Students!

I figured it was about time to share some of the pictures that I've taken of my Singaporean students.  All of the pictures you'll see are of my younger students - simply because the older they get, the less they want to have their picture taken.

I work for a school in Singapore called Jan & Elly, which now has three different schools across the island.  We have a good group of teachers, with some Singaporeans, a few Americans, Canadians and a Brit.  I teach children between the ages of 4-12, with the younger ones being cuter and fun but the older students being more interesting and engaging to actually teach.  It's a totally different teaching experience from Korea; in Korea, most students had tremendous difficulty with learning the new language, and many younger students had little or no vocabulary.  Here, even the 4 year old's have some vocabulary, with English being the predominant mother tongue amongst my students.  My oldest students, in what would equate to grade 4, 5, and 6, are obviously fully fluent and quite bright.  In Korea, though my older students were quite lively and bright, they still lacked proper grammar and had difficulty with sentence structure.  In Singapore, for the most part, these kids are fully fluent.  Also, not only are they fully fluent in English, chances are they proficient in at least one other language (whether it is Mandarian, Cantonese, Hokkien, Tamil, Malay, or Korean - talk about the leaders of the future)!    

For the 4-6 range, I teach proper phonics and some simple vocabulary and grammar.  Lack of proper pronunciation is an epidemic in Singapore (with its infamous "Singlish") and parents are very concerned in raising children who speak English properly.  For the grade 1 and 2 classes, I teach creative writing and comprehension.  Finally, for the grade 3-6 students, I occasionally teach creative writing and comprehension, but I mostly teach exam preparation (Singapore adheres to the British system and has a massive nation-wide exam in primary 6 which has tremendous consequences as to where a student will be lucky enough to attend secondary school).

Phonics - 5 years old (and twins).

Phonics - 6 years old.

Phonics - 6 years old.

That's (apparently) me.  Drawn by a  grade 3 student.