3rd season: A Division Netball 2014.

Training for the 2014 season started really early this time around. We began coming together for training as early as September. And if you count the number of months, you can say that we have trained for 8 out of 12 months in a year, with the intensity and quantity amounting to almost 12 hours a week.

This season, I focused on different things. Mainly more court play, and lesser on basics. More on fitness and movement as well. We had a good pool of talented girls this year. The number of year 1s, thanks to the remaining IPs made up most of the team.

Celebrating birthdays with VJNB

We had a good bout of training and schedule going, with improved drills and I managed to work on some concepts this time around. However, training for 8 months for just 2 weeks (or even lesser!) of competition does cause burnout, needless to say. So, for one of their holiday trainings, I brought them to sentosa to do some sand and resistance work on the beach! It worked towards team work, as well as pushed them to dig deep and run a little harder! Would consider doing this again next year!

Drama queens

I had the help of some of my ex-VJNB girls coming down as well. Without them, we would not have enough players to play the game and to work on concepts and game play. Really appreciate the time these girls sacrifice for their juniors. Hope to build more girls of this positive character and belongingness to vjnb! :)

With the senior girls

Some may say that it is enough, some may argue on the quality and effects of training on the girls. But somehow, this still wasn't enough to get us onto the next step.

Our draw this year was together with HCI once again. With arch nemesis SRJC and NJC on the groupings as well. It is with unfortunate circumstances that we had to battle against SRJC for the first game, the team who killed us last year, but also the team we knew were of equal strength as us. It was truly a mentally and physically daunting task. We had back to back 3 games every alternate days, and I was worried that the girls would not recover in time. Prepared an ice bath for them after SRJC's game as we would definitely be playing hard for this first game.

We lost eventually, 37-47, just 10 goals short, given that we were leading 12-10 and then tied at 21-21 for the first two quarters. It was disappointing surely, but perhaps not as much as the previous year as we fought as hard as we could. With this loss, we had a tough fight against HCI next. We lost to HCI 11-66, a score difference that bested last year and eventually SRJC against HCI. It spoke alot to the girls, who's motivation ran low initially, but picked up again for our last match against NJC. we won 56-14, an even bigger score difference as compared to SRJC. Statistics can really speak alot, as it tells of how a team plays, the mood, the flow and the overall performance, quarter by quarter.

While we may be out of the round once again, I believe we can only go higher from here. It's time to lift our heads up and high, grit out teeth and train even harder. This season has opened my eyes to even more factors and contributing skills and concepts that needs to be worked on at this A Division level. We may have had strong players, but we needed more confidence, more fitness, better passes and awareness of the game (important!) in order to take control like how the other seeded schools have done for the past few decades. It is indeed a pity to see such a hardworking team be let off from the season so early. I hope that this will not cause anyone to give up hope or mindset towards training hard further. 

Team photo! With Ms Lim as well, who has helped us along the way so many times!

VJ boleh!

Our fixtures for 2014

Training a team is a more daunting task than individual athletes. Theres always a need to look ahead, pre-ampt possible team combinations and how the game strategy will work out with different players. Skills and techniques are not much of focus, but essential. I believe it is just a balance between these. And it is the balance that proves the hardest.

Reflect on your personal development of competencies as you train to become a teacher

Professional Practice

Leadership and Management

Personal Effectiveness

Throughout this first year in NIE, we have been taught in several modules on the importance of professional practice, leadership and management and personal effectiveness as a teacher. Being professional means we take our job seriously, knowing the responsibilities and requirements of our job scope as a teacher. Putting it into practice is an additional step which requires constant effort in taking pride in what we do and the duties we are meant to carry out. How we see ourselves as professionals impact on how to then take to the tasks given or placed before us. We will then take pride in doing what we have been trained or learned to do in NIE. For example, discerning the kinds of advice we give to students based on career options, CCA management or studies reflect on our professional practice. Personal opinions that are unethical or detrimental to a positive development are not good reflections of professional practice.

This competency ties in together with leadership and management as we embark on our career as teachers. I feel that this transit from student to teacher must be undertaken seriously, allowing ourselves to take on initiatives and responsibility in managing our colleagues among us as well as students. This process may be slow and reap little results at first. We might even have to handle more stress or deal with irrelevant matters involving paperwork. Having the leadership to spark changes or propel innovations and take up roles in our school is a competency that would reflect well on us. Thus thinking about how we can showcase our leadership and management in our future school can start the ball rolling in getting us to think different and work on challenges. Its about a strong voice making an impact, a difference in a student. This idea of Teacher Leadership is a new shift towards enabling, equipping a teacher with sometime more than just books and content and subjects. 

Personal effectiveness is an individual aspect which I believe holds strongly on how much the individual aims on being an effective teacher. If the mindset is bent on simply teaching subjects and getting students to pass exams, the level of effectiveness may only be limited. But to expand beyond this and strive to personally put in the effort to understand students, or try out different methods of teaching, we as individual practice personal effectiveness and this in turn would enhance and enable us to teach better.

Reflection on the CST course

Please answer the following question based on your experience in the QLK 520 CST Blended Module:

• To what extent do you think you will be able to apply what you have learned in this course to your future teaching career?
• Please answer in terms of the communicative skills you have learned as well as the "blended aspects" – the online and F2F elements of the course.
• Support your answer with examples if possible.

 

This course really touches on the communicative skills required of teachers in the classroom. As a PE teacher, our environment is very different from a classroom environment. The command of attention  ofthe students outside does not require as much skills compared to in the classroom, whereby learning leans towards a verbal-visual aspect compared to kinesthetic. However, the skills we have learned covers not just classroom or teaching matters, but even admin or relation communication with parents, colleagues and even our bosses. Some important topics we covered were:

• emails or letters to parents or colleagues. i.e. how we convey our purpose and content to differing audiences.
• proper pronounciation
• how to ask good questions to stimulate student's thinking as well as to get responses we want. (This i felt was really important!)
• how to respond and feedback to students

I believe that like it or not, it is important for student teachers to undergo such lessons and actually learn how to communicate with their students. Although some may argue that the current generation gears towards technology and lesser interaction and communication would be involved in teaching, it is still an important skill to master. Perhaps future modules may even involve communication using ICT! A combination of ICT and Comm Skills.

This module gave us the option of doing an online or face2face lesson which was a first for me. I picked all face2face lessons as i felt that learning communication skills requires more interaction, and i could tell the interaction between the tutor and the class also grew as well.