Gosh! When was the last time I posted an entry?? 13 Feb 09! More than 5 months ago. And now I am back, finally. Guess what, today I have completed my last assignment for my course, and I am handing it in on Mon! :)
What a journey it has been during this 10-month course... Very tedious, very tiring, very taxing on the brain... I feel like I have never thought so hard in my life! Every weekends had been spent doing assignments that seemed to be never ending, and there were presentations every now and then, whether they carried marks or not.. Goodness knows how many powerpoints I had prepared for those presentations!
But there were fun moments too, such as making ice cream in class during the science module and doing a group collage using all sorts of materials during the art module. And there were class excusions too, like a visit to Australian International School to learn about their play-based curriculum and to SAM to appreciate the art pieces (and to complete 3 art critiques on 3 pieces of artwork, which took me 3 weekends to complete, for I am an art idiot!) Oh yes, the Bedok library performace too *faint*, where each of us had to put up an individual rhyme and song (with actions) as well as a group rhyme, song and dance as part of our music and movement assignment. Gosh, can you imagine putting up a public performance as part of your assignment? I recall that we only had 4 days (including Sat and Sun) to prepare for it. But I must say I enjoyed practicing the group dance to the tune of S.H.E's 《不想长大》, even though from the video recording we looked hilarious.
I must say this course requires a lot of thinking and creativity. There was an assignment requiring us to write a Math story using powerpoint... and there was one requiring us to write a language story using words that start with a particular letter of the alphabet. Guess what was the letter I was given? Letter Y! *faint* couldnt really write a fantastic story with so few words that start with Y. I recall using up almost all the words that I could find in the dictionary!
And there were times when we were "forced" to give individual presentations (and no marks given for them) to the whole class, like bringing a children's storybook to do storytelling (and I had to borrow a nice and short storybook from the library that I knew would not bore the adults to sleep) and presenting our philosophy as a preschool teacher to the whole class. Ha, I remember my philosophy was the 3 Ps - passion, patience and persistence.
All modules have a group assignment and individual assignment. I am glad that I had done most of my group assignments with a same group, of which 2 of them are current childcare centre operators and they have lots of resources. When I worked with this group, we never had to meet up over the weekend to discuss our projects and work had always been allocated efficiently. But the drawback was, most of the time I was the one to compile the group assignments.. and the good thing? They always "trusted" my work and nobody bothered to make changes, so at least that part saved me a lot of time, ha!
In this course I have met a lot of people with great passion to educate young children. They may not have high academic qualifications but they are nice people who are easy to get along with. There are also some who show determination to further their studies to be a better educator - they started out doing a certificate in preschool education, then a diploma, then they intend to carry on to do a diploma in leadership! I really admire their determination, because for me, I will never want to go back to the days of working and studying at the same time - I want a proper life please!
Although it has been hardship for the past 10 months, I must admit that I have learnt a lot, and I believe many things that I have learnt in this course (and other memories) would not be forgotten easily. Ha, a mixture of nice and horrible memories!
14 years ago
