31 March - 7 April

Psalm 127:1 :

“Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain

Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain”.

This is my verse for the week.

I can plan everything I want, but if God does not watch over me, I labor in vain.

I learn to recognize my limitations and reliance upon God.

A thankful heart, a heart of gratitude helps me to live each day with His joy.

God provided 2 more angels for me this week : Madam Sita and Madam Budhawanti

Though they are in the management team, they are very unpresumptuous and supportive of my work.

Madam Sita volunteered her room to let me “experiment” on group work for the PD session on Saturday.

In one of my lesson observations, I had a teacher who did the “drilling” technique with her class. A definition was repeated at least 7 times together with the class to ensure the students remember the important definition.

The intention was clear, the students must learn the definition by hard.

I fully understand the importance of rote-learning as I was also brought up in the generation of “rote-learning.”

Rote-learning has its value in an examination system that needs students to reproduce the answer word by word and phrase by phrase.

It was also important that I brought the awareness to the teacher that human brain does not form “long term memory” if the learner cannot grasp the concept by understanding it. There will be no synaptic plasticity no matter how many times the students recite the definition by hard. In a long run, we are not preparing students that can meet the global needs of the society.

After saying that, I am also aware that unless the current examination system encourages learning by understanding, it will be an uphill task to change the mindset of teachers.

I empathized with what the teacher shared and assured her that she was doing a good job. She just has to be mindful that human mind does not work in the way she wants it to be.

During the week, I was reminded by Pinkey (the general office staff) to come up with some inspirational quotes for the library decoration. There will be an important event at the end of this week : The Annual Principals’ Conference. All Thimpu principals will be attending the conference in the library on 4 April.

I did some research and consulted Mr Tshering and Dr Wang who happened to be around. They have other ideas for the library decoration.

I helped Namgay to clean up the library, together with her group of students. I was very impressed by the students’ work attitude. What made them so unique was : they did their jobs with a smile. It was a tough job because some of them had to climb up to clean some of the windows.

During the week, I got to understand the function of the health room in the school. It is the sick bay in Singapore context. Students have to report to Ms Namgay if they are sick.

So not only is Namgay in charge for the library, she is also in charge for the sick students in RHSS. It is really tough managing 2 portfolios if it is for me.

Dr Wang is usually around on Wednesday or Thursday. He personally oversees the cleaning process in the library. Within 2 days, the library was transformed. I was very impressed by the number of books available in the library. Many books were brought in by the students through 1 contest : “Outweigh Dr Wang Contest” where students have to bring as many books as possible to outweigh the amount of books brought in by Dr Wang. The winning class was given a treat by Dr Wang. Dr Wang really has the heart for the school. 

I was tasked to deliver a speech on Wednesday morning assembly. I chose the topic : “The Power of Choice”. The speech was well-received by both the staff and the students.

I was invited to join in the staff basketball competition against the sports captain on Thursday. I decided to decline the invitation and keep to the meeting scheduled for the student leaders.

The kids were really punctual and on task. I am glad the meeting is becoming a routine for them. Empowering them to lead the troop is the objective and dream of every scout teacher. Gelson and Pinkie will be trained to lead the group.

A total of about 32 principals of Thimphu schools turned up for the Annual Principals’ Conference on 4 April. I was quite happy to be an observer in the conference.

      
Unfortunately most of them spoke in Dzongkha, so my takeaway was quite limited. I was thankful that the lady proprietor, Madam Sonam, acted as my translator though. The Guest of Honor was the Thimphu District Mayor. Being able to meet him and speak to him in person was another honour. 

As the needs of the private and government schools are different, it is little wonder to hear comments from school principals that the conference should be structured in such a way that the timing and sessions for government and private school principals should be separate. 

Besides the lady official who presented the school health matter in English, Mr Tshering was the only one who spoke in English during the whole conference. Many issues were brought up and it was quite interesting to see how principals talked things out. The conference ended 1 hour later than what was scheduled. My experience in RHSS was indeed a very enriching one.

Over the week, I became very good in the “guessing” game, be it in the  principals’ conference or the scout leader’s training in HQ. And I guessed it right most of the time.

The venue of the 2^nd PD session was set to be in a classroom and it was deliberate. It is important that the RHSS teachers are able to relate their takeaways and bring it back into their daily teaching routines.

I delivered a 15 minutes session of Economics lesson and invited the Economics teachers to be my observers. The objective of micro-teaching sessions was to try out the learner-centered lessons in a safe environment and allowed peers to share the learning. It was inevitable that the Economics teachers will focus on the concepts delivery instead of the PD objectives since they are the Economics teacher.

Mr Tshering came in after I completed my micro-teaching. He needed to attend to the students first since there was morning assembly and basketball finals on Saturday.

English micro-teaching was conducted by Mr KD Yeshey. He used powerpoint, markers, A3 paper and masking tape.

I could see a lot of time and effort invested into the lesson preparation and I was glad that the department supported him.  

Some departments embraced group work and some were still hesitant. I was not surprised by the outcome and can only do the ploughing work. It will take some time for the teachers to buy in my ideas and move out of the comfort zone.

I stayed on for the afternoon scout meeting, only to realize there was a clash in the venue. The basketball final for boys division was still on when the scout meeting started.

Due to the large number of scouts, I had no choice but to settle the kids at the car-park at 12.30 pm and later shifted them down to the library while waiting for the basketball finals to end.

By the time I joined the groups of 4 teachers at the Ministry of Youth and Sports, it was already at 3 pm. They were discussing methods of finding their way if they were lost in the wilderness. Nice.

I introduced an action song with the scout leaders : “The side” and they simply loved it.

We were dismissed at about 5 pm and we set off for the Thai teachers’ apartment an hour away from the scout training venue. By the time we reached the apartment, it was already 6.15 pm.

The Thai teachers are really good cook. We had a feast of Thai delicacy and had a great time together. I realized that Thais are generally very warm people and they enjoy gathering together and have fun.

 

I had less than 50 ml of local red wine (Takin) that evening and my whole face was red like a red indian. It was only 16% alcohol content !!

I ended the week with another day of scout programme.

Spirituality is an important part of every Bhutanese. And one lecture was specially dedicated to “Scouting and Religion”.

The adult leaders had a test on the scouting fundamentals immediately after lunch.

We had 2 skills session on that day : “Knots and Hike”.

Prior to the hike, the scout leaders were brought to one of the nearby venue to receive blessings from one of the reputed Dharma, Tang Rinpoche. According to Ugyen, it was one of the rare occasion that the Dharma will come to the town. That was also the reason why the scout training programme was temporarily disrupted to cater to the Dharma’s visit.

The hike started at about 3.30 pm and ended at 5.30 pm after a debrief session. The “4 beads” leader trainer, Mr Pema, was a very experienced scouter and I learnt a lot from him.

The groups were dispatched in patrols and they were guided by the known trail signs marked by red markers. This will not happen in Singapore because the marking of trail signs on the lamp posts will be considered vandalism of public property and it constitutes a fine.

The whole hike did not require any navigation skills. We just had to follow the trail signs and did some activities during the hike. We had fun and I learnt some Bhutanese yells (cheers) and scout “punishment”. It was really cool.

After the scouting training, we walked to the vegetable market. We were really exhausted after the 2 full days’ of activities.

We took a cab back after all the shopping and treated ourselves pizza for dinner before we rested for the night.

I am thankful that the friendship between myself, Tandin, Ugyen, Karma and Kelzang was forged through scouting. Be it due to scouting or work, we were brought together through a common purpose : to give our young a wholesome education.

My video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl1sPXLFs1k&feature=youtu.be