November 2002

Slow Afternoon - 11/2/2002







Sitting around in the staffroom, just marked two months wort of attendance cause te end of the year is near and this is the only thing that counts as work. I drfit to the sounds of the door swinging open beind me with busy people wandering shuttling in and out of their business and contend with the unresponsive "h" key on my lap top as I try to trot out an entry on these stubborn keys. Need to press them extra hard and Im pretty sure there's a touc h response system to this comp that I havent found out about.

In front of me, harried teacher on a Sat Afternoon thinking about a weekend of work ahead of her. I'm just here - fly upon the wall. People come and go oblivious to the curious lines they leave on the clean floor. The tiles are newly mopped so each stain is significant. But after a while who bothers. I find it wasn't the key that was faulty but that my angle of attack was too oblique, the pressure not direct enough for an immediate effect. So it is with the things I've done this week - from the terrible chasing for PW files to the scroungingaway from a potentially political situation in the Dept. In effect - I place ease of mind and travelling light above desire and ambition. I suppose where desire matches with a politically neutral position, then well and good. But this week I walked away from opportunity because I wanted to make sure I didn't get entangled in department politics. I didn't even see it coming. Anyway it wasn't even opportunity for me - it was more a statement of interest and preference and of course, as in all things, my passion for Lit. Unfortunately, teaching Lit in this EL dept is a highly politicised affair. So I extricated myself from it. Ah well - not missing much anyway - A level lit tends to be very parochial.

Enough already - got a sucky A level invigilation time-table ... The Chief Presiding Examiner said - for those lucky ones, you get only one full day (out of the 10). Those unlucky - get 2 full days. I got two full days. And worse - I end right on the last day of the papers -3rd of Dec ... while most of the others end on 27th Nov - ah well - you take what you get ...wasn't planning to go to NY until the 4th anyway ... so I'm not too sore about it.

Sat through an evening of strange observations last night. College staff dinner. Was a reluctant attendee. I marvel at the enthusiasm that some of my peers display for these things. Sat with the cynical EL teachers. Quite strange cause I should really have been sitting with either the J1 GP teachers or the batch of New teachers. Either way it was an odd affair. I suppose it underlines the fact that social obligations are not my strength. And I really don't intend to make any drastic adjustments in this area. Yet despite being an old hand at being out of place, I still feel the awkwardness of it. Wonder if one ever gets so use to it that being out of place is no longer a strange feeling. Being in a strange place alone is fine. But being packed into a room with people that you're supposed to know and see everyday and need to be cordial to ... that's difficult. Anyway - saw lots of sides of people that I'd never seen before. Not sure that was a good thing. Sometimes it's good to know people only as they are in their work roles. To see them let their hair down is a little scary...









End of the Year - 11/7/2002







Had staff Seminar today. Which was a real drag cause it's all this idealistic and unrealistic planning based on the most general of educational goals. It's putting down the obvious on paper - an activity that the bureacrats and admin people like to dao, and pride themselves in calling planning! Stupid activity. Ours has become a profession where the unoriginal, the mundane, the boring, the unchallenging has become exalted and given that lovely tag - "system". It's no longer teachers that work - it's the system that works. And the bureaucrats love it! As long as we have a system it'll be aye ok. Never mind that there are gaping holes - as long as we can describe those holes nicely. You need to know the shape of the hole. You need to know the jaggedness of the outline. You need to know how the outline works. In a nutshell - let's ignore reality and work with our Systems. Cause our systems become reality. And that's when the bureacrats get recognised and promoted. Because they were able to put down on paper what everyone already knows.

Stupidity comes in small parcels. It's ok to be stupid on your own. But when you spread it out to the rest of the world - then you're really somebody.

HOw to be a leader? When everyone already knows what to do, you need to interupt and explain some principle or detail that is utterly irrelevant in a manner that makes it sound important. Then you're an effective leader. YOu need to allow the people to do the work - then you must mess it up. You need to always be evasive about what people really want to know.

