Portraits III: Narratives of Singapore Arts Educators Portraits 3

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ISBN: 978-981-11-8913-5

of Singapore Arts Educators

Narratives

Foreword

Portraits III builds on the many wonderful teacher narratives that have shed light on how Art and Music teachers breathe life into their teaching practice. This third volume of the series, Portraits, commissioned by the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts (STAR), documents the experiences of Art and Music teachers through narrative inquiry. We are reminded of the choices we make in our commitment to sound pedagogy and artistic excellence. We reconnect these choices to our teaching practice, rediscovering new relationships as we co-create teaching and learning experiences for our students.

STAR is dedicated to building a teacher-led culture of professional excellence in Art and Music teachers in the Ministry of Education fraternity. We believe that by inspiring us and influencing the way we see and think about our everyday work, these narratives will help build a strong community of arts educators, giving students hope for today and courage for tomorrow, and collectively shaping the future of Singapore through quality arts education.

Mrs Rebecca Chew

Academy Principal, Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts

In Appreciation

WRITERS

Hong Xinyi and Lea Wee

PHOTOGRAPHER

Desmond Wee

ART AND MUSIC EDUCATORS

Ms Ameerah Sharainee Zain

Senior Teacher, Music

Riverside Primary School

Mr Ang Kok Yeow

Art Teacher

Zhenghua Primary School

Mr Ben Khor Teng Chih

Lead Teacher, Art

Ngee Ann Secondary School

Ms Faith Chung Wai Teng

Head of Department, Aesthetics, PE & CCA

Bukit View Primary School

Mr Heng Yew Seng

Director, Curriculum Policy Office

Curriculum Planning & Development Division 1

Ms Jasjit Kaur

Art Teacher

St. Hilda’s Primary School

Mr Jonathan Tan Jun Qiang

Music Teacher

Telok Kurau Primary School

Ms Judy Isabel Koh Cheng Tee

Subject Head, Art

CHIJ St. Nicholas Girls’ Primary School

Ms Liow Xiao Chun

Music Teacher

St. Andrew’s Secondary School

Madam Norlita Marsuki

Senior Teacher, Art

Naval Base Secondary School

Madam Pang Ming Ing

Academy Officer, Art

Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts

Ms Sarah Choo Jing

Art Teacher

Nanyang Girls’ High School

Mr Song Ziliang

Subject Head, Aesthetics & Music

Zhonghua Secondary School

Madam Suriati Suradi

Master Teacher, Music

Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts

Mr Tan Kuo Cheang

Principal

Xinmin Secondary School

Mr Tommy Wong Yong Ping Music Teacher

Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School

CROSSING DISCIPLINES

BEN KHOR TENG CHIH

Making an Artful Living

When it comes to lifelong learning, Ben Khor is not afraid to walk the talk. This deeply conscientious Lead Teacher for Art at Ngee Ann Secondary School tries to learn a new art form every year, and the choice of the art form is guided by his Secondary 3 Art students’ interests.

One year, he had a student who aspired to become a film director and wanted to focus on film as her SingaporeCambridge General Certificate of Education Ordinary-Level (GCE O-Level) Art project. “I decided for that particular year, I would have to pick up film-making skills,” Ben remembers.

Tapping on books and online resources such as YouTube videos, he learned about camera angles and storyboarding, and figured out how to procure necessary equipment, such as cameras and microphones. “Ultimately, I think the experience did make an impact on her life. She is now a film producer.”

Another year, a group of students expressed keen interest in fashion. To bone up on this subject, Ben did not just rely on books. He also took the initiative to seek help from the women in his life who knew more about fashion than he did. “I got scolded a lot by my wife for not knowing certain things,” he recalls with a laugh. “That learning process helped me realise there is so much more to the fashion industry than just sewing.”

He also sought out industry partners to get these students internships, and three of them ended up pursuing fashion retail.

Ben also tried his hand at digital painting because of several Art students who were very interested in exploring this new form, which involves using computer software and hardware to create work that has the look of physical media, such as oil painting. In fact, this was the genesis of Ngee Ann Secondary School’s digital imaging studio, IRIS, which was set up in 2012 and equipped with state-of-the-art equipment such as interactive tablets. The initiative is a particularly good fit for the school, because Ngee Ann Secondary School has a niche in information and communication technology (ICT).

“One of the students who led us to set up this studio is now a junior designer at an architecture and engineering firm where she does branding work for companies and agencies,” Ben adds. “Another student who did digital painting with us is now studying computer science, and what she learned here will help her if she ever goes into game design.”

LIFE-CHANGING POTENTIAL

It is clear that Ben makes an effort to keep track of his Art students long after they graduate (he even collates and updates this information using an Excel spreadsheet, he confides). Besides wanting to know how they are doing, and offering them support if needed, he is also keen to observe if learning art influenced their professional paths. After all, that is one of the key tenets of Ngee Ann Secondary School’s Enhanced Art Programme (EAP), which has been running since 2011 and aims to equip upper secondary Art students with skills that enable them to further their passion in the fields of art, design and media. “I believe there is true relevance in what we are trying to teach here,” says Ben. “What I always tell parents is,

there is an opportunity to be taken from the EAP.”

Typically, Secondary 3 Art students are exposed to a variety of different media, then asked to create two works as final term submissions — one relating to applied art and the other relating to fine art. “That gears them up to select one final medium they must explore for Secondary 4, and these projects can lead students towards life-changing choices, such as what to study at the tertiary level and what to pursue as a career,” says Ben. “Our EAP has grown to encompass more applied arts. Last year, half of our students who applied for early admission to tertiary institutions chose applied art subjects such as animation, communication design, urban planning and film.”

He used to teach Design & Technology (D&T) as well as Art, and still sees great affinities between the two subjects. This year, Ngee Ann Secondary School introduced an integrated programme for Secondary 3 Art and D&T students, who team up to approach real-world issues using different skill sets. “For example, if we are talking about overcrowding on buses, Art students can create posters persuading people to better

manage time during peak hours, and D&T students can design flexible seating mechanisms to save space,” Ben explains.

“We want them to know that what they are learning is really relevant to what they could be doing at work in the future, and increase their capacity for collaboration. I think they do see we are putting a lot of thought and resources into this programme, and they are appreciative of that.”

He believes that students still benefit from their time learning Art, even if they do not pursue related professions.

“The arts develop you holistically as a human being. You learn to reflect and observe more. My students who are in the workforce always share that they have learnt to think, observe and execute in unique ways that set them apart from others.”

SUPPORTING THE FRATERNITY

When he was 19 years old, Ben was part of the first cohort of the National University of Singapore’s industrial design programme, first launched in 1999. This decision was partly inspired by his father. “He worked his way up from a welder to a ship and oil rig designer, and was always tinkering and fixing things at home. I learned a lot from him,” Ben shares. The desire to become a teacher took root after a relief teaching stint, as well as his experience as a platoon commander during National Service, both of which enabled him to see first-hand how teachers could enable positive growth.

As a teacher, he aspires not just to impact his students, but also to contribute to his fellow Art teachers as well. As part of the Singapore Teachers’ Academy for the aRts (STAR) Beginning Teachers Milestone Programme, Ben opens up his classroom to new Art teachers on a Learning Journey. This gives them a chance to observe how he runs his art room and ask him questions on topics such as lesson preparation,

time management and pedagogical approaches. “I was really fortunate that I was mentored very well by my former Heads of Departments (HODs), Mr Nathanael Tan and Madam Lee Kian Soon, and the Principal then, Mr Low Eng Teong, when I first began teaching, and I told myself if I were ever in a position to help, I would always be willing to lend a hand,” he says.

In 2016, Ben, a former Subject Head, made the decision to switch from the leadership track to the teaching track, so that he could provide more meaningful support for colleagues and friends in the art fraternity. He had been featured in a television programme, “Talking Point: A Teacher’s Day”, and that led to several Art teachers seeking him out for help and support. “Most did not know where they could go to learn from an established art programme, like our Enhanced Art Programme, or how to build one in their school. What we did after that was to conduct sharing sessions and invite them to our classes to look at the things we were doing. That is when I realised I could play a bigger role in supporting teachers and decided to make the switch. As a teacher leader, there is a lot of meaningful work I can do for the fraternity. And if I can impact the teachers’ lives positively, I will be impacting their students as well.”

We want them [students] to know that what they are learning is really relevant to what they could be doing at work in the future, and increase their capacity for collaboration.”

FAITH CHUNG WAI TENG

Reinventing Music

Faith Chung, who grew up playing the piano and singing in school choirs, used to associate music largely with Western classical musical instruments.

It was only after Faith, now Head of Department for Aesthetics at Bukit View Primary School, embarked on teaching as a career that her understanding of music was broadened.

When she was undergoing training at the National Institute of Education (NIE) in 1998, she was introduced to the video, Stomp Out Loud, a unique and exciting blend of dance, rhythm, movement and comedy, which used ordinary objects and included everyday sounds such as those of car honking and traffic white noise.

Faith, who holds a Bachelor in Music (Keyboard Performance) from the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, recalls: “I was like ‘wow!’ It made me see music in a new light. I realised that you did not need classical instruments to make music.”

When she was posted to Jurongville Secondary School as a Music and English teacher in 1999, she got her students to make music out of an ensemble of everyday objects, including tables, chairs, metal rulers and basketballs, and take turns to perform on stage. “They were very enthusiastic about it and

some even opted to bring along their own ‘instruments’ such as plates and bowls. Later, the vice-principal told me he found the performance refreshing,” Faith says.

However, it was her subsequent stint at the Co-Curricular Activities Branch (CCAB) at the Ministry of Education (MOE) from 2005 to 2007 that further broadened her understanding of music.

At CCAB, where she was a choir officer, she organised performances for school choirs on national platforms, such as Singapore Youth Festival (SYF) as well as National Day Parade (NDP), and also helped out in other performances where she had a chance to appreciate other art forms. For the first time, she saw the synergistic effect of combining music with other art forms. “In mass dances at NDP, students danced to music and the combined school choirs, which performed for SYF Opening Ceremonies and NDP, did simple choreography while they sang. As a choir, they also used props, such as vests that could change colour to create a flashcard effect,” Faith explains.

She also saw how the display bands coordinated music playing with marching. She says: “I realised that music does not need to exist in a silo. When it was combined with other art forms, it became more vibrant and exciting. It gave me a multisensory experience and also made me think about the role of music in life.”

BRIDGING THE ART FORMS

When she returned to Jurongville Secondary School as the Subject Head for Aesthetics and the only Music teacher between 2008 and 2011, she was in charge of the school’s music curriculum, as well as its performing arts CCAs.

With the CCAB experience still fresh in her mind, she experimented with combining music with other art forms. She gathered students from the angklung, Chinese dance

and Malay dance CCAs to put up a fusion performance. The angklung instructor composed the music while the Chinese and Malay dance instructors choreographed the dance, which comprised Chinese and Malay dance steps.

