work.  Peak performance occurs when our anxiety optimally alerts the body.  However, as anxiety continues to increase, it interferes with performance until at the far right we are paralyzed by anxiety.  Students with test anxiety describe their minds going blank, and students with mathematics anxiety are those at the far right of the graph.  The lecture was quite interesting because it provided a real simulation as well as a lot of research related to the effects of math anxiety on students.  As teachers (and parents) we can teach kids coping skills and more specifically a set of problem-solving steps/skills that can be used intentionally to approach solving a novel problem.  

The professor did not ever go over or expose the solutions to the above problems he presented us with--which would drive my students crazy if I never validated their answers or explained to them how to solve (if they had not be able to on their own).  So, scroll down for the my worked solutions:

Gardens By The Bay & Lucky Plaza

Saturday, 27 January

Bren and I went to Gardens by the Bay today.  We explored all the outdoor gardens and areas today, and are going to wait for our friends to visit to go into the indoor gardens (Flower Dome and Cloud Forest) since those require tickets.  The grounds and park areas around the "Supertree Grove" and the "Dragonfly Lake" and "Kingfisher Lake" were beautiful.  It was nice to have a full, sunny day out exploring.

The flowers around this area were beautiful as well:

The Supertree Groves and lakes around the area were equally as neat to walk around and explore:

There was Spanish moss!--which I hadn't seen anywhere else yet.  Reminded me of Savannah.

This is the Auto Rider--which is a fully-operational, air-conditioned self-driving vehicle that can be used to travel around the park if you are elderly or just too hot out in the Singapore heat.  We didn't ride in it, but it was cool to see functioning:

These are the beautiful Dahlia's blooming inside the Flower Dome window:

Last week we signed up for Mo Bike, which is one of the bike sharing programs in Singapore.  For $5 SGD we got 180 days free.  You just scan the QR code and it unlocks a bike.  Everyone rides bikes on the sidewalks here too, so you get to be completely away from traffic.  We rode bikes to the downtown area and walked around for a while before deciding to go to some of the only thrift stores that exist in Singapore.

The thrift stores were all on the top floor of this building called "Lucky Plaza" which was old school compared to other enormous, fancy shopping malls in Singapore.  It was a little more scrappy and more our shopping style.

We found some great deals in the thrift store, Lucky Plaza Bazaar, including a traditional Chinese outfit I'm planning to wear to the AST Chinese New Year celebration in a few weeks.

There were also some old stores that seemed like they'd been closed since the mid-1980s.  Like this eye glass store (right picture) when still had a reference to "West Germany" in the advertisement.  

On the way home, there were Pongal festivities happening in Ang Mo Kio and we saw another decorated cow.

Such a fun day exploring!  Can't wait to see the light show at Garden's By The Bay in a few weeks when Kara and Eddie visit.

Conference in Australia and New Apartment!

Friday, 26 January 2018

Lots of exciting news today!  First, through the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching program, participants are invited to apply for an additional grant to attend a professional development opportunity.  Usually these conferences are in-country, but because Singapore is quite small and there are no math-specific conferences related to my inquiry project while I'm here, I applied for one in Sydney, Australia.  I received the additional grant funding to a visit a high school in Sydney and attend the "Talking Mathematically: Communicating Clearly" conference in early April!  I'm excited about this learning opportunity, and Bren and I are pumped to visit Sydney, Australia!

Also, we looked at a new apartment today and decided to sign a 3-month+ short term lease!  It is a little closer to the city center, has a pool, and it will be easier to have visitors throughout the next few months, and it's only a little more expensive than our current hostel apartment.  We had to move quickly and figure out some bank stuff, as well as meet the agent at the mall to sign the paper work and work out the logistics.  We are all good to go though and will get the keys and access card once the landlord signs all the leasing papers.  

There were heavy rains today, and the canal was full of water on our way back to the apartment.

It's no surprise why everything is so green and tropical here :)

ICA for Student Pass and NIE for Student Card

Wednesday and Thursday, 24 and 25 January 2018

I had an appointment this morning at ICA (Immigrations and Checkpoint Authority) to provide all my documentation to get a student pass visa.  It was a lengthy process, but not nearly as long or tedious as Freddy made it sound.  At one point they asked me for a document that Freddy thought he had already printed for us at AST.  He hadn't though and we had to go to the basement of the building and try to print it.  Freddy was super stressed out about it, but it just didn't seem to be that big of deal to me.  After all, I have 90 days as a tourist here before it would even be an issue.  Finally we figured it out though and got it printed.  After it was all said and done, Freddy looked at me and said "you sure know how to stay calm and patient, makes sense that you're a teacher."  Haha.  I took it as a compliment for sure--there is no sense in freaking out over things you can't fully control, and things seem to always work out one way or another.  I got my student pass card though and am feeling pretty official:

We went to lunch afterwards and ate rice, chicken, and vegetables cooked in a claypot over the fire.  It was delicious!

