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| Are bright young Singaporeans put off entering teaching? |
Chee Ming: If I want to go to UK to teach Mandarin, do I qualify? I do have a degree in Chinese Language and Literature but it's from, sigh x infinite, SIM.
Limpeh: Hi there. Let me explain this to you step by step.
Step 1: You need a teaching qualification - teaching is a skilled profession, it is not sufficient to be a fluent Mandarin speaker with a degree in Chinese language/literature.
Step 2: You need teaching experience. So I hope you've been teaching Chinese for a while in Singapore.
Step 3: Once you've done steps 1 + 2, then you can hunt for a job and start applying for teaching positions in London (or wherever in the UK) as a Chinese teacher.
Step 4: You then need to receive a job offer from a company (say a language school or university) who are willing to hire you as a teacher and sponsor your work permit.
Step 5: Your employer will then sort out your work permit for you and once that's settled, then you can start work.
Step 1: You need a teaching qualification - teaching is a skilled profession, it is not sufficient to be a fluent Mandarin speaker with a degree in Chinese language/literature.
Step 2: You need teaching experience. So I hope you've been teaching Chinese for a while in Singapore.
Step 3: Once you've done steps 1 + 2, then you can hunt for a job and start applying for teaching positions in London (or wherever in the UK) as a Chinese teacher.
Step 4: You then need to receive a job offer from a company (say a language school or university) who are willing to hire you as a teacher and sponsor your work permit.
Step 5: Your employer will then sort out your work permit for you and once that's settled, then you can start work.
By that token, where your degree is from doesn't matter... As long as you have a valid teacher's training qualification in Singapore, then that's good enough for you to qualify. Here's the warning I would give you though: the demand for Chinese teachers isn't great - most people are shying away from Chinese because it is very difficult and very few people are trying to learn it. There is a growing number of young children who are subjected to it say at the age of 7 or 8 at school as an after school thing, ie. 4 x 60 mins a week. That's because the parents are saying, "I can't learn Chinese, I'm too old and it's too hard, but if my child starts very young, maybe s/he won't realize just how bloody hard it is and have an attitude problem." That's where the bulk of the work Chinese teachers are at the moment - teaching young kids, rather than adults. Just thought I'd warn you in case you wanted to teach adults.
Sis: Shoot.
Me: What's the size of our class today?
Sis: About 35 - 40
Me: What's your class size when you are in primary school?
Sis: About 35 - 40
Me: I thought they are intending to lower the teacher to student ratio? Why so long liao, ratio still the same?
Sis: (Awkward silence for 5 seconds) It's like that one lah...
There we go. After this conversation, I totally gave up on MOE and hence, the teaching qualification. Since there's no 1, how to have 2?
Ironically, where you got your first degree from is irrelevant, as long as you have a valid teacher's training qualification and Singapore is probably the cheapest place for you to do it right now (unless you wanna go get it in somewhere like China - I don't know anything about it ...) but given that you intend to teach Mandarin in and English-speaking environment, I can't think of a better place than Singapore for you.
Why does a big class size put you off?
Chee Ming: Why does big class size put me off? I kapo your bell curve for a while. (See graphic below.)
After all, schools and teacher have KPIs (which are quantifiable factors, like how many students pass their exams) to keep up with, which is tied to how much bonus they will get, which also affects the chances of them getting a higher pay rise or that very elusive promotion (I mean, how many HODs are there in a school?).
So naturally, the more ambitious (and tend to be better) teachers will go "Jesus, Buddha, Ti Gong, I promise to be a good person. Bo bi bo bi, please give me a good class" and chances are, they will get what they want (because HODs sees them as good future leaders and wants to nurture them). While that leaves those "Aiyah, good students bad students also like that, I take salary niah" teachers to take up the not-so-brilliant class (Not saying these teachers are bad, they are probably not as good). This eventually leads to the good gets better and the bad got worse.
Limpeh: Hi Chee Ming, I see what you mean. This is very interesting for me as my parents are retired teachers who have spent a lifetime teaching in Singapore. They got by, were happy enough with it but I think part of that comes with the fact that they are not the kind of people to question the system - the less questions you ask, the happier you are because you can then occupy your mind with happy thoughts on other things in life that are good (as opposed to your large class sizes...) I also have an old friend from Singapore who became a teacher (he had a teaching scholarship in fact) and he eventually left teaching after he served his bond and he told me the way the MOE treated him was pretty awful (long story, maybe I'd share it for another time...) You know, surprisingly, he never mentioned anything but large class sizes - he had other awful, terrible things to complain about, bigger fish to fry!