Understanding that culture shapes artists’ expression in the arts and that music and dance are intricately interwoven, Faith also played Malay dance music for students to listen to during music classes, and even roped in the CCA instructor for Chinese dance to teach students basic Chinese dance steps and how to dance in rhythm to music.

She also introduced music from Asian cultures into her music classes. Among other things, she gave her students an overview of theatres such as Beijing opera and bangsawan (a type of traditional Malay opera), taught them to sing the ragas of classical Indian music and engaged an instructor to teach them how to play Chinese drums.

The response from students to her various initiatives ranged from lukewarm to enthusiastic, but she was undeterred.

“I just wanted to expose them to the music and art forms of other cultures,” she says. “Hopefully, this will help them take the first step towards understanding another culture better and over time, also broaden their minds and help them develop multiple lenses through which they see things, which is what knowing the art forms of other cultures has done for me.”

THE POSSIBILITIES OF MUSIC

She went on to complete a Master of Arts at NIE and in a subsequent stint at the Arts Education Branch (AEB), she had opportunities to work on curriculum and co-curriculum matters. In a 2015 trip organised by STAR to Estonia — known as “the country that sang its way to independence” — she visited various schools and witnessed how they taught music there.

“The songs used in the music curriculum were songs about Estonia, such as its history, culture and festivals,” she says. “It got me thinking about whether we could also use singing, for instance, songs by local composers and possibly based on local themes, to instil a sense of pride in our country and culture among our students.”

Back in Singapore, she worked with her choir team to propose that the works of local composers be chosen as the set pieces for SYF Arts Presentation for Choirs. The proposal was accepted and the songs, Bunga Sayang from the musical, Kampong Amber, by Dick Lee, and Little Red Dot by Liong Kit Yeng, were eventually chosen as the 2017 and 2018 set pieces respectively.

In January 2018, Faith took up a new role as the HOD for Aesthetics at Bukit View Primary School. Since then, she has been continuing to open students’ minds to what music can be, outside of Western classical music tradition.

She is still drawn to the idea of making music out of everyday

objects, which was first brought out by Stomp Out Loud, and is excited about her recent discovery of music made using vegetables and PVC pipes. She and another colleague are now working on a project to make PVC pipe band instruments for students out of recycled plastic bottles.

Hopefully, this

will

help

them take the first step towards understanding another culture better and over time, also broaden their minds and help them develop multiple lenses through which they see things.”

In fact, she believes that music does not have to happen only in classrooms, during CCAs, or in the presence of teachers and instructors. “I hope to bring music into students’ everyday environment so that they are free to discover and explore it on their own,” she says.

Faith has added two more pianos to a common area in the school, which used to have one piano, and has plans to introduce more musical instruments into the school’s public spaces. So far, the pianos have been well used, with students tinkling the ivories during their free time before school and during recess. “This shows that when given the opportunity, students do want to explore music on their own,” she muses.

“So, my challenge is to continue to think of ways to increase these opportunities for them.”

ANG KOK YEOW

Finding a New Voice

Zhenghua Primary School Art teacher Ang Kok Yeow has packed a lot of living into his 31 years. He spent the first few years of his childhood in a Lim Chu Kang kampung, adjacent to the fish farm where his father worked. In 1990, he moved into a HDB estate with his family. But the memories of those early years when he was surrounded by nature have continued to linger, most explicitly in his work as a multidisciplinary artist.

In a 2011 photo series titled Once Upon A Time, he captures a slice of rural Malaysia in an attempt to recreate that childhood kampung. A 2014 work, All That Glitters Is Not Gold, uses photography, video and performative art to explore one of his favourite themes — man’s relationship with nature.

“As a kid, I was not too sure what art was. I was just interested in creating something out of nothing, and that is ultimately what led me to art,” he says. By the time he was a teenager, he was certain he wanted to be an artist. To fuel that drive, he wanted to interact with people from different walks of life so he could observe how they lived. So he tried his hand at many different part-time jobs, working as a chef, an ice-cream promoter, and even a cartoon mascot.

Kok Yeow studied cinematography in Ngee Ann Polytechnic, and worked as a crew member on film sets. He then took up

fine art photography at Nanyang Technological University, and became a freelance photographer for a few years after graduating. “But I realised I could not find my voice as an artist.”

That is when the thought of becoming a teacher crossed his mind. He had been a member of the Boy Scouts as a student, then a Scout Leader for 10 years. “Going back to secondary schools to share knowledge as a Scout Leader had come quite naturally to me, and I thought that teaching would be something I could do. I felt that providing art education to a younger generation would be a way of touching lives, and that was something I would love.”

THE ART OF TEACHING

He has now clocked two years as an Art teacher, and describes the experience to date as enriching, vibrant and fast-paced.

“It has been really fun, like a rollercoaster ride. There are so many things to try,” he says. “I’m very thankful to my Principal, Mrs Rita Dass, Subject Head, Madam Geraldine Ang, and Senior Teacher, Madam Lem Li Kuen, for being so supportive, encouraging and helping me to grow as a teacher and as a person. They are very open to new ideas, and very accepting when it comes to teaching styles that are more engaging for students.”

“Sometimes I see myself as both an Art teacher and an artist who teaches,” says Kok Yeow. When he encounters interesting artworks in exhibitions, he will often share the learning experience with his students in class, “to start off a conversation about a larger topic, and to plug them into the art landscape in Singapore as well”. Sometimes, he also brings up his own work. For instance, as a finalist in the 2017 France + Singapore Photographic Arts Award organised by the Alliance Française de Singapour, he shared the works created by some

of the finalists with his students, to familiarise them with the medium before they started on a photography workshop. Besides bringing art into the classroom, this advocate for museum-based learning also leads his students out of the classroom in search of engaging encounters with art. Class visits to museums have long been a part of art education in many schools. Starting in 2018, museum-based learning was formally integrated into the Primary and Lower Secondary Art syllabuses, and MOE partners with local museums to use such visits as catalysts for deeper learning and reflection.

“I think this initiative is spot-on,” says Kok Yeow enthusiastically. “By bringing the kids to museums, they learn about art in a more authentic way because they can look at the scale, colours and details of real paintings and smell the air of a real museum environment. That whole tone puts them in ‘art mode’.” These outings form one component in a carefully scaffolded lesson plan, which includes pre-museum visit preparation, such as learning about the job of a curator, to post-museum visit follow-up lessons

where students create their own artwork inspired by what they have experienced at the museum.

During the museum trip itself, Kok Yeow works with docents to engage the children in different ways. To learn about portraits, a few students might be asked to pose for sketches drawn by their classmates, for instance. Often, simply being in the presence of these artworks will trigger questions that lead to fruitful discussions. “The kids are very interested in the olden days of Singapore that are depicted in some of the paintings we see. One question they asked was: how did people live without Wifi?” he recalls with a laugh. “The question may seem naïve, in a sense, but it also shows that these students are really thinking and trying to understand what life was like in the past. From these questions, we can start having interesting conversations.”

A FRESH PERSPECTIVE

This type of exposure — to art and history, but also more generally to different modes of knowledge — is a very important part of what he hopes to provide as a teacher. With their parents often busy with work, his students are frequently left to amuse themselves with their IT gadgets. “As teachers, we have to offer them as much as we can and expose them to as much as possible, to give them an enriching and meaningful education.”

This year, he introduced a new programme called Art at Recess, where students paint on big canvases laid on the ground, by manoeuvring remote-controlled cars. It is yet another way he is trying to enrich the experiences of his students, and the key message here is that art-making does not have to be limited to conventional mediums. “Anything can be art. I want to encourage them to not be limited in how they express themselves.”

At the request of Mrs Dass, Kok Yeow also designed characters who serve as ambassadors for the school’s six core values: care, respect, responsibility, integrity, resilience and harmony. These are featured in different parts of the school, and it is a way of using art to make civics and citizenship education more lively. Kok Yeow deliberately chose a more contemporary style for these adorable bright-eyed creatures, because he believes that “the school should be the first place where students come into contact with the latest developments in visual styles”.

Anything can be art. I want to encourage them to not be limited in how they express themselves.”

Having benefited greatly from working with film-makers like Anthony Chen, Wee Lilin and Charles Lim, he hopes to see artist residences in his school one day, so his students can learn from not just their Art teachers, but also from artists. In the meantime, his own artistic journey continues to unfold. This year, a screening of All The Glitters Is Not Gold will be part of a group exhibition titled The Unsettled Dust at Glasgow’s Centre of Contemporary Art. He also recently completed a photography documentary, Almost Home, about the passing of his grandfather and the customs of a traditional Taoist funeral. His students have refreshed his artistic voice, simply by bringing him new perspectives, he says. “They never fail to impress me. They have such lively ways of looking at things, and there are so many things to learn from them. Sometimes I feel they are giving me a lot more than I’m giving them.”

TOMMY WONG YONG PING

Synching with Sonic Youth

Back in 2015, two Music rooms were set up in Ahmad Ibrahim

Secondary School (AISS), and named after composers Frédéric Chopin and Ludwig van Beethoven. One day, some students were overheard talking about these new facilities — they believed the rooms were for Music students only, and felt left out. That snippet of conversation sparked an idea to not just open up the Music rooms to the whole student body, but also to make music an integral and inclusive part of the school culture.

A year later, the AESPIRE (coined by combining ‘aesthetics’ and ‘inspire’) Lunchtime Concert series was born. Music teacher

Tommy Wong, who had then just begun his teaching career at AISS, joined his colleagues in thinking of ways to recruit student performers for the first concert. They eventually decided to set up an Instagram account and use it as a sign-up platform. “Students can approach us face to face as well, but for those who are too shy to audition in front of people, we wanted to remove that barrier,” Tommy explains. “So they can film themselves performing and send us a clip via Direct Message. And we have found that most students are very comfortable with doing that.”

The school’s four music teachers run the concerts, with Tommy taking a lead role in mentoring the students and running the AESPIRE@AISS Instagram account. Today, that account has more than 750 followers, who are mostly the school’s students,

and it has become a platform for showcasing audition clips as well as the actual monthly lunchtime performances. To prepare student performers for these concerts, the music teachers mentor them in different ways. Students may send in a video of themselves performing and receive feedback from the teachers via text. Alternatively, they can choose to meet their teachers during recess or after lessons to discuss ways to interpret a particular piece of music and present their performances.

These lunchtime concerts now draw a robust student audience numbering around 150 each time. The initiative’s success means that the Music rooms are no longer perceived as exclusionary spaces by the larger student body. Beyond that, this platform resulted in some interesting insights for the Music teachers. They had initially expected the performance slots to be mostly taken up by the school’s O-Level Music students. “It actually turned out to be the reverse,” says Tommy. “Once we started this series, we realised there were so many interesting talents out there who were not formal Music students.”