For all our attempts at planning the basic question on the Dept's lips - "What will I be teaching next year, J1 or J2?" was successfully evaded throughout the seminar. The principle becomes simple. The lack of transparency and clarity will only result in resistance.

But at least things are much better planning here. In the old place, planning was taken much more seriously. At the least the groups that I worked with today didn't think it was all that important ! Which meant we had lots of time to 1. doodle, 2. talk, 3. munch and 4. eat.

Interestingly enough, when the P walked by the entire table looked so busy ! Certainly a trick we've learnt from the students we teach (as one of the older teachers pointed out once he left ...) ah well - some things don't change ...







In the spirit of experimentation and finding - 11/15/2002







out about new stuff, I've embarked on learning more about Jazz and educating myself about that uniquely american art form. This has entailed listening to a lot of CDs and trying to play stuff on a variety of instruments. I've been in and out of Jazz, never really jumping in but this Hols I'm determined to make some progress. Of course I started all this earlier but it's when you have more time to yourself that you make leaps in the understanding and appreciation of stuff.

So today I went to a Jazz club. There aren't that many in Singapore so ended up in this second floor place at boat/clarke (i can't tell the diff) quay. Of course my company was tired/distracted and left after a short while and so there I was, left in a roomful of Ang Mos and Yuppies with a pitcher of yummy mango margarita to myself.

What really irritated me however was the utter lack of respect the people paid to the musicians. You don't go to a Jazz club to talk. you go to a Jazz club to listen to the music. This obviously was no the case at this club. There were loud conversations going on all over the room. Being alone, I managed to concentrate on the music pretty much but the snatches of conversation were just intrusive. This reinforces my opinion that many of us are into a thing (jazz in this instance) not so much because we want to know more or want to learn about it but because, well, beacuse it happens to be there. Which is why I've never frequented noisy discos. It's just too noisy and smoky to think through the haze. Obviously you may object and suggest that through the noise, the music and beat must cut through and that to demand quiet during a performance is elitist and rubbish. I wonder - perhaps I lack that ability to pick out stuff and so need to concentrate a lot more. I know make listening to music sound like a chore but it's a whole new world and so one treads on the ground carefully.

Anyway- the stuff was quite commercial except for some snatches of impressive piano soloing. I think that as a performative art, Jazz is unrivalled precisely because the moment is created on the spot through improvisation. Sat through 2 sets (the second featured a guest alto player, which was neat) and made sure I caught the last bus home.









A Teaching Manifesto - 11/20/2002







After an evening of conversation with students and fellow teachers, conversations separate but united by that force of being ME, I have decided in intellectual audacity and snobbery, to declare a manifesto along the lines of F.T. Marinetti's Manifesto of Futurism. In case anyone suspects my cause or questions my sources, here is the link that you may check it out (which is in a sense, easy speak for intellectual curiousity)

http://www.unknown.nu/futurism/manifesto.html



An evening of conversation? The modern convinences of the machine - International Calls, Two-in-One tele calls, face to face pontifications - mean many ideas colasced into one mind. Followed by the downing of alcohol - Good beer, stale sherry - have put me in the mood for this. I refer sparingly to the past, hoping that what gets put down marks it and guides my days to come.

Manifesto of the Teacher

1. The Teacher is Supreme. Not what is taught, not what is learnt, not the exams or the results. But WHO I am as a teacher and who YOU are in relation to every act of learning. The Teacher is never an individual but an act, a mind that inquires extends the Teacher beyond these fragile bodily strictures to ...

2. Brashness, intelligence, the Question, will be essential elements of each "teaching".

3. The end of intellectual security must be affirmed. And in this age of uncertainty we look toward the irrational, toward faith, at doubt and wonder about how these may be refashioned with a vocabulary that WE may understand.

4. I will sing the songs of those who were truly great.

5. Systems infect themselves - never trust them. Even the belief that I may change a system from within is a Lie. Like the One Ring, I must never wear the belief. I leave it for those those of stouter hearts, or with minds lesss filled with guile.

6. I dance with those whose hearts are too weak to absorb this wonder called life. Lay down your weary soul, lay down. The song is only half sung when the feet don't dance to the rhythm of their tired hearts. Lay down!