Limpeh: Yes - but that still leaves you with the situation whereby you need work experience (going back to your original question about coming to work in the UK as a Chinese teacher). You'll need to be qualified and you need work experience - no one is going to sponsor a work permit newly qualified teacher with no experience, so getting 3 years work experience in Singapore with the MOE makes sense, despite all your misgivings about the system.
So there you go readers: I invite everyone, especially other teachers (I know I have some readers who are teachers!) to comment and I am sure they will come up with helpful suggestions for Chee Ming. Thank you everyone.
I'm not a teacher but I've ever worked in a secondary school environment before and one of my NS campmate is also a teacher so I have some insights to share.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that these days teaching is a 2nd choice fallback job like taxi driving. Some of the teachers like my campmate, an engineer by training, are structurally unemployed as he decided to convert to teaching rather than becoming a taxi driver. I also know of 1 (maybe there are many more) who actually thought teachers have a easy job since they have 1 month vacation and only work in the mornings so she decided to become a teacher.
As for those old timers who actually love teaching? Most of them left early to become tuition teachers or joined as contract staff since the current day teachers do lots of admin work which they do not enjoy. Current day teachers do more admin in the form of exam/test setting, marking, remedial classes, managing fussy parents, leading some value added project (this contributes alot to school rankings), etc
You seem to be rather sympathetic towards Chee Ming. This is perhaps due to you having a soft spot for teachers, aspiring or current, since your parents are retired teachers. I don't see you otherwise coddling someone like him and being so patient.
ReplyDeleteMy impression on the whole exchange is that Chee Ming 'whines' too much and finds excuses to avoid doing what he has to do. He whines about the 3 year bond. The 3 years is a means to an end. It gives him the experience he needs and does away with the inflated school fees. Just do it already and stop whining. Is he a man or not? Really. Just pay your dues and get on with it. I get the feeling this is what you are trying to tell him, but all he does is keep finding excuses to not do it. I can't do Step 1, I can't do Step 2, blah blah. OK, stay stuck right there. It's your own fault.
He also complains about the class sizes before he has even experienced being a teacher. How do you even know the challenges before you even try it? It's all speculation. Talk about putting the horse before the cart. If you poo poo all the possible downsides of every job, you will NEVER get a job, because even the best jobs have some cons. It isn't a perfect world. Even if he has a smaller class, it may have no fewer problems. Then what? Quit? Seriously.
Yes. I might sound like whining (or maybe I was whining) about class size. But that's not the bone of contention. The bone of contention is ideology. You see, when students at the right end of the bell curve gathers in a class, they will have lesser/no problem, maybe because they have the innate ability or they can afford the tuition or both (nature and nurture). In fact, I think if you put a robot to teach them, things might come out well. The issue lays with a bigger class with students from the wrong end of the bell curve. True, a smaller class might also have problematic students but you have more resource to tackle the problem and time is a valuable resource. I do know of a school in Singapore (why "school"? Because I only know of one school, Nan Chiau Primary, did this, from a friend who was doing IT support for a short while in that school) that has a class with only 1 student in it. Apparently, the student is so bad, not in conduct but in learning, that he got a King's education, at least for a while. Can all schools in Singapore do what the school did? I very much doubt so, especially with the "KPI = reward" concept hanging around.
DeleteAnother bone of contention is over-promised and under-delivered by the ministry. When the present Minister of Finance, Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, was the Minister of Education, he started to reduce the teacher-to-student ratio (I can't remember when but he did gave a speech about it and it was on the news. "The News" har, not "The Noose" hor). Some time passed, the present Minister, Mr Heng Swee Keat came onboard. In one interaction with the students, he asked is the student willing to pay higher tax because of the reduced teacher-to-student ratio. Then he safely concluded that reducing the teacher-to-student ratio is not a feasible solution. Also, you noticed that when Sim Ann gave a speech for NIE graduation ceremony, she merely mentioned the number of teachers employed had hit the target earlier than expected (KPI achieved!!! HOORAY TO BONUS!!!)? What about the ratio? It's like your boss sees you do OT everyday, thinks that you are very ciam and tells you that he/she decides to employ more people to help out. You happily tell your spouse about it. Some time passed and indeed, you have a lot more competent colleagues. One day, your spouse calls you while you are doing OT and says, "Dear, I thought your boss said he going to get more help? Why you still doing OT everyday?" Revelation came. You realized that your boss getting more people is not because he sees you very ciam but because there is an increase in workload and he/she needs more people to finish the work. Over-promised and under-delivered from boss.