What accounts for this phenomenon? “The nature of the subject as it is taught at O Level requires grounding in certain things, like classical theory. So what we observe is that most Music students already have their own private music tutors,” Tommy muses. As for the concert performers who are not taking Music in upper secondary, “my initial response was that it is a pity that students who are keen to perform are not pursuing Music further in a more recognised route”, he says. “But on the flipside, this has pushed us to be more resourceful in terms of looking for platforms to hone their skills. Once we identify talented performers from this concert series, we try to guide and prepare them for performances and competitions outside school.”

STAYING RELEVANT

Tommy himself is no stranger to the impact of wider exposure to the arts. An alumnus of Ang Mo Kio Secondary School, he

remembers vividly being a part of the school’s Night of Music and Dance (NOMAD) arts showcase in 2005, when he performed as a member of the school band. The teachers, led by then Subject Head for Aesthetics Ng Tian Hui, brought in professional arts practitioners to collaborate with the students, and conceptualised an innovative roving format for their performances and artworks. “It was a very powerful experience,” says Tommy. “I saw how massive an arts production could be, even for a school without many resources, and how having that one person at the helm with a strong vision could result in such transformative work. As a teacher, I hope more students will have opportunities to be part of such experiences. I hope we can continue to step out of our comfort zones and strive to source for or create platforms for students to experience the arts.”

Staying abreast of music trends is one of his key goals as an educator. This is particularly critical when teaching lower secondary students, since their grades for Music are not included in their overall academic performance. “I’m always thinking, how can I get their interest and dedication when I assign a project, in spite of the fact that the subject may not matter academically in the traditional sense?” His take: “I think the cool factor has to be

Art Is All Around

Avisualdiary dating back to 2011 still sits atop Pang Ming Ing’s desk at STAR. It contains her doodles and scribbles from her time in the Art Teacher Practitioner Programme (ATPP) that year. ATPP, held once a week over six months, was initiated by STAR for generalist teachers in primary schools who wished to specialise in teaching art. Each teacher-student was given a visual diary at the start of the course to document their art-making.

Ming Ing, who was among the pioneer batch for the programme, says: “I found the diary so useful and powerful that when I went back to school, I gave my students jotter books, so that they could document their own exploration and reflection in art.”

She believes that the process of making art is just as important as the final work. “It shows how and why an artwork was done, which we cannot always tell by just looking at the final artwork itself.”

After ATPP, she went on to complete an Advanced Diploma in Primary Art Education at NIE and later taught art at Edgefield Primary School before joining STAR in 2016. Things have come full circle now that she runs ATPP for primary school teachers who wish to specialise in art teaching.

ROCKY ROAD TO ART

Ming Ing’s journey from a generalist teacher to one who specialises in teaching art was a rocky one. In fact, her attempts to study art — a childhood passion — were thwarted at various points in her life.

Having done well for art in lower secondary, she wanted to continue pursuing the subject in upper secondary. But at the advice of her parents and teachers, she chose science instead. After her O-Level Examination, she secured a place at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts to pursue a diploma course in Art, but again, she had to turn it down after her parents disapproved.

Ming Ing ended up studying Electronics Engineering at Temasek Polytechnic and later worked as a planner in a shipping company. She quit after a couple of years to take up a relief teaching post at a primary school after her mother, who worked as a clerk in the school, told her about the vacancy.

Finding that she enjoyed interacting with young children, she underwent training at NIE in 1997 to be a primary school teacher. She chose Art as one of her teaching subjects, but was deployed to teach English, Mathematics and Science instead.

Things started to turn in her favour only after she was posted to White Sands Primary School in 2000, where, as a generalist teacher, she had to take on some art classes. She also became the school’s Art Coordinator, and she helped plan the art curriculum and co-curriculum as well as organised art workshops for staff. When she moved on to Edgefield Primary School in 2004, she continued in the same roles.

Ming Ing enjoyed teaching Art so much that one year, when she was not assigned an Art class, she approached her reporting officer and requested to teach Art to her form class, volunteering to sacrifice her two free periods every week in

the process. “If I did not teach art, I felt like something was missing,” she recalls with a laugh.

In 2011, her Principal, Mr Willy Tan, told her about the inaugural ATPP at STAR which trains specialist art teachers. Even though the deadline was over, she decided to write in to appeal to join the programme.

“I wrote a long email where I explained how if I were art-

trained, I would be able to deliver better and more meaningful lessons, and how because I was not art-trained, I was always questioning myself on whether I was delivering my lesson in an appropriate way for my students to experience art.” Her appeal was successful and she eventually enrolled in the programme.

TRAINING MAKES A DIFFERENCE

Attending ATPP was a game changer. Besides encouraging students to keep a visual diary and focus on the learning process, Ming Ing took a less “teacher-directed” approach to teaching art. “I gave students more chances to explore their own ideas and express their individuality,” she explains.

As a result, her students churned out more diverse, instead of cookie-cutter, artworks. Art became part of a self-journey, an expression of the authentic voice from the child who shared a part of his or her life in the art-making process.

To encourage ownership over their own work and to deepen their aesthetic sense, Ming Ing asked her students to reflect on their work and articulate their ideas.

The way she referenced artists’ work also shifted.

She says: “I used to get students to reproduce an artist’s work but after undergoing the programme, I would focus on a specific theme instead, for instance, the technique, material or mood in the artwork, and see how that might spark off the students’ creativity, either to re-create the same effect or do something different altogether.”

Once, Ming Ing got students to look at different parts of Kandinsky’s musically inspired painting, Composition VIII, and come up with their own music. “Later during recess, I saw some students making tapping sounds on the table with their pencils and asking each other what that would look like visually. It is good to see how this has rubbed off them and

made them realise that sound and music can also inspire art.”

Indeed, one thing Ming Ing would love to experiment with when she goes back to schools is the use of the environment. She believes that this is an important aspect of the art-making process that has often been neglected.

“But art does not just happen during Art classes,” she explains.

At Edgefield Primary School, she put up students’ artworks all over the school. She also took them to the eco-garden where she showed them the patterns and colours of leaves and facilitated their study of the characteristics of different insects. Walks around the school compound allowed students to observe different objects. Photography lessons in the understanding of concepts, such as composition, were carried out in the neighbourhood.

I saw some students making tapping sounds on the table with their pencils and asking each other what that would look like visually. It is good to see how this has rubbed off them and made them realise that sound and music can also inspire art.”

Ming Ing hopes that at the end of their primary school experience, students will enjoy art and realise that it is more than just drawing and painting. “In fact, art is all around us. If only we would ‘open’ our eyes or even our ears, we can see patterns, shapes and colours in our environment and draw inspiration from them.”

SONG ZILIANG

Playing a Different Tune

Music teacher Song Ziliang started piano lessons at the age of four, after his parents realised he had a knack for perfectly replicating tunes he heard on television on a toy piano. He swiftly grew enamoured with classical music. “There is an adrenaline rush that comes with it, because classical music is very dramatic, and that captured me,” he explains.

His passion for music continued to deepen in his teen years. In 2001, when he was 16, he spent a few months studying with Singaporean pianist Lim Jing Jing in Beijing, where she is based. Her mother had been his piano teacher, and Ziliang had first met her back when he was 10 years old. “She was the first Singaporean to graduate from the Moscow Conservatory, and I was very impressed by the beautiful sound she could create at the piano, and her vitality and exuberance as a musician.” That, combined with his admiration for the formidable technique of Russian pianists like Emil Gilels, Vladimir Horowitz and Svyatoslav Richter, sealed his determination to follow in her footsteps and study music at the Moscow Conservatory.

His parents, both music lovers, supported his decision, and with the help of sponsorship from the Trailblazer Foundation, Ziliang set off on his adventure. For the next four years, he relished exploring the Russian capital’s cultural milieu. “If you take a walk

in Moscow, there are so many posters of concerts and ballets and plays. The arts is very much in their DNA, and being immersed in that culture taught me the importance of dedication to one’s craft.”

Subsequently, he attended the Royal College of Music in London, where he spent another four years, graduating with a Bachelor of Music (Honours) and a Masters of Music in Performance.

POP CONVERSION

Upon returning to Singapore, Ziliang became a Principal Study Lecturer (Piano) at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. After a year, however, he decided that teaching music to secondary school students might allow him to make more of a difference in Singapore’s arts ecosystem. “I hope that by engaging students on a daily basis, I can get them interested in the arts and help to cultivate the next generation of performers, educators and audience members. It is important that our arts ecosystem starts from Singapore’s schools,” he says.

He has been a Music teacher at Zhonghua Secondary School for the past three years, and it has been a steep learning curve. For starters, even though he was not a big fan of pop music in his youth, he has since developed a liking for it, since it is the genre that is most accessible for his students. “When I saw their blank faces after talking about Beethoven and things like that, that is when I realised I had to try other ways of explaining musical concepts,” Ziliang explains candidly. He now uses music streaming service Spotify to track pop hits, so that he can pick suitable trending songs to use in his lessons, and has found that these songs can illustrate musical concepts such as syncopation, modulation, and structure quite handily.

However, his classical training comes into play even when he is using pop songs. Russian classical musicians are known for their virtuosic techniques, “but these gestures

are underpinned by a very rigorous study of the music, and its historical and philosophical context, because they know that is part and parcel of having a good interpretation of the score”, says Ziliang. “So my time in Moscow taught me to not just follow the score, but really understand what is behind the score. And the same principle applies to pop music. If you are performing Ed Sheeran’s Perfect, you have to understand it is a song about the love that grew between two people back when they were young, and you have to express that emotion. You cannot sing it like you are just happily strolling in a park.”

Spotify also comes in useful for the school’s O-Level Music programme, which he started in 2017. “A new programme does not have as many resources as an established one, from practice papers to the institutional knowledge of experienced teachers,” he

shares of the challenges behind this task. “But thanks to Spotify, we did not have to buy many recordings.” Along with his Music department colleagues, he sought advice from members of the teaching fraternity from other schools with established O-Level Music programmes, to learn more about assessment techniques and how to craft good lessons. “It was like starting a new venture.”

AN INTEGRATED EDUCATION

Since returning to Singapore in 2012, Ziliang has become much more interested in exploring unique elements of Singapore’s culture, and expressing these elements through music. “The music of a nation should reflect its cultural background,” he believes. He has performed pieces by Singaporean composers Chen Zhangyi and Syafiqah Adha Sallehin that blend Asian and Western musical influences. In the classroom, he appreciates how the GarageBand app includes instruments such as the pipa and erhu, since that enables students to create multicultural music. He has also made use of the Musically Singaporean App developed by MOE. After learning music using these platforms, his students performed a cover of Dayung Sampan using both Chinese and Western instruments for the 2017 Singapore Youth Festival.

Using music to learn about Singapore’s cultural traditions and diversity is just one way that the arts can inculcate important values, he believes. And there are many more ways a subject like Music can be woven into a child’s education, from understanding physiology through mastering playing techniques, to learning about history by diving into the context that gave rise to a piece of music. “I would love to see a more integrated curriculum in Singapore education where we can build programmes across subjects, and leverage music to teach different but interrelated concepts.”

