An Eye for Design & A Heart for Teaching 

Think Teach’s Sci­ence teacher, Teacher Dawn, is always on the hunt to learn and try out new things. Her mantra in life is sim­ple: Do not be a one trick pony. Many of us might not know this but apart from being one of our most well-loved teach­ers, Teacher Dawn is also a tal­ent­ed graph­ic design­er. In fact, she is the key woman respon­si­ble for design­ing almost every­thing you see in Think Teach. 

In this inter­view, we catch up with Teacher Dawn and find out what made her get into teach­ing and graph­ic design, and how she man­ages to jug­gle her two loves. We also ask her to tell us what, aside from grades, she wants her stu­dents to learn most from her. Our inter­view then ends with our clas­sic ques­tion to allow us to peer into the per­son behind the teacher.  

Q: You clearly loved or at least wanted to teach from the get go. You started out in MOE before moving to private education with us. What made you decide to join MOE as a teacher? And what was it like for you there? 

I always want­ed to teach and like many, MOE was a good start­ing point to learn the ropes with. My 6 years teach­ing in an MOE sec­ondary school taught me invalu­able lessons about class­room man­age­ment, gave me the oppor­tu­ni­ty to influ­ence young lives and shaped my teach­ing phi­los­o­phy to become more stu­dent cen­tered. My time at MOE was extreme­ly mem­o­rable and I enjoyed every sec­ond with the class­es I taught. Time real­ly flies; I’m attend­ing an ex-student’s wed­ding at the end of the year!

Q: Sounds like you really had a close rapport with your students. So, what made you decide to leave MOE to join private education? 

It was def­i­nite­ly a dif­fi­cult deci­sion giv­en that I was close to my col­leagues and stu­dents. But I feel that it’s nat­ur­al to want to move on to dif­fer­ent and more chal­leng­ing jobs as you progress in your career. I wasn’t util­is­ing much of my graph­ic design skill set in MOE and was hop­ing to find a com­pa­ny in which I could con­tribute both as an edu­ca­tor and an artist.

Q: What is the main difference between teaching in MOE and with Think Teach? 

The class sizes! In MOE, I taught class­es of 42 stu­dents. In Think Teach, the aver­age size of the class­es I teach is around 10. Nat­u­ral­ly, with small­er class sizes, I am able to give more con­tact time to my stu­dents. I feel that I can get to know them bet­ter and am bet­ter able to bring out the best in them. 

Q: In addition to teaching, you have contributed your talent for graphic design to Think Teach. Many people might not know this but you are quite the accomplished graphic designer. What made you get into it?

Art and sci­ence share the same need for care­ful obser­va­tion and hands-on appli­ca­tion! Like every stu­dent, I was an avid doo­dler dur­ing class and that even­tu­al­ly devel­oped into a pas­sion for dig­i­tal art. I ini­tial­ly intend­ed to major in illus­tra­tion but a book cov­er design assign­ment turned me into the joys of cre­at­ing func­tion­al and attrac­tive designs. I have done a num­ber of free­lance work dur­ing my spare time. I see it as a hob­by and it’s extreme­ly ful­fill­ing to see my work exist­ing out in the world in the form of bill­boards, posters and ads. 

Q: How would you advise someone who is interested in starting to learn graphic design? 

It’s a two-pronged approach.: First, train your eye by con­sum­ing good art and design to devel­op good taste. Sec­ond­ly, devel­op the tech­ni­cal skill to realise your artis­tic vision by becom­ing flu­ent in pro­grammes such as Pho­to­shop or Illus­tra­tor. 

Q: How important do you think it is to be multi-skilled? Would you encourage your students to learn from your example and equip themselves with a variety of skills?

Aside from open­ing up new avenues career-wise, I feel that it’s good to always learn new skills sim­ply because it makes you a more well-round­ed, inter­est­ing per­son with hob­bies and projects out­side of school or work. Hav­ing more and var­ied skills also help you be more inter­est­ing in social set­tings haha! 

Q: How do you find the time to hone your prowess for teaching and design?

I sketch on my iPad and put my Skills­fu­ture cred­its into life draw­ing lessons when I have the time. I put on doc­u­men­taries or lis­ten to Radi­o­lab pod­casts when I’m work­ing on art projects to build on my con­tent knowl­edge while my hands are busy. 

Q: One final question for today, and it’s a mighty personal one! Where do you see yourself and what do you want for yourself in five years?   

In 5 years from now, more of my for­mer stu­dents will be enter­ing uni­ver­si­ty, com­plet­ing their degrees or even get­ting mar­ried! I don’t have any chil­dren of my own but when my for­mer stu­dents cross mile­stones in their lives, I feel like a proud moth­er. So any­way, back to the ques­tion, in 5 years, I fore­see that I will be attend­ing a lot more wed­dings! 

This arti­cle was proud­ly writ­ten by TTA’s Sci­ence Team. We aim to help stu­dents achieve exam excel­lence in Sci­ence with our sig­na­ture tem­plat­ed answer­ing struc­tures which will help your child tack­le with ease and con­fi­dence even the hard­est of sci­ence ques­tions