Not All Superheroes Wear Capes: The person behind Teacher Fiona

Many can teach. But few can be teach­ers. Teacher Fiona is cer­tain­ly one of the few. While most see the tail end of the year as the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to rest and relax, Teacher Fiona is relent­less and sees the oppo­site. As the new­ly mint­ed leader of the Math­e­mat­ics team, she has opt­ed to take advan­tage of the lull hol­i­day months to gath­er feed­back, con­duct teacher train­ing ses­sions, and improve the cur­ricu­lum. An immense amount of effort will be expend­ed to achieve one sin­gu­lar goal—to have her team primed and ready for stu­dents next year! In this inter­view arti­cle, we catch up with the ever-spir­it­ed Teacher Fiona. We get her to share her feel­ings about being pro­mot­ed to Head of Math­e­mat­ics at Think Teach. We also learn more about her excit­ing plans and goals for the team. Final­ly, we peel off the pro­fes­sion­al lay­ers and take a peek into the life of and at the per­son behind this super­hero of a teacher.

Q: Congratulations are in order! You have just been promoted to Head of Mathematics at Think Teach. What does this mean to you professionally and personally?

Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, it meant that the com­pa­ny recog­nised my efforts and poten­tial, and this spurs me on to do bet­ter and exceed expec­ta­tions. Per­son­al­ly, it felt that all the hard work all these years was worth it in the end.

Q: What can parents and students expect to see different with you at the helm of Mathematics? Will you be bringing about some exciting changes?

I believe that learn­ing should be fun and not dread­ful, and stu­dents will be thrilled to know that we will be intro­duc­ing Math games and quizzes in our lessons! I’m also a firm believ­er in rein­force­ment when it comes to learn­ing. You could see it as tak­ing three steps for­ward, and one step back. We need to make sure that the foun­da­tion is strong before we con­tin­ue build­ing on a child’s under­stand­ing of Maths con­cepts.

This was the rea­son why we intro­duced Math Guides for the P5 and P6s in 2022 and it was well received by par­ents and stu­dents alike. The TTA Math Guides fea­ture the ques­tion types taught in a block, accom­pa­nied by teach­ing videos. Stu­dents were glad that they had a con­densed form of revi­sion to fall back on and par­ents were even hap­pi­er that they could now watch the teach­ing videos with their child and pro­vide greater guid­ance when it came to revis­ing for the exam­i­na­tions togeth­er.

There­fore, in the year ahead, par­ents and stu­dents can expect to see that our work­sheets will be tak­ing on a new for­mat — Intro­duc­tion, Prac­tice, Assess­ment.

In our Intro­duc­tion to heuris­tics con­cepts, the con­tent will be expand­ed to make it even more com­pre­hen­sive. This is so that stu­dents who join mid­way will still be able to refer to these notes and catch up on the con­cepts that have been taught. After which, there will be a Prac­tice com­po­nent to allow the stu­dents to apply what they have learnt. There­after, in the fol­low­ing week, we start off the les­son with Assess­ment time. This allows the teacher to deter­mine whether or not the stu­dents have learnt well, and the capa­bil­i­ties of a child who had just joined that week, or if addi­tion­al prac­tice is required to rein­force a par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing con­cept.

There will also be a “Recap and Revise” sec­tion every quar­ter to allow for more rein­force­ment in the weak­er top­ics for the cohort. These weak­er top­ics are deter­mined from the scores for the week­ly Assess­ment sec­tions and this allows us to pin­point the rea­son for less-than-spec­tac­u­lar results and take the appro­pri­ate steps to but­tress our stu­dents’ under­stand­ing.

Q: You sound very ready to get up and work on the plan you have for your team! Where did this love and passion for education come from?

I guess you could say that it was a call­ing! Noth­ing quite gives me as much joy as syn­the­sis­ing com­plex infor­ma­tion, teach­ing and explain­ing, and watch­ing the eure­ka moment occur. I have also always want­ed to be a moth­er to many chil­dren, and I mean many (at least four!) and teach­ing does help to ful­fil my dream in a sense!

More than help­ing chil­dren achieve aca­d­e­m­ic excel­lence that would open up more doors of oppor­tu­ni­ty for them, I want to nur­ture chil­dren who grow up want­i­ng to make this world a bet­ter place. It is immense­ly ful­fill­ing when I see chil­dren who start­ed the year feel­ing neg­a­tive about life and end­ing the year with so much hope for their future. It is in know­ing that I could poten­tial­ly play a part in inspir­ing some­one, keep­ing her out of dan­ger, or help­ing him make wis­er deci­sions, that keeps the fire in me going.

Q: That is certainly inspiring to hear. Following that, I am going to ask you to complete this sentence. Being a teacher to me is ….

…being there for a child. I believe that as teach­ers, we teach because we love what we do, and not because we can’t do what we love. To me, teach­ing is so much more than just impart­ing knowl­edge to a child. It’s about break­ing stereo­types, build­ing stronger minds and kinder humans, nur­tur­ing young hearts and souls, and just being there for the lit­tle ones who might not have any­one there for them.

Q: And how would you want your students to remember you and your lessons?

Hmm… I hope that they would think of me as fun, and fun­ny, but not lame haha!

On a seri­ous note, I hope they also remem­ber that there’s always a les­son to learn. They can cer­tain­ly turn every event in their life (good or bad) into a learn­ing expe­ri­ence. What­ev­er they are learn­ing right now may not come in handy straight away, or may not seem use­ful or rel­e­vant, but the knowl­edge they have gained will one day serve its pur­pose, and maybe in a way they least expect. I also remind them that we do not live long enough to make all the mis­takes and learn from all the mis­takes we make, there­fore, learn from the mis­takes of oth­ers.