Ziliang still performs regularly, and will next be seen tickling

the ivories at the Esplanade Concert Hall in 2019, where he will be one of the featured musicians in a Young Virtuoso Recital Series. His performance experience comes in useful when he is guiding his students. He oversees the seven performing arts groups in Zhonghua Secondary School, and started an Aesthetics Festival for these groups

I would love to see a more integrated curriculum in Singapore education where we can build programmes across subjects.”

to stage performances and concerts in school. Six times a year, students can also take part in an open mic showcase held in the canteen. Classical music is still part of his repertoire, and he does make an effort to introduce more accessible pieces in his lessons along with pop songs, “because it is still relevant, and there are a lot of things they can learn from it, like the characteristics of different instruments”. That said, this one-time classical purist is perfectly happy to mix it up with more diverse genres, as he firmly believes that sparking the curiosity and interest of students is the first step to building a strong foundation for what will hopefully be a flourishing arts ecosystem in the years to come.

“I hope that students will be able to experience the joy of music-making through performing the music that they love. In the process of music-making, students will also be able to acquire core values at the heart of the 21st Century Competencies and exercise critical and inventive thinking, exploring and experimenting with different genres of music, thereby thinking out of the box to create music unique to Singapore. Having acquired musical experiences in school, I hope that students will eventually take an interest in attending and partaking in arts and cultural performances, thereby creating a healthy ecosystem for the arts in Singapore.”

CONSTRUCTING NETWORKS

she can learn from others. She even scrutinises the curricula vitae of artists she admires, to find out how they arrived at where they are today.

After completing her master’s degree in fine art at the Slade School of Art in London, the United Kingdom, in 2015 and before returning to Singapore to serve her teaching bond with MOE, she also made sure she found a London-based gallery to represent her works in London and other cities in Europe.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

As an Art teacher at Nanyang Girls’ High School since 2015, she wants to make her students’ art experience “real and authentic” and “not just something that exists in theory”.

“By allowing them to see how the art scene functions, they can make their own connections and link these to a larger picture,” she says.

“When students appreciate the multiple aspects of art, even if they cannot or do not want to be an artist, they can still contribute as a creative individual such as a patron, a curator or a designer, all of whom are needed for our culture and art economy to be sustainable.”

Hence, she brings all sorts of creatives — designers, photographers, artists, curators, animators and illustrators — into her classes to share their stories.

During a fashion module, she took her students to a photo studio where they directed their own fashion shoot and learnt about lighting, angles and poses by taking on the role of a director, a photographer and a model.

Before her solo exhibition titled Accelerated Intimacy was launched at Yeo Workshop in Gillman Barracks for Singapore Art Week 2018, she invited her students for a private viewing.

“They had the chance to listen to the conversations I had

with collectors and to observe how as artists, we could direct a conversation to talk about our inspirations and processes,” she says.

That said, the impact she leaves on her students is not necessarily related to art.

“Art education should go beyond the classroom and reflect life,” she says.

“Even though there is a fixed syllabus in art education, it is not set in stone and there is a lot of room for conversations beyond the syllabus.”

She engages her students in talks about values and mindsets: how mindsets shape actions and the importance of traits such as resilience and daring to try.

When she was a relief teacher at Serangoon Secondary School, she put a group of students who thought they couldn’t paint through a nine-hour painting session.

“After that, they did not say anything but they were smiling,” she recalls. “With their own eyes, they saw that they could paint.”

TEACHING AND ART-MAKING

Sarah herself personifies the spirit of resilience. Not born with “a natural talent for art” (her parents took her out of art class because she couldn’t draw a banana well), she practised and trained for hours to figure out what medium worked for her.

After she scored A2 for Art in her O levels, she made a trip to Nanyang Junior College and managed to persuade the team of Art teachers there to let her enrol in its Arts Elective Programme. In university, during term breaks, she took on internships at STAR, Serangoon Secondary School and Sengkang Secondary School, through which she confirmed that teaching suited her.

“There is a structure to teaching that I am drawn towards, and which influences my practice,” says Sarah.

Her artworks, she explains, are “very planned and structured”.

“I am working with video installations right now and in videos, there’s a lot of planning and specific timings to follow. Even my compositions are created to look accidental but they are actually crafted intentionally. Everything and everyone placed in a scene are premeditated and calculated.”

In the same way, she plans for “accidental coincidences” in her lessons, for instance, getting students to use paper as a creative medium and at the same time, as a form of selfexpression or to communicate an idea or intent.

Much as she tries to benefit her students with her art practice, her interactions with students have also coloured her own practice. Her 2017 work, Art of the Rehearsal, at the National Museum of Singapore, was inspired by the struggles she saw her students undergo while making art. The video installation showed dancers rehearsing their moves before a performance and the vulnerability they revealed in those moments of preparation. “I wanted to let my students see that the process is as important as the final outcome, and in fact, the process affects the outcome,” she explains.

She is not afraid to share her own struggles in making art. “After I show my students the countless times I have to redo my scripts and perfect the music before burning it on the vinyl disc and the multiple renditions of various compositional choices, they understand that trials and errors are an inevitable part of the creative process,” she says.

Art education should go beyond the classroom and reflect life.”

Working and interacting with her students also remind her why she still practises art. “Making art is a solitary process. If I do not interact with my students and colleagues, I might end up getting lost in my solitary world. Through their ingenuity and innocence, my students often offer a different perspective and outlook.”

For instance, once, she gave her students an assignment, which was to interpret a piece of paper, and one student tried to split the drawing paper into two. At some point, one half of the paper looked as if it was going to fall off, but the student kept continuing. “She later shared that she wanted to show the values of perseverance and resilience through her work. That made me reflect and ask, how far can I stretch myself as an educator and artist?” Sarah says.

She believes that one way is to expose herself to different schools, cultures and organisations.

“I do not want to get too comfortable in a particular zone. I want to push myself to try new things,” she says. “If we are too fixated in a particular zone, we can forget the bigger picture. What works in one school, culture or organisation might not work in another.”

JONATHAN TAN JUN QIANG

Caring, Sharing and Inspiring

When he started secondary school at Maris Stella High School in 2001, Jonathan Tan was planning on taking up archery as his co-curricular activity. His father, however, encouraged him to learn a skill that he could continue to use even after leaving school, and nudged him towards the Chinese orchestra. At the time, Jonathan was a big fan of the television series, The Legend Of The Eight Immortals, and when the time came to pick an instrument, he decided on the Chinese flute, or dizi, since that was the instrument played by the character, Han Xiangzi.

It turned out to be a decision that changed his life. He played the dizi throughout his student years, becoming the Sectional Leader of the Maris Stella High School Chinese Orchestra, the Student Conductor and Sectional Leader of Nanyang Junior College’s Chinese Orchestra, and then the Student Conductor of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Chinese Orchestra.

An alumnus of the Singapore Youth Chinese Orchestra (SYCO), he has performed both in Singapore and abroad, and taken part in numerous competitions. In 2012, he won the second International and Commercial Bank of China – Talent Competition, and was the first runner-up in the National Arts

Council National Chinese Music Competition’s Dizi Solo Open Category. Today, along with his best friends from the SYCO, he is the co-founder of Dicapella Dizi Ensemble, the largest bamboo flute ensemble in Southeast Asia, which aims to help nurture the next generation of dizi players in Singapore.

Before all this happened though, Jonathan was just a 13-year-old boy who had decided to learn how to play the dizi, armed with no musical training apart from what he had learned during music lessons in primary school. “The closest thing I had done up to that point was playing the recorder,” he remembers.

“So the initial stage of learning the dizi was not easy. I did not know how to read a score. Even getting a proper tone from the dizi was a challenge.”

What kept him going was the strong sense of camaraderie with his section mates, and the guidance of his first dizi teacher, Boo Chin Kiah. “He was very nurturing and introduced me to different playing styles and orchestras outside of school. He taught me a lot.”

FIRMLY FRIENDLY

Jonathan was keen to continue pursuing this passion as a teacher, and his extensive experience in Chinese orchestras marked him as a strong candidate for teaching music. After he accepted MOE’s offer to teach Music in primary schools, he sought advice from his former music teachers and friends who had become teachers to find out how to manage younger children.

One suggestion he heard quite a lot was that he had to be very firm right from the start. Once he started life as a fulltime Music teacher at Telok Kurau Primary School though, he realised that “actually, I could not do it”, he says with a laugh. “I feel it is more important to be myself.”

Last year, pupils even voted that he should get the Friendliest Teacher Award for Teachers’ Day. But Jonathan’s preference for a more approachable and caring teaching style is not about winning popularity contests. Rather, he believes it is a more constructive way to engage his students, the vast majority of whom do not learn music outside of what they experience in school.

“I’m lucky to be teaching in primary school, because primary school music teachers may often be the students’ first music teachers and I can help prepare them for what is to come. I get to share my love for music and hope to inspire them to love music as well,” he believes.

Besides setting aside his free time or the recess period to help the weaker students, he also tries to make his classes as engaging as possible. Last year, he started a GarageBand programme for his Primary 6 students, tasking them with using the app to create their own covers of selected pop songs. After noticing how they preferred to intuitively figure out how to use

the app rather than read through his prepared instructions, Jonathan has come up with a few tweaks for this year’s batch. “Rather than giving too many instructions, I’ve set them questions to facilitate their learning through peer discussion. I have also set aside more time for them to be more handson. This makes the lessons more interactive, and gives them a greater sense of ownership over their learning.”

He is also continuing a pen-tapping programme first implemented by a colleague, where students create a variety of beats by tapping pens against a table surface. This form of musical expression originated organically from adolescents a few years ago, and pen-tapping videos have since become a trending genre on YouTube. “You can create rhythms without any musical instruments, and that is something that may speak to many of our students,” he reckons. “If they enjoy it, they may be interested in moving on to learning how to play the drums.”

INSPIRING STUDENTS

Jonathan still performs as a member of Dicapella, and keeping his instrumental practice has enriched his teaching. “I am able to better relate and share my performing experiences with my students, especially when preparing students for their performances, be it during Music classes or when guiding the Guzheng Ensemble CCA, which I am in charge of.”

He occasionally performs during school events as well. Two years ago, for a Children’s Day concert, he decided to play the Western flute, an instrument he picked up in 2014.

“That performance actually inspired one of my Primary 5 pupils to buy a flute and learn how to play it on her own by watching videos online,” he recounts. “I did not even know about it until she told me a year later that she wanted to perform a tune together with her classmates as part of the

Primary 6 graduating ceremony.”

He helped her during rehearsals and was almost in tears when he watched the performance. “They did it quite beautifully, and I was very touched and heartened.” One day, he hopes to launch a talent showcase in school, to discover more students with musical talents.

Primary school music teachers may often be the students’ first music teachers and I can help prepare them for what’s to come.”

“It will serve as a good platform to inspire other pupils to excel in music, or even to pick up a new musical instrument.”