Also, don't forget the elitist nature of the ruling party. In fact, I think streaming introduced by the late Mr Goh Keng Swee is not a bad move, if egalitarianism was applied. However, elitism and the "KPI = reward" thinking killed it. That's because if streaming can identify the good students and filter out the not so good ones, more resources can be put to nurture the not-so-good students. But what came out? The opposite of it. (Side note: That's why I think MOE are just wasting $$ going to Finland for study trip. The ideology of both countries' approach towards education is completely opposite of each other. How do you learn the ideology of your opposite when you are upright oppose to it?)
OK how about this - even if you hate the system, see it as a means to an end, get your training, work 3 years, then bugger off to somewhere like the UK. Nobody is asking you to be a flag waving patriotic PAP supporter, we're just telling you that this is a cost-effective way for you to get qualified as a teacher.
DeleteOtherwise... what's your plan B? What would you rather do apart from teaching then?
Yup, that's one way out. Be a "Aiyah, good student bad student also like that. I take salary niah" salaryman for 3 years.
DeletePlan B is something to do with script writing. It can be a movie or documentary. Shitty part: How do I get started?
Have a read of my latest article where I tell you exactly how you can get started as a script writer. am I good or what? LOL.
DeleteChee Ming, why are you trying to convince me that the system is bad? Whether it is bad or not, there is the choice to make the best of it, or to not do anything but sulk at it, to the detriment of only yourself.
DeleteIf you cannot overcome this, what makes you think you can be a good teacher? Instead of tackling the challenge head-on, you are daunted by it and prefer instead to do nothing. If you are passionate about teaching, then you should find a way to work with poor teacher-student ratios, difficult students, and longer hours. If you can't do this, then walk away and do something else, rather than lament endlessly, it is not like the PAP or MOE will know about or do anything about your dissatisfation.
As you said, if the students are good, they don't need a teacher, they can be taught by a robot. In other words, they render you obsolete. Is that what you want? Just to stand in a classroom of already-smart kids and be useless? I can't believe that you are going to run away from the fact that there will be some kids that aren't bright. Hey, the world isn't full of smart people, that's why a bell curve even exists. Even if you want to only teach smart kids, those top institutions want teachers with experience and tenacity, neither of which you seem to possess.
And if you think teaching is difficult, and your plan B is scriptwriting? Hah, I laugh at you. You think that's actually going to be easier and less frustrating? HAHAHA.
er.
ReplyDeletethe guy can't teach at tuition centre to gain experience?
By the way, I do know that schools to employ relief / adjunct / contract teachers. It's just pure teaching, minus paperwork, minus compulsory CCAs, minus all other nonsense that make teachers quit. And the reasons why teachers quit are not students but other teachers and extra tasks. Go figure. End of 3rd year, get principal to write you a reco letter.
So therefore, it's 17 grand as a NIE postgrad dip, plus another 3 years of contract teaching with low pay (relatively, but hey, there is a lot of chance for you to give tuition assignments). You get better quality of life compared to a teacher and the tuition assignments give you some measure of control. What's there not to like? It's only 17 grand, dude. Friend of mine went this way. Part time teacher, part time tuition teacher, earns almost the same as what he does as a teacher, with a much better quality of life.
Thanks for the suggestion. I will seriously think about it.
DeleteHi Choaniki,
ReplyDeleteMy sister is a teacher, so I pretty much know what's the working schedule of a teacher is like. I witnessed her marking homework at 2 am and she has lessons to conduct 5 hours later. Sometimes, she got so desperate that she roped me in to help her to mark homework (definitely NOT tests and exams because she wants to gauge how her students are coping) and compute marks. Ya, the best Teacher's Day present is not some plushie or cake, it's actually a box of red pen.
KPIs for teaching, and the public service in general, have been poorly implemented and are a huge mess and reflection of the gahmen's obsession with numbers - arguably, they are the reason for the lack of motivation and mission in the public service. This is a worldwide problem that happens even in the Western countries, but when you have extremes in Singapore and no system of checks and balances in implementing policies, you get extreme results as well (good and bad).