As much as I can, I link my lessons to real-life sit­u­a­tions so that stu­dents see the pur­pose of learn­ing per­cent­age dis­count (so that they pick out the most val­ue-for-mon­ey items at a sale, or apply it effec­tive­ly to their future busi­ness­es), learn­ing how to cal­cu­late area and perime­ter (so that every piece of fur­ni­ture fits per­fect­ly in its place in their future homes, and you avoid the night­mare of hav­ing awk­ward­ly posi­tioned fur­ni­ture), or learn­ing rate of work (so that they do not get short-changed or over­charged). Although the exam­ples are extreme, it does stick in the stu­dents’ minds and it def­i­nite­ly helps in the learn­ing process when stu­dents see the point of learn­ing some­thing well. I want my stu­dents to see that my lessons are use­ful, and they will be glad that they had paid atten­tion in class.

Beyond prob­lem sums, Math­e­mat­ics helps to build con­nec­tions in your brain, and devel­op com­mon sense, crit­i­cal think­ing skills, and log­ic. This will sure­ly aid them in mak­ing wise choic­es as they jour­ney through life.

I hope they remem­ber that when life gives them lemons, make lemon­ade! It is impor­tant to look on the bright side of life, and yes, although good times don’t last, bad times don’t stay for­ev­er. This may sound a bit preachy, but I do like to remind them, “Do the right thing, even when no one is watch­ing.”

What was your most gratifying moment in all your years of teaching?

WOW, this is a tough one. Well… I can’t real­ly sin­gle out a spe­cif­ic moment. It was grat­i­fy­ing when a stu­dent went from scor­ing sin­gle-dig­it to scor­ing more than 80 marks, or when a child tells me that he/she enjoys Math­e­mat­ics and finds it fun and chal­leng­ing, or that the sub­ject was not as dif­fi­cult as they had thought, or when I see a child who was ini­tial­ly weak in the sub­ject gain enough con­fi­dence to teach anoth­er stu­dent, or when I see stu­dents tak­ing greater pride in their work. They would come ear­li­er, stay back, or email me ques­tions. It is indeed sat­is­fy­ing to see stu­dents take charge of their stud­ies and show a keen inter­est to become even bet­ter.

It is also par­tic­u­lar­ly grat­i­fy­ing to hear stu­dents exclaim, “What, there’s only 30 min­utes of les­son time left?” or “What? One hour passed? It felt like only 10 min­utes!” That is, to me, a sign that stu­dents are enjoy­ing my les­son.

Ok let’s move away from teaching. I want to get to know the person behind Teacher Fiona. Let’s start off with two easy questions. With the new year coming up, what are you most looking forward to? And what are some of your new year resolutions?

Work does form a big part of my life, so I’m real­ly look­ing for­ward to see­ing the cur­ricu­lum I’d been work­ing on come to life! On a per­son­al note, I’m also real­ly look­ing for­ward to my new home! Although I wouldn’t be mov­ing into it next year, it does mean that I am one year clos­er to mov­ing into it :))

My new year res­o­lu­tion would be to take on a more active lifestyle (yes, I think I’m ready for that). I do jog and swim, and I hope to take it up a notch by learn­ing yoga, Muay thai, or ten­nis. I’d pre­vi­ous­ly tried golf­ing, but it gave me such ter­ri­ble back­ach­es that I decid­ed I was not cut out for it haha!

I also hope to be able to spend more time with my fam­i­ly by hav­ing din­ner with them at least thrice a week (this res­o­lu­tion is the first on my list, every year). There are cer­tain weeks when I achieve my goal, and cer­tain weeks when I don’t. Every year, I aim to do bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous year.

Now that my par­ents are almost retired, I do want to be able to take them on trips so that they’ll be able to enjoy and see more of this beau­ti­ful world that we live in.

That sounds like some demanding resolutions there. Do you expect a lot from yourself?

My mot­to in life has always been to work hard, play hard, and I am of the opin­ion that if you were to do some­thing then do it well. In that regard, I can be a bit of a per­fec­tion­ist and some­times, it works against me.

I do put pres­sure on myself, because that is one way to help me grow and up my game, but I am care­ful not to do it to the extent that I break. This is some­thing that I’m very aware of and it helps with bal­anc­ing stress and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Gen­er­al­ly, I like to set the bar a lit­tle high­er then read­just it so that it’s more real­is­tic. As they say, shoot for the moon, and even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.

So where do you see yourself in 10 years’ time?

I hope to be a proud moth­er of at least 3 chil­dren, and a hap­py and beau­ti­ful wife. Heh

Another time travel question to cap off the interview. Complete my sentence once again. If I could turn back time to any point in my life, I would …

go back to my teenage years and choose to spend more time with my fam­i­ly. I was hav­ing so much fun with my friends at the expense of spend­ing time with my fam­i­ly, and I real­ly wished I had been a bet­ter daugh­ter and a bet­ter sis­ter.

Friends come and go, but fam­i­ly is for­ev­er.

This arti­cle was proud­ly writ­ten for you by the Think Teach Team. Every year, we impact over a thou­sand stu­dents and empow­er them with our smart tech­niques to achieve exam excel­lence in their school exams as well as the PSLE. We want your child to be our next suc­cess sto­ry!