After all, the benefits of learning music will stand them in good stead in life, as this ‘educator-musician’ well knows.

“Music education is not just about learning an instrument. You develop social skills through active listening and teamwork, and build self-confidence when you perform in front of an audience. You also learn resilience — you may not get the note or tone right on the first few tries, but you must tell yourself to keep pushing on, that you can do it.”

SURIATI SURADI

Nurturing Music Educators

Some of Suriati Suradi’s fondest childhood memories are of listening to Malay children’s songs from the cassette tapes her mother bought for her and her father’s singing that accompanied the keroncong, a traditional folk music genre, which he played on the turntable. “Sometimes, my father’s friends and his brothers would visit and they would sing together,” she recalls.

Those precious childhood memories partly explain why Suriati, now a Master Teacher for Music at STAR, believes singing should be an integral part of music education.

In 2014, she helmed a professional development programme for primary school music teachers called Engaging with Songs, where she initiated a variety of approaches to teach singing in the classroom.

“To make singing more interactive and fun for students, I introduced singing games, incorporated movement to accompany singing and included elements of drama.”

The programme, which she described as her pride and joy, has since been taken up by music teachers in 53 primary schools.

“Initially, teachers felt awkward because they had to engage in purposeful play and at times, they had to make exaggerated

movements. But when they saw me role-modelling the movements, they were more inspired to try.”

Students themselves found singing songs more fun and engaging. In singing games, which are designed with specific music learning objectives in mind, they experience musical concepts as they sing. For example, in a game that introduces the musical concept of dynamics, students guide a chosen student to a hidden object, by singing louder when he or she is near it and softer when he or she is further away from it.

Teachers have been telling Suriati that more students, especially those from upper primary, now enjoy singing. In one school, Primary 6 students have even asked to form their own choir so that they can sing for their graduation.

“For those who are reluctant to sing, teachers say they now have more ideas to engage them in musicking,” Suriati says. “For

instance, they can beatbox, sing the bass line or a melodic ostinato (a short, repeated melodic phrase), or accompany their friends’ singing on instruments such as the djembe, ukulele or cajon.”

CONSTANTLY LEARNING

Professional development of teachers is an issue close to her heart. After all, she has personally benefited from it.

Following her Singapore-Cambridge General Certificate of Education Advanced Level (GCE A Level) Examination, she joined MOE as a generalist primary school teacher in 1990.

When she was posted to her second school, Elias Park Primary School, she had the opportunity to further her music education.

“The principal then, Miss Chiang Wai Leng, is someone who really believes in the professional development of teachers.”

Miss Chiang told her about a six-month in-service diploma course in primary music education at NIE and encouraged her to take it up. “She also encouraged me to try out things I had learnt in my music classroom. I ‘grew’ as a teacher while I practised,” she recalls.

It was also during the course that she met another role model, Dr Sylvia Chong, who encouraged her to pursue a master’s degree in music education. And she did.

After she completed elementary school music education at Hiroshima University in Japan on a combined MOE-Japanese government scholarship, she did a part-time master’s degree in music education at NIE while teaching at Pasir Ris Primary School.

She also served on the East Zone Centre of Excellence steering committee for music and had the opportunity to be involved in the professional development of East Zone primary school music teachers.

But it was her subsequent stint as a curriculum planning

officer in the music unit of MOE Curriculum Planning and Development Division (CPDD) in 2007 that set her on the path of professional development of teachers.

In 2011, she was posted to STAR as a programme manager and developed to become a Master Teacher in 2014.

PRACTISING SERVANT LEADERSHIP

As a Master Teacher, she conceptualises and runs professional development programmes for teachers.

Besides the Engaging with Songs programme, she helms two other programmes: Beginning Teacher Support Programme, where she provides support to new teachers embarking on their music teaching journey; and the Music Teacher Practitioner Programme, which is for generalist teachers in primary schools who wish to specialise in music.

Many of these teachers who have received professional development through the two programmes were mentored by her.

Music rooted in cultural heritage takes a significant place in Suriati’s heart. She is part of the teaching team for the programme Teaching Living Legends, where she mentors primary and secondary school teachers on the strategies of teaching dikir barat in the music classroom. Dikir barat is a form of Malay group singing featuring pantun, body movement, and call and response between groups of singers to the accompaniment of musicians.

She believes in the power of a group that thrives on learning together. With the many trial lessons she undertakes while mentoring and coaching teachers, Suriati feels that it is empowering to give affirmation to the teachers who are open to learning. They often watch her demonstrate teaching strategies as a peer coach and the ensuing conversations

help them to develop deep trusting relationships.

“I encourage teachers to be honest and open with me. And they are not afraid to tell me if the pedagogical approaches introduced do not work well,” she shares.

Her greatest sense of joy is when she sees her teachers try new ideas, even though it is out of their comfort zones, with the intent of allowing their students to enjoy quality music education.

I encourage teachers to be honest and open with me. And they are not afraid to tell me if the pedagogical approaches introduced do not work well.”

“When I see them becoming more confident teachers in the classroom and being driven to constantly sharpen their pedagogical understanding to deliver quality teaching — these are proud moments for me.”

LIOW XIAO CHUN

Growing in Confidence

Since she joined St. Andrew’s Secondary School in 2014, music teacher Liow Xiao Chun has grown from being someone who struggled with teaching to one who is confident enough to share her classroom practices with other teachers.

Among other things, the 28-year-old has opened up her classroom for beginning teachers to observe and shared with the fraternity her strategies for teaching music to Normal (Technical) (NT) music students using information and communications technology (ICT) tools.

On what contributed to her personal growth and transformation, she says: “I observed and learnt from others. I also had a lot of support from my family, school, colleagues and the fraternity.”

Her first year at St. Andrew’s Secondary School as a Music and Mathematics teacher was “extremely challenging and difficult”. She struggled with classroom management and had problems in carrying out her lesson plans.

Once, while she was getting a class ready to go into the classroom, a student broke from the ranks and bolted into the classroom, where he proceeded to run around in circles. He was soon joined by another student. “I was in shock,” she recalls.

“Maybe the boys thought they could ‘test’ me as they saw I was rather permissive with them when I taught them during

my practicum. As a new teacher, I was not firm enough and inconsistent with my instructions,” she reflected.

WINNING STUDENTS OVER

Over time, she learnt to be firm and to teach students that they had to deal with the consequences of their actions. She picked up tips by observing and learning from the other two music teachers in the school, Ms Cheryl Ng and Ms Deborah Gan, who mentored and co-taught with her for a year after her practicum.

From Ms Ng, she saw the value of discipline and not just “being a nice teacher”. She says: “With good discipline, students saw they could complete tasks in class and felt success in making music. This led them to develop respect for the teacher and subject.”

From Ms Gan, she learnt the importance of planning lessons and having a myriad of musical activities — from singing and instrumental playing to listening to music, watching music videos and live demonstrations and engaging in analysis or discussions — to engage the students and keep them focused in class. “I realised a lot of preparation had to go into planning and scaffolding a good lesson.”

To bring about greater engagement and learning among her students, she planned at least two activities, namely, musicking and consolidating music concepts learnt through discussion, watching videos or lectures. To ensure that her lesson had “flow” amidst the many activities, she rehearsed with her younger siblings and went to the music room earlier if she had a free period before the lesson. On her own, she initiated ideas on how to engage her students, including learning how to use the GarageBand software in her class to create an authentic experience for her students. “The boys enjoyed feeling like they were part of a band,” she recalls. “I did not have to play the accompaniment and was able to pay closer attention to their musical skills.”

When her students realised that she was firm and no-nonsense but that her classes were fun and enjoyable, they settled down and some, including the one who bolted in the classroom, even became her advocates and would ask the others to listen when she was talking.

Xiao Chun also won her students’ respect with her musical proficiencies and competencies, which she continuously improves on as she believes they are necessary to being an effective music teacher. Besides picking up the ukulele, she learnt to play the piano not just in the classical way that she was brought up with, but in a variety of styles that appealed to students. “It was inspiring for the students because they could tell that I have the passion, competency and confidence in my craft. They asked me questions that sparked conversations about the determination, perseverance and discipline that are needed to learn a skill or an instrument, values that I wanted them to learn from my music lessons,” she says. She had students asking her to teach them how to play and for those who were in NT, she would encourage them to join NT Music in Secondary 3, where they could develop more advanced keyboard skills.

As she also had to teach some NT Music classes, where there

was heavy use of ICT, an area new to her, she had to learn it from scratch. Besides learning from Ms Ng, who had started the NT Music programme in the school, she watched YouTube videos and attended workshops on ICT by STAR and the Arts Education Branch (AEB) of MOE.

“I had to expand my repertoire of music to include not just classical, traditional and pop music, but also genres like EDM (Electronic Dance Music),” she adds. “This allowed me to be more open-minded and to develop a keen sense of picking up interesting features of each genre, such that I could attempt to re-create their effects on GarageBand.”

SHARING BEST PRACTICES

As she grew in confidence in her pedagogical skills, she started to share her best practices with the fraternity. In 2016, she was one of four teachers who was part of the Network Learning Community led by AEB. Along with other nominees, she brainstormed to generate ideas on how to enhance NT music learning for students and shared them in a workshop with other NT music teachers.

Aside from NT music, she also shared signature music programmes from her school with the fraternity. In 2017, with the encouragement of her Head of Department, she volunteered in a Teacher-Led Workshop where she showed other music teachers how her school successfully uses a singing programme called Life Songs to engage boys in music. The programme was started by Ms Gan and improved on by Xiao Chun.

“What is unique about the programme is that we teach concepts of music and the socio-cultural context of the country using songs,” Xiao Chun muses. For instance, in the Singapore module, which she helped to develop, students sang xinyao and learnt about its history and significance through games, singing and songwriting.

A STAR Champion since 2017, Xiao Chun has also been attending professional development workshops organised by the STAR, after which she comes up with lesson ideas, which are then published and shared with the fraternity. Being able to share and exchange ideas with the fraternity through these workshops has been “very empowering”. “It always inspires me to come up with new ideas for my lessons,” she shares.

Nowadays, with technology, we can be very self-absorbed, but in music class, we learn how to sing and make music together.”

Looking ahead, she hopes to become a Senior Teacher or even a Lead Teacher in Music. “Having benefited from being mentored by others, I would like to help mentor other music teachers.” And she will continue to upgrade and refine her pedagogical skills and lesson packages. What motivates her is seeing “the focused looks on the faces of students when they play or listen to music”. As a music teacher teaching in a school, she is also gratified she can make a difference to students who may not be able to afford private music classes.

About a quarter of her students who have graduated from O-Level and NT Music classes have gone on to study music. But Xiao Chun, who still meets up with them over dinner once a year, says it does not matter if they are still actively pursuing music or not. For her, music education is about igniting the spirit of achieving something together.

