It's Official!

In the mail yesterday, we received official confirmation from the Ministry of Education that Ethan is exempted from compulsory education.

We're all going on a learning adventure!!!

Noel

My Learning Journey to the Emergenetics Brain Summit 2007
Sanya, Hainan Island 20 - 25 Sep 2007

Reasons why it was a memorable experience:
Flying on Tiger Air
Flying with Edna
Travelling with Ethan as a homeschooler
Going to China as a Family
Staying at a Hilton establishment
Drinking 4 different blends of Chinese tea in 15 minutes
Making a presentation at the Summit
Meeting American Associates and Emergenetics International Staff - Chris Cox, Mary Case, David Goldberg, Harold Suire, Cheyvanis, Karen Lang, Karen Hulett, Mark, Nora and Erika
Meeting other Asian Associates - Agnes, Zoe, Scipio, Stephen, Yvonne, Perry, Liya, Adair, Karen Smythe, Nick Tang, Seri, Mayura, Stella, Sharon, Ingrid

All in all, a very, very memorable experience.

Noel Tan
(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)

'You can lead a horse to water and make it drink, if you give it salt'

(Dedicated to my friend Lance Fogle and his Pastor)

We've all heard the proverb 'You can lead a horse to water and but you can't make it drink' and we've probably agreed wholeheartedly. At work, you and I have probably seen co-workers like the proverbial horse. When I teach and train, I encounter participants who are like the said equine. So for as long as I can remember, I've never questioned the proverb.

Until I met Lance in June when he shared this blog entry's title with me, which was something he had heard from his pastor. What a paradigm shift and an epiphany, that statement was for me! I had never fully questioned why the horse didn't want to drink. I had assumed, now incorrectly, that the horse was as stubborn as it's close relative, the mule. I had not thought that maybe the water was foul-tasting. Or maybe the horse wasn't thirsty enough.

As educators in the largest possible sense, we probably think that with our training, intellect, know-how etc, why shouldn't/wouldn't anyone not want to listen or learn from us? Yet by thinking this way, we have removed ourselves from the most important position in the learning process - standing in the learner's shoes.

Maybe our learners at home and in school don't want to learn because the material has not been contextualised enough. Perhaps the material has been 'fouled-up', overcomplicated to such an extent that the learner can no longer see its value or relevance to him.

Maybe our learners are not 'thirsty' enough. That is, they have not come to the position when they have a real need to learn the material. Perhaps we have not aroused the learner's innate curiosity enough. Perhaps we have not created sufficient security for the learner to step out from his comfort zone and say 'I don't know about this. Can you tell me more?'. Perhaps we have not given enough 'salt' or motivation for the learner to be 'thirsty' again, to seek out the 'fount' of knowledge for himself.

Lance's words gave me a new way to look at what I need to bring to the learning process, not just for the people that I train, but also for myself. Am I modelling the very same behaviours that I expect them to have?

So Lance, thank you for sharing that insight. You probably didn't know how much it spoke to me.

Noel Tan
(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers)

School-Family Education Talks

We have been privileged to speak at the following institutions over the past 13 months, to help build stronger families in Singapore. It always energises us to work with likeminded partners in Bethesda Care, Care Corner, St Andrew's Lifestreams and Tung Ling Community Services, by assisting in areas where we have expertise and access to research.

· Bedok West Primary School

· Bukit Panjang Government High School

· Junyuan Primary School (in association with Bethesda CARE)

· MacPherson Secondary School

· Presybyterian High School

· St Andrew’s Junior and Secondary Schools (in association with St Andrew’s Lifestreams)

· St Patrick’s Secondary School

· Shuqun Secondary School

· Tanjong Katong Primary and Secondary Schools (in association with Tung Ling Community Services)

· Temasek Primary School

· Unity Primary School

· Westwood Secondary School

· Yew Tee Primary School (in association with Care Corner)

This Saturday, 29 Sep 2007 - we'll be working with parents from Hougang Primary School.

Noel Tan
(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)

Does it matter if you are first or last, if you are not in the race? Aka why can't primary school education be more like post-graduate education?

Just the other day, I read a paraphrase of today's blog entry title in an online parenting forum . The comment made by the contributor was in relation to the academic paper chase in schools. It struck a chord with me instantly.

It came at a time when we are considering home-schooling as an option for our eldest. The wife and I have been revisiting the idea, primarily due to a pressing need to realign his learning journey on several fronts - his learning style, temperament and his learning difficulties, in relation to our own beliefs and assumptions about education and development.

The wife and I went through the school system in our time and got through those years with our degrees, with a fair amount of success, I would think. I mean, I have 2 post-graduate degrees and am now in the 2nd year of my doctoral research.