7. I co-exist with those who have sold their Souls to the system. Why? Is this not a contradiction! Are you mad? But if indeed, they have sold their souls to the System, then I have bartered my Head for much less. For a roomful of books and a 10 year old CD player! to each his own - they fill in my forms, I fill in their Voids.

8. The Teacher must exhaust himself in every exertion. Physical, emotional, psychic burn out, brings renewal or death. Choose as you wish. Without that exhaustion, nothing will be sung.

9. Every Rumour, Gossip, Bad-mouthing, deceitful practice - in short - every act of Office Politics must be condoned if those that hold the key to Political power have surrendered their Souls to the System. There is no such thing as honset reform. The anarchic is legitimate, as it steps outside the System to bring it down. These are the terms of Revolution. But these are terms, a coward like me would be afraid to use!

10. I remain true to a belief. An ideal. An observation. An insight. No amount of seduction neatly packaged as promotion or financial renumeration will sway my adherence to this. I remain inflexible that I might retain my intellectual nimbleness.

11. Embrace! Embrace knowledges, not knowledge. Plurality, connectivity, sheets of sound and the Advant Garde. Nothing is too miniscule. I learn from all. The repetitiveness of labour challenges my imagination and I laugh at the complainers and those who are above menial work! Give me mindlessness and I will strive to form a Mind!

It is from Simplicity, the Naive belief that things cannot change, that Systems perish and that Ministers talks with their mouths full but their minds empty, from the utter lack of respect for non-contradictory, sound advice that I shoot from the Hip. Don't expect me to admit to saying these things. I merely intend to live by them!











'Tis the Season for Chalet-ing - 11/27/2002







I've been musing about the whole sub-culture of class chalet-ing that has sprung up in the years since I was a student. Just some background. When I was in sec school and JC we hardly chalet-ed. 'Twas too expensive. The most we did was to go to someone's house for a BBQ or stay over at someone's house. The more adventurous would stay over at East Coast on the beach. And this was always done only with friends you were very close to. The notion of assembling as a class and squeezing into a space meant for 6-8 people, away from the scrutiny of parents and the like, was never an experience experienced. I suppose it's kind of a middle ground, a compromise between staying over at home AND staying out on the Beach (was dangerous and things used to happen). Plus the fact that you have to pay for these chalets, means that you have got to get a large number of people. Anyway - some prototypes:

The ones that don't happen
Much effort goes into planning one of these things but sadly it never happens. I think I've been told stories of this happening to classes at least twice.

We got a chalet going but ...
These happen I think when the class is quite a young one. Everyone is enthu about things but ends up doing his/her own thing. The result is much chaos and unhygenic living conditions. I seriously think that boys under a certain age should be banned from these living arrangements as they don't seem to know the first thing about communal living ... Plus, some of the boys never ever help out. all they do is sit in front of the TV and toggle the play station controls ....

My Commitment, You Chalet
This happens when only a small number of the people at the Chalet are responsible enough to work out all the logistics. This involves clearing up, sweeping the floor, taking out the trash etc. It's really irritating to know that while some people while away the time, these people are working behind the scenes to make the stay more comfortable for all. I suppose a good thing out of this is you get to know who really cares ...

We're Super-Organised
This happened at one of the gatherings I happend to visit. Everyone (well almost) was on task and helped out in preparing stuff. When it was time to start stuff no one lingered or whined. They just looked for things to do.

Let's Talk
I've wondered what indies do through the long watches of the night. Even when I stayed over at friends' houses, we never just played cards, or (in those days) modified versions of popular board games (Luck chess, ransom chess and a whole host of complex strategy games spring to mind). We always ended up mulling over stuff. Talking about what we thought about I guess. Maybe we were a generation that grew up full of hopes, expectations and fears that remained unarticulated for us and so we took to the darkness of night to unravel and explore how we felt.

And the final kind of Chalet ...Eh - you also here ah
This happens. One then wonders about the probability of these occurences. Perhaps it is true that the circles in which we move intersect at the moments that we least expect them to.