“Nowadays, with technology, we can be very self-absorbed, but in music class, we learn how to sing and make music together,” she says. “I hope that these shared memories will stay with my students forever, as well as the soft skills, such as listening, coordination and discipline, that they picked up along the way.”

AMEERAH SHARAINEE ZAIN

Play to Learn, Learn to Play

From attending courses to reading up on various pedagogies and browsing YouTube for ideas, Senior Teacher for Music at Riverside Primary School, Ameerah Sharainee Zain, is always racking her brain for ways to get her students “playfully hooked” on music-making.

She counts the three milestone courses on the music pedagogies of Kodály, Orff and Dalcroze that she attended at STAR between 2012 and 2015 as among the most influential in strengthening her classroom practice.

She took up these courses after she graduated with an Advanced Diploma in Primary Music Education from NIE in 2012. She had started out as a generalist teacher for English, Mathematics and Science at Si Ling Primary School in 2008, after earning a bachelor’s degree in Science (Education) from the Nanyang Technological University.

The milestone courses at STAR changed the way she taught music and showed her how to engage students in music-making before teaching them musical concepts, which was different from her classical music training.

Ameerah, who grew up playing the organ, piano and cello, and also sang in choirs, says: “When students can experience and enjoy the music before learning the musical concepts,

their learning becomes more meaningful and purposeful. Engaging in the music-making process also helps foster student-centered learning, which in turn nurtures 21st century competencies.”

For instance, to teach Primary 1 children the song, Hot Cross Buns, she does not just get them to sing the song. Instead, inspired by the Orff approach, which teaches music through the integration of speech, movement and music, she presented various playful ways of engaging her students, with opportunities to improvise using body percussion, movement, voice and instruments.

“With one simple song, the students can be engaged in music-making in many ways,” she explains. “They learn about musical concepts through musicking, including how to keep a steady pulse, sing with an accurate rhythm and pitch, and perform as an ensemble using percussion and melodic instruments, such as the bongo and xylophone respectively.”

A REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONER

To improve her teaching methods so as to instil the joy of learning music in her students, she does post-mortems on her lessons, a habit she attributes to her science training. She always carries a notebook with her so that she can scribble down her thoughts on the fly. “For me, reflective practice is key to improving my teaching practices,” she says.

For instance, after reflecting on why her Primary 3 students were not so motivated to learn the recorder, she concluded — through observing her students’ behaviour, getting their feedback and discussions with her music colleague — that the lessons had to be more student-directed.

She researched and read up on possible strategies to engage her students and subsequently embarked on a

different approach to the playing of the recorder. “I gave them ample opportunities to be engaged in music-making, from active listening, where students had to process the notes played by the teacher and imitate the sound, to improvisation, where they created a short tune based on the notes they had learnt, and collaborative learning, where students helped their peers to improve on their recorder playing,” Ameerah shares.

The result was that, students who were previously not so motivated to learn to play the recorder and sometimes forgot to bring their recorders along, became highly motivated.

As a reflective practitioner, she is also aware that the profile of her students is always changing and she is not afraid to embrace new ways of teaching to better equip her students for the future. For instance, she has thought of ways to integrate technology into her lessons to engage her students, such as the use of the GarageBand app on the iPad.

She is also aware that with shrinking family sizes, children’s attitudes and behaviours may differ from what they were

previously. “With shrinking family sizes, I need to place more emphasis on teaching students the value of teamwork, such as what it means to share and take turns,” she says.

As a Music teacher, she wants to not just spread the joy of learning music among her students but also teach them the values needed to be a better person. “I strongly believe that education is not just about educating the mind, but educating the heart.”

LEADING AND NETWORKING

Her appointment since 2013 as a STAR Champion for the North 7 Cluster has further developed the “reflective practitioner” in her. As a STAR Champion, she attends workshops facilitated by Music Master Teachers at STAR and learns the principles behind pedagogical approaches.

For instance, in this year’s workshop, she learnt different strategies to improvise and compose music through non-formal teaching approaches. She then conceptualised a lesson idea to suit her students. She trialled the lesson to further refine it.

After that, she shared her experience with the music teachers in the North zone, and their feedback made her think even deeper about her lesson design.

“The entire process allows me to think critically about why I teach the way I do and this develops the ‘reflective practitioner’ in me and leads to quality music teaching and learning,” she shares.

Indeed, her classroom practice has been so commendable that since 2014, STAR has invited her to carry out open classroom demonstrations for beginning teachers to observe how she engages her students during music lessons.

This is not to say that she never faces challenges in her classroom, and when she does, she is grateful she has a strong

network of like-minded teachers she can seek support from.

“We share what works and what does not work and also issues that we are facing and strategies to mitigate them,” she says.

She is in regular contact with a group of music teachers who attended the Advanced Diploma in Primary Music Education with her in 2012 and also networks with other fellow music Senior Teachers. As a STAR Champion for the North 7 cluster, she reaches out to other music teachers in the cluster, largely through the STAR Champion workshops. She also has a close relationship with her school management, which allows her to help in making key decisions concerning the teaching and learning programmes within the school.

The entire process allows me to think critically about why I teach the way I do and this develops the ‘reflective practitioner’ in me.”

It is this strong support from the fraternity as well as school leaders that has kept her going for the last 10 years.

She says: “It is important for effective teachers to ask others for help when they need it and collaborate with other teachers to leverage their skills so they can make improvements in their teaching practice.”

Whenever the going gets tough for her, she would also remind herself of the reason why she became a teacher in the first place: to spread the joy of learning and teach students the values needed to be a better person.

CREATING CHANGE

HENG YEW SENG

Art as a Language

In meetings, you may see Director of Curriculum Policy Office (DCPO) Heng Yew Seng suddenly whip out a marker pen, and start scribbling away furiously on the white board.

Using drawings and diagrams to illustrate a point is something that comes instinctively to him.

The 45-year-old attributes it to his years of practising art — he has a bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London, in the United Kingdom, and a master’s degree in Education (Art Education) from Harvard Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, in the United States.

His art training has stood him in good stead throughout his multifaceted career with MOE. He started out as an Art teacher before moving on to become a Curriculum Planning Officer, a Curriculum Specialist, a Head of Department, a VicePrincipal and eventually, a Principal.

“My art training taught me how to simplify complex ideas and concepts into visual forms, so that others can easily understand what I am trying to communicate,” he says. “It also allows me to be creative and bring in fresh perspectives for my team to consider.”

For instance, when he was an Art teacher at National Junior College (NJC), he was tasked to produce school videos to showcase the school’s work in national education and

partnerships. Within a short time, he needed to understand the different programmes the school had in terms of National Education and how the school worked in partnerships. “My art training helped me to make sense of the mass of information and put it into a framework that was easily digestible for the audience,” he explains.

The process of producing an artwork, which includes conceptualising and visualising the artwork and eventually evaluating and fine-tuning the product, also requires project management skills, which are important life skills. This set of life skills was useful at various points in his career. For instance, as a Vice-Principal, he had to break new ground and help the Singapore Sports School develop a set of staff beliefs as well as explore the possible school quality evaluation and validation tools the school could adopt.

He views art as a form of language. “Because I acquired the language of art, I was able to venture into many spectrums of development and strengthen myself in many domains of skills, knowledge and competency.”

FROM ARTIST TO EDUCATOR

His original goal was to be an artist. His parents signed him up for private art classes after noticing he was “patient and able to sit still”. His budding interest in art soon turned into a passion and later, he became an AEP student at the Chinese High School and NJC. It was in these schools that he encountered mottos such as zi qiang bu xi (perseverance) and xue yi zhi yong (learn and apply) that were to guide him in life.

For instance, he was determined to pursue an art education after his A Levels. He studied hard, hoping to obtain a scholarship to go overseas as he knew that his parents, who worked as fishmongers, would not be able to afford such an

education. When he scored a B for his A Level Art, he was devastated. Nonetheless, he managed to land himself an interview with the Public Service Commission (PSC). “It was quite daunting as I had to face more than 10 panellists,” he recalls. “But the moment I stepped into the room, I just opened up my art portfolio and started to talk and talk about my artworks. I really wanted to share my passion with them.”

Indeed, the panelists were impressed by his passion, strength of character and abilities, and awarded him a PSC Overseas Merit scholarship to study Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

When he returned to Singapore after his studies, he was posted to Ang Mo Kio Secondary School in 1999 as an Art teacher. Although teaching was new to him, he soon grew to like it. “I found that I enjoy connecting with young people and seeing the sparkle in their eye when they learn something new,” he says. He describes himself as a teacher who would “walk the journey” with his students and engage them in animated discussions of their artwork at every stage of its development.

Picture: Swiss Cottage Secondary School

During his career in education, he continued to persevere and strive to excel in whatever role he was in, seeing them as opportunities “to learn and serve”. In this, he was also motivated by another motto, service with honour, that had resonated with him since his NJC days.

For instance, when he was posted to the Curriculum Planning & Development Division (CPDD) between 2003 and 2008 as a Curriculum Planning Officer, he saw it as a chance to help effect change from the core.

In his stint there, he supported and helped conceptualise a major review of the art curriculum, where art criticism replaced art history as one of the two pillars in the curriculum, art practice being the other pillar. This was in line with the general shift of the education system towards an emphasis on critical thinking.

“If students had the skills to critique art work, then they could be a judge for themselves and be better able to evaluate visual images and designs around them,” he explains.

As he saw the value of effecting change from the core, his passion also started to shift, from wanting to produce his own artwork, to making sure that art education and education in general are “valued and rightfully placed in our society”.

VALUING PEOPLE

From CPDD, he went back to schools where he took on leadership positions and eventually became the Principal at Swiss Cottage Secondary School. As a school leader, he continued to “walk the journey” with his staff and students.

Soon after he took over the reins in 2013, he met all his staff, including the operations support staff, for between one and two hours. “Some were very nervous because no principal had ever talked to them for so long,” he recalls with a laugh. But their concerns were unfounded as he just wanted to get

to know them better. “I believe in having a personal connection with people around him, and leveraging on people to grow people,” he says. “If you take care of your staff, they will take care of your students.”

At Swiss Cottage Secondary School, he was also actively involved in art education, which he says, will always have a special place in his heart. He conducted master classes for the Art students and ran sharing sessions with the Art teachers in the W2 cluster, where he shared his ideas on how to enhance art programmes in schools. When the teachers organised activities, such as painting of a wall mural at the Adam Road market, he was there to lend his support. He feels it is important to encourage and recognise staff for their work. “This will strengthen their conviction and spur them on in their work.”

My art training helped me to make sense of the mass of information and put it into a framework that was easily digestible.”

In his current role as the Director of the Curriculum Policy Office, where he has been since early 2018, he meets his staff individually and builds his personal connections with them. His scope of work now covers curriculum policies, which govern learning not just in art but all subjects in primary schools, secondary schools and junior colleges. “It is a big responsibility as the work I am doing here can affect every single child in Singapore schools.”