However, I note that my most eventful learning was in these recent years, when learning was truly discovery, in pursuit of answers to questions that I was genuinely interested in. The individual journey has been fulfilling because it revealed the innate creativity and problem-solving resources that I could harness. I guess a deeper, more fundamental reason would be that I am no longer under the pressure of being compared or measured. If I'm only racing against myself, then it becomes a competition of an even purer form - wrestling against my own limits, struggling against habits that hinder - in order to achieve a result worthy of myself.

It's important to clarify that competition is not inherently bad. In appropriate settings and when processed properly, academic competition and testing can yield positive benefits. In my case, I've discovered how my son, is increasingly turned-off from learning because of the emphasis on results or teaching to the test. This flies in the face of recent research into social and emotional learning, multiple intelligences, learning styles and brain-based learning.

Our conversations with the eldest inevitably focuses on the homework that he has, deadlines, to stop dreaming and focus on completing his work etc. I would much rather like the conversation to be about what he has enjoyed learning and how what he's learned can connect with other things in the world. In a perfect world, we would be having that same conversation with him and he would also be able to thrive in a competitive, exam-centred environment. Since that is not something that is foreseeable, the next best solution would be to place him in a context which allows him to re-discover the joy of learning. How that will transpire will depend on our considerations over the next few weeks.

I think the deeper question here is not about protecting the child per se from the harsh realities of life. Rather, it has to do with preserving an essential attitude that is at the centre of our existence as human beings - a healthy curiosity and a love for learning. Otherwise, I might end up having a child who is well-schooled, but not at all educated.

Noel Tan

(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)

Food for Thought: Brain-Friendly Food

Just a short post today from me. Here's a list of food that are just simply GREAT to keep your brain in fantastic shape:

1. Food rich in Vitamin B eg oats.

2. Eggs - rich in choline, which the brain uses to make the neuro-receptor acetylcholine.

(Low levels of acetylcholine are found to have a negative effect on memory and are associated with Alzheimer's.)

3. Fruit and fresh vegetables, rich in Vitamins C & E - These eliminate free radicals in our bodies.

4. Fish, a primary source of Omega-3 fatty acids eg DHA.

5. Lots of water - removes toxins from the body, including the brain.

6. Beans, nuts and legumes.

Noel Tan

(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)

Dealing with School Pressure: Which School of Thought do you belong to?

As a parent of a school-going 7-year-old in the pressure-cooker environment that is the Singapore education system, as well as a family life educator, I've discovered that there are different schools of thought, when it comes to dealing with school pressure.

'Swim' school

Parents who belong here believe truly that 'Life is tough' and hence, school is the the induction into life. How does the learner deal with pressure? The simple message is 'Hard luck, kiddo. deal with it, because I dealt with it'.

'Live-the-moment' school

If life gives you lemons, parents who belong here are likely to say 'Make lemonade'. They accept that schooling is tough and competitive, but they emphasise to their learners to look beyond the negative and enjoy the ride.

'Cram' school

Given the exam-centric nature of the system, parents over here tell the learners to 'Forget about the Fun, and Focus on the Facts'. Learners are seen to have coped with the pressure by getting extra doses of brain work at tuition centres and other enrichment courses.

'The-road-less-travelled' school

How to cope with pressure? Parents in this school of thought believe that there IS an out-of-the-box way: be it homeschooling, boarding school overseas including the option of emigration. 'Pressure? What, pressure? (..when you have an alternative, that is)'

Simplistic, though, these labels may be, they are useful for helping us see the messages that we transmit, consciously or otherwise, to our children when they face pressure from school. They also bring out the underlying assumptions about pressure and schooling experiences as well as their respective educational outcomes.

Is there one best approach? I doubt it; the effectiveness of any approach will rest greatly on the child, how well his parents understand him and their relationship together.

Noel Tan

(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers)

Role-modelling EQ: A Reflection

In the middle of the year, we were part of a consortium that recently completed a pilot project with a school to develop Emotional Literacy skills in a group of Sec 2 Normal Tech boys. Social and Emotional Learning research suggests that with enhanced EQ, students' academic performance improves.

When my facilitation team and I first met the participants, we primarily saw 2 key behaviours on display - aggression and passivity. Clearly, these belied the lack of confidence and esteem that are otherwise found in resilient kids. We saw as our primary task to model the EQ competencies which included the need to engage in thinking about consequences, recognising and harnessing emotions etc.

One pitfall in modelling EQ skills is in not knowing where to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. We found that however clear the behavioural expectations were and however much we reiterated these expectations, these would obviously not be met by a few individuals. We also discovered that no matter how much we shared amongst ourselves what these expectations were and what would we all do if they were not met, ultimately different people have different thresholds for unacceptable behaviour.

So the key lesson through our own debriefing as a facilitation team was to have each facilitator share and account for their individual response to unacceptable behaviour. Knowing the logic for our responses allowed each facilitator to move towards a 'normed' response that everyone would adopt in the event.