After lunch we explored Little Thailand in the Golden Mile Complex building:

On Thursday I went to to NIE to retrieve my Student ID card;

I'm feeling pretty legit now with all my Singapore ID cards.  Logan and I video chatted tonight which was really fun and nice to catch up.  I miss her!

Spectra Secondary School Visit

Tuesday, 23 January 2018

We met Freddy at the Woodlands MRT station this morning to head to Spectra Secondary School.  When we briefly met with the Deputy Director of General Education in Singapore during our first week here, she mentioned a innovative school that was doing great work with the normal tech stream (lowest academic) students in Singapore.  We were all immediately intrigued and AST helped set up a visit to Spectra Sec today.  It was an incredible visit and the school is clearly meeting students where they are at and helping them experience success academically.  The principal, Mr. Krishnan Aravinathan, is an incredible school leader and it was great to get to spend the day learning about his vision for the school and how far they have come over the past 5 years since they opened.

This is what the principal wrote for in the informational brochure they gave us:  "At Spectra Secondary School, we recognize the spectrum of talents and strengths of our students.  We believe that every child has the potential to succeed and shine to their brightest.  We want to provide the platforms for our students to shine.  There will be room for them to make mistakes, learn and grow to become global citizens who will make a difference in the lives of others.  Join us and be a part of close-knit community of students, parents, teachers, industry and community partners.  Together, we will advance with a shared purpose to bring out the best in all who work, study, and dream here.  Spectra is a place where our dreams take flight."

It was neat to see these words come to life in this school building.    Spectra Sec has smaller class sizes of around 20 students, and maintains a vision that "every student will leave equipped to lead a fulfilling life."  The principal spoke about the current reality of many normal tech students who often view school as boring, sedentary, rigid, tested to highlight weaknesses, criticized, alienated, lacking moral support, no choices, no control, negatively challenged.  Spectra aims to create an environment where efforts are appreciated and rewarded, voices are heard, success is prevalent, students take ownership of their learning and work, help others and know how to reach out for help, where the values of school are real, and students feel positively challenged.  Before joining Spectra, students described feeling discriminated, apathetic,  bored, lacking confidence and frustrated at school.  Now at Spectra, kids generally describe their experience at school as enjoyable, somewhere they find meaning, emotionally safe and respected, and confident. 

The school seemed to be doing a lot of investing in activities and interest of students.  For example, they talked about how there is a monthly initiative to teach the students a new skills.  Recently it was juggling, and they talked with kids about how in life there are always things you will have to balance and juggle and that it is important to always keep learning new skills.  We didn't get to experience the morning assembly, each day this open the school day with this ritual.  During the morning assembly, they celebrate kids and staff who were "caught doing good" or do a fishbowl style "quick chat" where a teacher/staff or student will be interviewed so everyone can learn more about him/her.  The principal also shared some about discipline at the school and how he tries to approach most situations as learning opportunities for kids to reflect on their actions and show empathy.  For example, he talked about how kids were throwing their trash and empty bottles up onto a ledge as they came down the stairwell.  He took pictures of the 70+ year old uncle, janitor, having to climb up a ladder and clean them all up and then spoke with the students about this issue at morning assembly.  It seems like a common sense way to approach issues like this in schools, but I think far too often school resort to punishments for students rather than learning opportunities to get kids to actual reflect on their decision-making.  There was a real sense of community, and the students seemed to exude a lot of joy.  One cool idea they did was have a quarterly "boot sale" (yard sale) where all the staff, parents, and students could bring things to sell and they had a BBQ there too.

The school day is focused on 1/3 academic (math, English, Mother Tongue) + 1/3 vocational + 1/3 electives, character lessons (CCE) and optional academics (science, citizenship).  We were able to visit classrooms, and also experience the "Escape Room" that they have built into the school building.  Students sovle math problems that open up different portals in the "Escape Room."  I want to remember to look into Breakout EDU (a company the school consulted with during the building phases).  Here are some pictures of our visit, I loved all the student art and creations around the building:

                     

 

The vocational and technical skill classrooms were interesting as well:

(Retail Room--HomeFix)

Retail Room (NTUC)

(Culinary Training Kitchen)

(Hospitality Room--Hotel)

(Student Lounge)

(Electrical Workshop)

(Staff/Teacher Work Room)

(Bistro--Cafe)

(Fashion/Design)

The school uniforms were designed by a well-known Singaporean fashion designer, Ashley Isham:

One of my favorite classrooms was the edible learning garden where the students grow fresh herbs and vegetables and can take home what they grow:

Such a fun day visiting an inspiring school!