But if there is one thing he wants to do — it is to instil the joy of learning in students. “Learning is something that is intuitive in us as human beings. It is important not just for pragmatic reasons of survival, it also feeds into our social and emotional needs,” he says. “I hope that students can enjoy learning in school so much so that even after they have graduated, they will want to continue to learn.”

TAN KUO CHEANG

The Unofficial Music Champion

Principal of Xinmin Secondary School and bassoonist Tan Kuo Cheang is so passionate about music that even though he never taught it as a subject in school, he has been shaping students’ musical experience through other means.

Throughout his stints as an educator at Nanyang Girls’ High School, East View Secondary School and Meridian Junior College, he played various roles in the school band, from being the official teacher-in-charge to being the unofficial bassoon tutor. In Xinmin Secondary School, he continues to coach the band’s bassoonists and recently performed with them. “Just as I used to have a positive experience with music in my school band, I want to give my students the same experience.”

One of the best moments in his education journey, he says, is when he sees his students continue to make music, with some performing alongside himself in local music groups, years after they have graduated.

It was Dr Zechariah Goh, the band conductor at Victoria Junior College (VJC) then, who changed his perception of music. “He introduced a wide repertoire that I would never have dreamed of playing in my secondary school,” says Kuo Cheang, who started piano lessons at the age of four and played the French horn in secondary school.

Dr Goh also allowed him to dabble in the bassoon, an instrument that has captivated him since he first heard it as a young boy in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring played by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. The piece opened with a solo bassoon in the highest register, a sound that he described as “out of this world”.

In a concert during his second year in junior college, he was given the opportunity to perform not just on the French horn, but also the bassoon. “It was a huge risk as I had learnt the instrument for only a few months,” he says.

The risk paid off. The bassoon soon became Kuo Cheang’s instrument of choice and the encouraging experience he had in the VJC band sparked a lifelong love for music. To this day, he continues to make music with local bands, orchestras, and chamber groups.

THE PRINCIPAL BASSOONIST

The collaborative music-making in these groups has trained him to be a good listener — a skill that has proven to be invaluable in his current role as a Principal.

“In music-making, we need to listen to other musicians and understand what they are trying to do and where the music is headed, before we can respond in kind and make adjustments to our playing,” he says. “Similarly, as leaders, we need to seek first to understand before we take action and the best way to do so is by attentive listening.”

Being a musician has also helped him to understand the value of every individual in a team and that different individuals need to take turns to step up to be the soloists.

He says: “In school too, there will be times when different colleagues have to take the lead and as the Principal, I would have to follow.”

He sees himself as a school leader who is not afraid to try things out. “When my teachers and students have ideas, I will tell them to try. If things do not go well, we will just learn from the experience and do things differently next time.”

He was influenced by school leaders who had allowed him to take risks with his musical ideas early in his career in education. In his first posting to Nanyang Girls’ High School as a 26-year-old Mathematics teacher in 2005, he was given the autonomy to develop sabbatical programmes for students as part of the school’s Integrated Programme (IP). In the first year, he got them to explore the idea of temperament in western music and in the second year, he developed a mini-summer music school for students from various music-related CCAs.

BEING A ROLE MODEL

He believes that music —and in fact, the arts in general — are a “quintessential human experience”.

“They not only provide us with a platform to discover ourselves through self-expression, but also allow us to better understand one another and the human condition,” he says.

“Arts education opens up avenues for people from different cultures to understand one another, which is important in building a more gracious society. There are also many opportunities to develop 21st century competencies such as perspective taking, critical thinking and collaboration.”

Kuo Cheang’s wish is that students can continue to be involved in the arts, either as an audience or a practitioner.

With that in mind, he is working with his colleagues at Xin Min Secondary School to see how they can enhance the overall arts education experience of students by exposing them to different art forms, including dance and drama.

He has also been sharing with his colleagues and students the possibilities in music performance thrown up by some of his enriching performance experiences.

For instance, a recent performance he did for The Philharmonic Orchestra in collaboration with dance company Arts Fission saw senior citizens from a daycare centre doubling up as dancers, and the choreography included their daily movements, such as stirring a cup of coffee. “This is a model I would like to introduce to my students,” he says. “Instead of just performing for an audience, they can have greater interaction with the community. It is through greater interaction that one understands and empathises with the other.”

As performing with local groups allows him to stay plugged into the thriving arts scene here, he believes that it is very important for Art and Music teachers to continue to practise their art.

“How can we convincingly teach the subject otherwise?” he muses. “By being involved, we can keep abreast of developments and inspire our students to continue to develop mastery in the field.”

Through balancing his roles in and out of school, he hopes to set an example for his students and staff. “I want to let them know that it is possible to pursue your passion on top of your studies or work,” he says. “I often tell my students, if I can finish my rehearsal at 10.30pm and still be on time for school at 7.30am, what excuses do you have?

Instead of just performing for an audience, I would like them to have a greater interaction with the community. It is through greater interaction that one understands and empathises with the other.”

Life is not just about studies or work, but also opportunities to connect with others and do something you really like.”

NORLITA MARSUKI

The Purpose of Play

At an early age, Norlita Marsuki developed an affinity for the subject she now teaches. From craftwork in primary school to creating a 2-metre-long piece of batik for her A-Level Art project, she not only derived creative pleasure from Art lessons and Art Club co-curricular activities, but also learned valuable life lessons from her teachers.

In Nan Hua High School, her Art teacher also taught Design & Technology, and showed her through his blueprintinfluenced style of drawing that it was possible to approach Art using different skill sets and mindsets. In Anderson Junior College, her Art teacher introduced her to art movements such as Impressionism, and encouraged students to be adventurous in their art-making. “She said, be brave, forget about your pencils, and apply the paint directly. So what if you make mistakes?” Norlita remembers. “So we learned to let go of that need to make something perfect.”

Inspired by these classroom experiences, and wanting to nurture others in the same way, she enrolled in NIE and became a full-fledged Art teacher in 1991. After three and a half years of teaching, she took study leave to pursue a degree in Art at Curtin University in Australia. Upon graduating, “I was super excited to return to teaching”, Norlita says. Energised by

all she had learned, she was raring to “change the world”. But first, she had to deal with a prosaic real-world hurdle — the school she was posted to in 1999, Sembawang Secondary School, did not even have its own campus.

While the permanent premises for this then-new school was being built at Sembawang Crescent, its students and teachers were housed temporarily at Woodlands Ring Secondary School. The teachers’ offices were modified containers, and there was no Art room to speak of, which meant Norlita sometimes had to carry pails of water to the classroom so students could mix paints and wash their brushes.

EXCAVATING POSSIBILITIES

Undeterred, she set about building an Art programme from scratch. “The challenge was to convince the school leaders and my colleagues that art is as important as other subjects,” she says. “And you can’t do that by force, you can’t demand things. We had a small budget the first year, and the work that students created proved their abilities. They also said nice things about the Art lessons, and when the students are keen, we can make the case for getting more resources, and more things can be done.”

When they finally moved into their very own campus nine months later, she enthusiastically outfitted the school’s very own Art room with materials and equipment. Norlita also launched a Make Your Mark programme, tasking the Art students with creating murals for the new building. To build ties with the community, Art students even created artworks for an auction organised by grassroots leaders, for the building of Jelutong Community Centre near the school.

In 2007, Norlita — then the Subject Head for Visual Arts at Sembawang Secondary School — received the President’s

Award for Teachers, the highest accolade for teaching excellence in Singapore. She then moved on to become the Head of Department for Aesthetics in the same school for the next five years. In 2013, she became the Subject Head for Aesthetics at Orchid Park Secondary School, and then Subject Head for Aesthetics when she moved to Naval Base Secondary School in 2017. This year, she switched to the teaching track, and is now a Senior Teacher for Art.

The decision was prompted by a desire to spend more time on teaching, she explains. “I like to go into the details of how a programme unfolds, and how the students learn, and there are a lot of things I want to do.” For instance, in 2017, Secondary 2 students from Naval Base Secondary School were taken to National Gallery Singapore. In the worksheets that were a part of this museum-based learning experience, different questioning strategies were used to help students think more deeply about the artworks they saw. “Pushing it forward, I definitely want them to be able to use these skills

in other subjects when they return to school. I thought then, if only I had time to share this experience and their responses to it with the teachers who would be teaching them Art, Design & Technology, Music, Food & Consumer Education, Social Studies or even English and Mother Tongue Languages the following year.”

A CIVIC PURPOSE

Building a stronger connection between the museum experience and classroom learning is exactly what she plans on doing this year, when the Secondary 1 students visit the ArtScience Museum. During such trips, she believes it is important to select artworks that will resonate with even those students who will not be taking Art in Secondary 3, who make up about 70 per cent of the cohort. “This could be their last visit to a museum with their classmates,” Norlita reckons. “We want to let them go with a bang, so we want to plan such outings with more depth, and make sure they remember the engaging and meaningful learning experience.”

After all, the purpose of art education extends far beyond the technicalities of art-making, she believes. “Art is a good tool for communication, especially for those who cannot do that well through words.” By communicating through art and through their responses to art, students learn to listen to one another’s stories, which express their individual day-to-day experiences, heritage, and belief systems. “That is how we learn from one another, understand other points of view, and build acceptance of our differences.”

To make sure that happens, Norlita strives to create a learning environment that fosters what she calls “social openness”. That means students must feel comfortable with collaboration, and learn how to respect one another’s work, and she tries to build

these dynamics by encouraging a sense of play through the exploration of different creative methods.

One of her favourite techniques is experimental drawing, which means not trying to create a photorealistic depiction of a subject, but rather to experiment with using different mediums and drawing from different stimuli to express the essence of the subject instead. “With this fun play of images, materials, and processes, students also hone their sense of sight, hearing and touch. This challenges them to present their point of view in creative new ways.”

Art is a good tool for communication, especially for those who can’t do that well through words.”

As a teacher, she tries to articulate the rationale behind each Art project as transparently as possible, so that the pedagogical intent is crystal clear for her students. “I hope that I am a fun, firm, and fair teacher,” she says. “To strike that balance is tough. It is like flying a kite. Sometimes I need to let go and be more accepting and forgiving; other times, I have to rein them in.”

She has been flying this metaphorical kite for over 20 years, and cannot imagine herself doing anything else. “I do not see myself as a guru. I’m always learning, and there are always new challenges. That drives me to keep going, so I can touch the lives of more students.”

JASJIT KAUR

Ode to Joy

Asa child, Jasjit Kaur used to draw on the walls of her home using her mother’s lipstick. Amazingly, she was never reprimanded for this. At the time, her mother, Madam Ranjit Kaur, was a secondary school teacher who taught English and Home Economics, and she became Jasjit’s number one cheerleader once she realised her daughter enjoyed art. Jasjit loved illustrated storybooks, and Madam Ranjit signed her up for storytelling competitions, helping her to create props for these events. She took Art as an O-Level subject, “but we were not introduced to many art forms in class, and I explored more at home than at school”, she recalls. “It was my mother who really pushed me.”

