Experience
I’m currently teaching Knowledge & Inquiry at Raffles Junior College as a contract teacher. Home tutored students from JC, Sec and IB schools for English and humanities.
I was a Peer Writing Tutor at NUS, working with my fellow students on essays from any discipline, ranging from Sociology to Economics to Psychology and Philosophy.
I am an SJI alumni and was reading PPE (Philosophy, Politics & Economics) as a firs major, and Philosophy as a second major at Yale-NUS (but it was merged with University Scholars Programme in NUS to form NUS College). I am an avid reader of philosophy, and am interested in the "meaning crisis" in which we find ourselves today. I intend to pursue a masters in philosophy in NUS.
As a student, I have always striven to understand & internalise the coursework material, rather than blindly memorising (mugging). I will deliver lessons in such a way that the student understands the concepts/themes, so that s/he will be able to make sense of them and eventually learn how to learn by themselves. For example, in Economics, I always ensured that the concepts (from the more complex exchange rate/ balance of trade ones, down to simpler more fundamental supply & demand curves) made sense to me, and that without referencing the "correct answer" in the textbook or online I will be able to arrive at the concept by looking at the real world (e.g. "when I buy stuff, as price goes up, will I & other people buy more or less?"), rather than just blindly memorising (e.g. "price increase leads to decrease in quantity demanded").
This will reduce the stress on students when it comes closer to exam time, as the fundamental concepts/themes would have been internalised, rather than being an additional burden to the student by being something s/he will need to memorise together with facts/case studies. However, more importantly--and more pertinent to the long-term in university--this cultivates a curiosity for learning and a confidence in one's ability to reason things out oneself.
I hope to have the opportunity to work with students who have a keen interest in the subject they are taking and its coursework, and, should that not be the case, to engender the students' interest and zeal for learning. The grades will then follow naturally, and the learning-how-to-learn skill, as well as the confidence gained, will be invaluable in dealing with the challenges life will bring, and the rigour of university studies.
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