brilliant mind and the kindest man to have been taken
away from us too soon), four years of learning to
constantly question and reflect, of opening my mind
and broadening my perspectives, I would not have
developed the necessary skills to help my students.
I wouldn’t have been able to connect with them, to
show them that there is more to life than repeating
the same old vicious cycle they believed they were
stuck in. My best friend’s prayers didn’t work, either. I
did wind up with a student (or rather three) who were
exactly like me back in high school. But I used my
own experience to help me handle them—and I used
what I learned from my Monash professors to become
the teacher to these students that my own back in the
day never were.
I may have painted a picture that I do not enjoy my
current career—and it’ll be a lie for me to deny it …
most of the days. Teaching is hard; whatever you’ve
heard about teachers having an easy life is a LIE! And
it’s a lot of admin work, event planning, counselling—
so much so that these often outweigh the actual
teaching and learning as well. The current generation
of students can be pretty self-entitled too, making
them a chore and a challenge to teach sometimes.
I wouldn’t change a thing, though. My parents’ stories
were scary but now, I have stories of my own—stories
that may not exactly rival the horror, but certainly
show how rewarding my choice of profession can
be. I helped a painfully shy girl, with a gift in music,
overcome her near-crippling fear of exams to earn
the credits she needed for that scholarship into the
Monash made that happen. And the educators I had
from the School of Arts and Social Sciences—they
made it possible for me to be able to personally
witness these miracles.
So, to Dr Andrew Ng, Dr Helen Nesadurai, Dr Yeoh
Seng Guan, Dr Sharon Bong, Dr Patricia Goon and of
course, Mr Benjamin McKay: I should probably blame
you for being the biggest influence on my decision to
walk down the teaching path—but I’m giving you my
deepest gratitude and appreciation instead, because
the success of these young students is as much a
testament to you as they are to me. You showed me
what an educator could be like; that we are more than
just dispensers of knowledge, that we can actually
turn a student’s life around completely.
I may have had a hand in changing my students’
fates—but you … you will always be the people
responsible for changing mine.
Kat graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in
Communication and Writing in 2009. She went on to
gain a Bachelor of Arts Honours (2010) at SASS and a
Postgraduate Diploma in Education from the National
Institute of Education, Singapore. She currently works
as a Secondary School Teacher in English Language
and Literature.
▲ When the going
gets tough…you just
keep going (2018).
75
Honestly speaking, the Monash degree seems pretty
useless now (because really, when is there ever a
right moment to bring up Marx or Foucault or Freud in
secondary school English Language classes?)—but
what it did at the time was open up the opportunity for
me to work here. I don’t think MOE would have hired
me without it; “A degree from the Group of Eight in
Australia; that’s what got them to seriously consider
your application,” was what one of my professors
at NIE (National Institute of Education, a necessary
institute in which I sacrificed a year of my life to get
that damn teaching certificate) shared with me when
he found out about my education background.
conservatory of her dreams. I watched with actual
motherly pride when my form class of monkeys
(seriously, every day I’d be called into the discipline
master’s office to deal with some trouble they had
caused) matured into responsible student leaders
and went on to graduate with enough clout to get
them into Singapore’s top polytechnics and junior
colleges. I happily wrote a letter of recommendation
for a former social outcast who had blossomed into
a bright, independent and capable young woman—
and shed tears of joy when she told me it actually
earned her a full ride to Japan, where she’ll be
studying International Relations. I fought for a
troubled girl who had been sexually abused by
a family friend, went to court to testify on her
behalf—and hugged her when she got the justice
she deserved.