With her parents’ encouragement, Jasjit went on to pursue a Diploma in Visual Communication at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 2005, then a Bachelor of Arts in Graphic Communication at Loughborough University in 2007, before embarking on a career as a graphic designer. For the next three years, she designed commercial publications such as magazines.

“But, as with most things in life, sometimes things change along the way,” she recounts. “Because clients often had certain fixed ideas about what they wanted, I was churning out

work that was not reflective of my personal style, and started to feel a bit disillusioned.”

At this juncture, she would sometimes think about the way her mother interacted with her students after classes, and how she would frequently work late into the night with unflagging energy and enthusiasm. “I always saw her enjoying her work, but it was not the same for me,” says Jasjit. As it turned out, Madam Ranjit could also tell that her daughter was not very happy at work. One day, she brought home a mailer from MOE recruiting for Art teachers, and asked if Jasjit wanted to give it a go.

“I was not confident that I could stand in front of a classroom to teach,” she says, but the idea stuck. So, in 2010, she signed up as a teaching assistant under the Allied Educator Scheme, which meant she could work with a smaller group of students rather than a full class. Jasjit spent the next year in St. Hilda’s Primary School, where she guided students who had special needs, were low achievers, or who came from challenging backgrounds.

ART IS ALL AROUND

During this year, the school leaders encouraged her to become a full-fledged Art teacher. Jasjit concurred that the job was a good fit and finally took the leap to enroll in NIE. After graduating, she returned to St. Hilda’s Primary School, where her experience as a graphic designer continues to shape her approach as an Art teacher. “I always tell my students, graphic designers are seldom able to create their work in one sitting. It takes research, idea generation, going back to drawing board, and the process can feel daunting. That is where resilience comes in.”

To foster a spirit of exploration, she tries to set more open-

ended art tasks during her lessons. For instance, instead of teaching them how to produce a particular type of textural effect, Jasjit sets up a ‘buffet table’ of materials — including unconventional ones such as baby powder — and challenges them to use these to come up with as many different textures as they can.

To help her students develop the habit of critical thinking and to encourage peer learning, her classes end with them talking about one another’s artworks, so they can practise articulating why they like something, and how their classmates might improve. “I tell them, as a designer, I sometimes faced harsh criticism from clients, but I had to learn to be receptive to feedback, and not take it personally,” Jasjit explains. “But you always need to explain the reasoning behind your critique.”

Because she has worked with graphic designers adept in many skill sets beyond drawing, Jasjit also makes sure she introduces diverse mediums in her lessons. Her students have dabbled in stop-motion animation, creating characters and backdrops using materials that run the gamut from clay to candies. She and her Art colleagues recently set up a ceramics

room, complete with a kiln, and she taught her class to make cups for their first ceramics lesson. “Their initial response was: ‘so easy’. It was only after trying to do it themselves that they realised how difficult it was to make a basic object that they take for granted every day.”

Indeed, her designer mindset is most evident in the way she always tries to link whatever they do in Art class back to the real world. She was pleasantly surprised to realise that her words had sunk in, when, during one lesson, a few pupils questioned why art was important. Before she could respond, the rest of the class started chiming in with answers. “They said, art is everywhere. Who do you think designs your school uniform, and the tables and chairs in the classroom?” she recalls with a smile.

A MEANINGFUL CHOICE

Now six years into her second career, Jasjit is still brimming with enthusiasm for new ways to engage her students. She recently returned from a holiday in Turkey, a destination she chose because she wanted to observe new techniques at a ceramics workshop to enrich her teaching. Last year, she received the school’s Outstanding Contribution Award for creating Art Learning Corners in different parts of the school, including one that introduces students to storybook illustrator Eric Carle (one of her childhood favourites). She is developing a detailed curriculum about book illustration for a select group of students. She also hopes to get students to curate the school’s annual art exhibition, so they can create a narrative for their own work. “Without a doubt, I am much happier now. I’m so invested in what I’m doing and it means so much to me.”

Because she knows how it feels to have her creative expression restricted, Jasjit is a firm believer in what she

calls choice-based education. This approach, when combined with the expressive power of art, has yielded some valuable insights into her students. One year, for instance, she set aside her lesson plan and asked a Primary 6 class that was “united in being difficult” to spend their Art period drawing the reasons for their disengagement. “That was the first time they were quiet. And when I collected their drawings, many drew things like their parents and teachers nagging them. It was clear that they were feeling very stressed by the PSLE.”

Teaching is not something you do today, then it is forgotten. It is something your students will carry throughout their lives.”

Besides asking this class to continue developing these initial sketches, she also passed the whole stack to other teachers who had been having problems with these students, so they could better understand their state of mind. Being truly present with students in this way can make a big difference to them, she believes. The ability to make that kind of impact is exactly what has kept her mother — currently the Vice-Principal of Temasek Primary School — deeply engaged in her job for so many years, and why she thought Jasjit might find teaching meaningful.

“She told me that as a teacher, the joy comes from being with her pupils,” Jasjit shares. “Even now, her former students will still come up to her if they see her outside, and tell her that they remember her. It is very inspiring. Teaching is not something you do today, then it is forgotten. It is something your students will carry throughout their lives.”

JUDY ISABEL KOH CHENG TEE

Taking on a New Challenge

Judy Isabel Koh Cheng Tee had wanted to be a teacher since she was a child. When she played with her younger brother and cousins, she always took on the role of the teacher, and even assigned her playmates homework. “I guess I liked to boss people around,” she concedes with a laugh. “In fact, my Dad once mentioned that I would be a good candidate for either a teacher or a police woman.”

Her passion persisted even as she grew older, but Judy — who excelled in track and field and table tennis as a student — initially thought she would be teaching Physical Education. In a twist of fate, however, she applied to join the teaching service in 1997, when there was a need for specialised Art teachers, and was asked if she wanted to be considered for such a position. Then 19 years old, she dug out her artworks from secondary school, and hastily created a few more to put together a diverse portfolio for her interview. “The next thing I knew, I was offered the art specialisation course in NIE. I was a little bit worried, but I thought, why not just give it a try?”

As a Beginning Teacher in her first school, Orchid Park Secondary School, Judy admits she was “super strict”. In fact, on one occasion, the Discipline Mistress shared with Judy that a student had told her he found Judy to be even fiercer

than her. “We thought that was very funny, but it also got me thinking. If my students are scared of me, I will not be able to build good rapport with them. So I changed. Once you start to get through to them, the kind of work they produce is very different. Instead of just doing the bare minimum, they will really try as they know the teacher is there to walk the journey with them.”

Beyond that, her more approachable style also speaks of the kind of role model she hopes to be for her students. “I want to teach them more than Art as a subject. I was blessed to have a very good mentor, my Head of Department, Madam Victoria Loy, who showed me that the role of a teacher is not just about helping students get the best grades. It is to help every child learn good values and important life skills, so they can survive and thrive when they leave us.”

Sometimes, it is the students who remind her of this larger mission. Judy remembers feeling very upset one year when two of her Art students did not get ‘A’s for their O-Level Art Examination. “I felt very sad for my students. However, they shared with me that while they were disappointed, they had learnt so much from doing Art and recognised that it was not just about the results. They did not regret their decisions to choose Art as an elective. They learnt to be more resilient and made strong friendships along the way. I was very touched. I learned something from my students that day.”

MAKING A TRANSITION

Around her sixth year in Orchid Park Secondary School, Judy started to wonder about teaching younger children, and whether they could be provided with a stronger foundation in Art, for Art lessons at the secondary level. She took time off to study the different developmental stages of a child.

She received her diploma from the International Centre for Early Childhood in 2008 and then a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education from Monash University in 2011. “I was very happy working with all my Art students but I also wanted to challenge myself to get out of my comfort zone.” In 2015, she finally took the a leap of faith to join CHIJ St. Nicholas Girls’ School (Primary) as an Art teacher.

Today, she is the Subject Head for Aesthetics and the Assistant Year Head for Lower Primary (Primary 1) at CHIJ St. Nicholas Girls’ School (Primary). The biggest change in the way she teaches now is in how she pitches her lessons, says Judy. “In secondary school, we can be focused on results because we do have the responsibility to make sure our students do well so they can move on to the next phase of life. In primary school, Art is not an examinable subject, so that allows me to focus more on exploring rather than technical skills. Children that age are not afraid to make mistakes, and it is easier to get them to try new things.”

She tries to minimise the time she spends standing in front

of the whiteboard and explaining with words. “Instead, I get the students down to work as soon as possible.” She strikes a balance between individual activities and group work, so that students enjoy some degree of autonomy while learning how to work well with others. Establishing rules and routines also teaches them important values such as responsibility.

TOUCHING HEARTS, BROADENING MINDS

For secondary school teachers who are pondering this switch to primary school, Judy has this to share: “Younger students are very open. They come in eager to learn, and because they are very enthusiastic, that makes you happy too.

Young children are also very curious and spontaneous, and they will come to you and ask a lot of questions during lesson time, which will lead to them talking about all kinds of other things. So you have to be very patient. We are Art teachers because we want to introduce the wonder of Art to our students. So why not start earlier?”

Judy has found her experience of teaching secondary school very useful in her current posting. For instance, she is able to prepare upper primary students well for what Art classes will be like when they move on to secondary school.

“I am glad I can bridge the gap between what they learn in primary school and what they will need to know in secondary school. I am able to share my teaching experiences with them to better prepare them. At the primary level, we have started to use more inquiry-based lessons and more collaborative art tasks. Also, at that stage, I focus more in developing drawing and colouring skills.”

Most of all, she has been able to try and make an impact on students at a more impressionable age, when the right kind of support can make a huge difference. “At the primary

level, it is very important to have an understanding of the developmental stages of children as well as their different learning needs.” Judy makes it a point to observe her students not just when they are working on art tasks, but also when they interact with their peers, so that she can understand them better and shape her lessons accordingly.

Her early resolve to build a strong rapport with her students continues to stand her in good stead as a primary school teacher. “It is important for them to be able to see and feel your sincerity and love for them. This will help build positive teacher-student relationships. In secondary school, I took on the roles of a mentor and facilitator. At the primary level, on top of these roles, I need to pay more attention to students’ emotional needs. Primary students look up to their teachers with great admiration and we can really touch their hearts and broaden their minds.”

The role of a teacher is not just about helping students get the best grades. It is to help every child learn good values and important life skills, so they can survive and thrive when they leave us.”

AMEERAH SHARAINEE ZAIN

ANG KOK YEOW

BEN KHOR TENG CHIH

FAITH CHUNG WAI TENG

HENG YEW SENG

JASJIT KAUR

JONATHAN TAN JUN QIANG

JUDY ISABEL KOH CHENG TEE

LIOW XIAO CHUN

NORLITA MARSUKI

PANG MING ING

SARAH

CHOO JING

SONG ZILIANG

SURIATI SURADI

TAN KUO CHEANG

TOMMY WONG YONG PING