ReplyDeleteWithout going into too much details, these KPIs cause dysfunctional behaviour and you can see why - why would a teacher bother helping the lousy students if he is incentivized based on grades?
This is the reason why most civil servants, not just teachers, are highly frustrated in the civil service - I think they should actually have a cap on the intelligence of civil service officers because once you get too smart, you get even more frustrated!
Let me chip in my two cents' worth, as someone who has been exposed to the teaching scene abroad as well as in Singapore, although my experience would be mostly at the tertiary level. If anyone is to consider teaching in the Singaporean system, the fact that a MOE teacher is assigned administrative and extra-curricular club duties other than the teaching, as well as the KPI(key performance indicators) pushed onto him or her, is enough to act as a deterrent from enrolling in that system. The hours are rarely as short as people imagine, and might actually stretch from 7.30am till 3 to 4 pm, and in some cases, even 7pm for those who are expected to stay back and do certain things such as teaching late classes(I think of PE/physical education teachers here).
ReplyDeleteNowadays, there are different means to get teaching experience that is recognized as valid experience for migration though, other than MOE teaching, and one such example is higher education instruction. The prerequisites for such teaching, however, would involve a graduate degree such as a Master's and (/or) a PhD, and additional years of schooling for the person(I assume that he is Chee Ming here) are also involved. Of course, unlike what we have been drummed into to believe in Singapore, grades are not the best means to ensure entry into a graduate program, because graduate entrance committees(my professors in my PhD program were in that committee, so I know that process relatively well) include references and the applicants' articulated research plan(s) as additional--and sometimes, more valid--means of ascertaining credentials.
Sadly, for those who believe that KPIs do not matter at the tertiary teaching level, well, they DO matter even here in Japan, where they are especially CLUELESS about the means to assess performance except via student enrollment numbers. I am blessed insofar as I know before I came here that Japan is only a transit point for me to stop over for a few years to get some good money and travel experience before I head off to Canada or any other place.
There are so many teachers from china, why would they employ a Chinese teacher from singapore? Furthermore since many could also speak English, would they be more desired? So is 1+ 2 really enough, or maybe a 3 is needed, like a masters in education? In your opinion, would 3 be extremely helpful, or just a nice addition?By the way your blog format is fancy but very slow on an iPad and smartphone, simplifying the blog would be much quicker
ReplyDeleteHi Xiaobai, I beg to differ.
DeleteIf you wish to teach Chinese as a foreign language in the UK, it is absolutely necessary to be totally fluent in English so you can explain the lesson to the learners in English. Now I have met some people from China who are fluent in English, but they remain in the minority. Now I wouldn't assume that all Singaporeans are fluent in English either (I have bitched enough about the standard of English in Singapore), but looking at the way Chee Ming writes, he is clearly fluent in English. Look out for my next vlog posts where i make fun of the way PRCs can't speak English - it may seem a bit crass but as we say, wu feng bu qi lang, most PRCs really do struggle with English so really, unless these Chinese teachers are teaching at such a high level they don't need to use English at all - then being from China isn't really an advantage. Likewise, I do recognize the relatively low standard of Mandarin in Singapore.
it really depends on your work experience and the quality of your teaching doesn't really depend so much on paper qualifications, but rather, practical work experience in the classroom. So a masters degree is not as vital as more work experience. I have had to suffer many bad Chinese teachers in Singapore - so really, a good teacher is one who knows how to engage the students and sustain their interest rather than one who is highly qualified on paper.
For my blog format, I use the standard options provided for blogger.
Hi Limpeh, actually I do agree with Xiao Bai. I like the tile format because it looks nice but sometimes it is hard to click on the tiles. They keep spinning around but the post won't open. I have to try many times to get my mouse perfectly centered on the text and do it very slowly so it doesn't just keep flipping around and actually opens. The comments on the post also offend don't load and I have to refresh many times. Am I the only other person to experience this? It is the same for me in all the browsers, be it Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Google Chrome.
DeleteHi Limpeh,
ReplyDeleteJust completed part 1 of my post on teaching as a career in SG. Check it out. http://neurotic-ramblings-sg.blogspot.sg/2013/07/sgteach-part-1-why-should-you-be.html
- A from NRSC
Hey Chee Ming,
ReplyDeleteCan I interest you to write for our sg education platform at www.domainofexperts.com ? You have a lot to share about the local education system I can tell. You can drop me a line via the contact form on my site. Really hope to get you on board. :)