Role-modelling EQ also meant that we had to come to terms with our own lack of these EQ competencies. Not being able to explain why we react a certain way when we feel stressed or fatigued, may mean that we may have limited reach into the child's life when debriefing his behaviour and feelings under stress or fatigue.

On hindsight, there is great potential in terms of impact on these kids who in their home life, have not had positive models of EQ. We showed that while we were there to model the competencies, we also had our own thresholds for negative behaviour and had to deal with them firmly. Through our positive management of our emotions, we showed them that they could too.

Noel Tan
(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)

Sometimes the Journey is more important than the Destination

What's a Singaporean doing in Idyllwild, California anyway? That was a question I asked myself, as I woke up to a knock on my motel room door; a world away from busy Singapore. Bleary-eyed after a 30-hour journey, with my body clock all topsy-turvy, I awoke to the lesson that the Journey is sometimes more important than the Destination.

1. Suspending Judgement

New situations unfold themselves fully only when one suspends judgement and the urge to criticise or even to compare. By immersing all your senses, you begin to allow every neuron in your brain to make connections. I had never previously been to a desert, but stepping out of the airport at Palm Springs that morning in June, gave me a sense of what near 40 degree Celsius feels like. On the ride up to Idyllwild, I made a mental note of not complaining too much about the humidity in Singapore so easily.

2. Physical space parallels Thought Space

My last trip to the US was in 1992, en route to a leadership conference in the Bahamas. I remember being boggled by the size of the continental US, as I flew from San Francisco to Philadephia. This time, almost in juxtaposition, I lived in Idyllwild, a small mountain town of 2000 people, where almost everyone I met there, didn't want to live life, as they call it 'down the Hill'.

These were people who were shocked by the amount of exposure the American media placed on the exploits of Paris Hilton, and who were concerned about issues like the state of the family, education and global perspectives. Yet no matter how wide the diversity of opinions, there was a parallel respect for the other person's right to his opinion. This was manifested in the way even businesses in the town's Chamber of Commerce settled issues through dialogue to understand the perspective of the other. As I exchanged Singapore for Idyllwild, I began to see the truth that the plurality of thought does parallel the physical space.

3. It's more interesting when one is not in stasis

All of us have a propensity to want stability, to conserve what they have. A journey keeps us away from our comfort zone, on our toes as it were; just enough to tip us off-balance, so that in our search for a new equilibrium, we are open to every element in the journey. When finally we achieve a new stasis, then as travellers, we would have considered and assimilated elements of our journey. All this adding to the fact that the Journey is more important than the Destination.

When I reflect on my learning journey to Idyllwild in June 2007, I remember being thrown slightly off-balance when I responded to the knock on my door, only to hear Spanish from the chamber-maid who was there to clean the room. Jet-lagged, I surprised myself by being able to blurt out 'un momento" to her. Then, I knew that the journey to Idyllwild would hold many lessons for me.

Noel Tan

(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)

Getting Your Teenager to Sleep

One of the questions I get asked with regularity at parenting talks is "How to get my teenager to sleep?". Living in an age of ever-increasing connectivity, it's not just adults who aren't getting enough sleep. Teens may be in their bedrooms early, but are in fact falling asleep only past midnight, and parents know that can't be right.

That is a view which is backed up by sleep researchers. Teens require about 9 hours of sleep every night, but most are in fact getting by with only 6 hours or in extreme cases 5 or less. In my conversations with parents, anecdotal evidence suggests that US research figures do parallel the Singapore situation.

The situation is not really helped given the truckload of homework given by school, and the fact that today's teens have the world in their bedrooms through TV, the computer and the telephone. The net effect is that our teens are too stimulated to get to sleep early. Entry into puberty also causes our teens' body clocks to shift to a later sleep-time.

So what do researchers say are the benefits of a healthy night's rest?

• higher immunity levels and better general health


• better concentration in school


• cognitive operations are better - improved recall


• pleasant dispositions


• lowered risk of accidents

Parents can try a few ideas to help their teens sleep earlier:

• move the TV, computer etc out of the bedroom


• guide development of time management skills in our teens


• fix dinner and sleep times - late dinners keep teens awake, while having a clear sleep time is better than having none at all


• late afternoon naps


• lobby the school's parents support group to organise 'Sleep Awareness' days - sometimes, teens just need to hear the message from other people, apart from their parents


• get the same group to lobby the school to review the amount of homework given, after all, the MOE has reduced content already some years back

Because it's such a fundamental part of being human, we often take for granted the importance of a good sleep. Often too, we do not role model the right behaviours ourselves - I remember reading about how parents lug sleepy kids through Mustafa Shopping Centre in the early morning hours, just because the adults could not sleep - so how do we expect our teens to follow? It's time we did, for our sleepy teens' sake.

Noel Tan

(*All text is copyright of Trailblazer Trainers Pte Ltd)