Went to the meet the parents meeting the other day in Ace's school with Max... thanks to his very understanding boss... when Max mentioned I will be going alone, his boss said Max should take time off to go as we have just arrived in Dubai.. in his words, "Your wife will appreciate it very much if you go with her..."
We reached there early and thank goodness we were early cos the school hall was so full there were some 30 pax who had to stand around...
As I looked around, the parents were mostly ang moh... sprinkling of indians here and there and I think as Chinese, we are unique.. and we also seem like one of the youngest couples as most of the parents there look pretty old.. like they are in their forties, some even look like they are in their fifties...
Anyway, I was quite impressed with the opening speech the the headmistress made and she made this presentation called Shift Happens.. (They took down the school link, I can only find this which the school presentation is based on.. and they changed it to show how an education in this school will actually prepare the students for this very different world our children will live in...)
Max says nowadays want to be headmistress also buay kantan.. has to be master of persuation, master of sales, master of PR (she greets every one of us as we sit down in the hall during PTA)... tsk tsk tsk... impressive!
Anyway, then after that, we went to the individual classes so that we could talk to the teacher one on one... there are not many students in Ace's class... I think there are at best 20 students in the class and his english teacher, Ms O'Donnell is a very young lady from Scotland who likes to dance, make friends and exercise.. (she has a tattoo on her calf so i think she quite happening one...) and because she is from scotland.. she has someone an sort of irish accent... so I had to pay extra attention to what she is saying in order to understand her and I figured that Ace will probably have an even harder time than me understanding her... I hope he gets used to it soon.. the little girl int he same building we stay in who goes to the same school has been in this school for three years and she speaks with an english accent.. and I am thinking Ace might develop an ang moh accent in time to come as well:)
Anyway, after the session, we went to have a talk with the teacher and she says that Ace is a fabulous character (dun ask me what tat means.. the english like to tell you that you are a star, you are fantastic or wonderful all the time...) but she says he seems to be struggling with his english pronunciation as wel and suggested that we allow him to attend English As An Additional Language (EAL) programme.
When I heard that, I had two thoughts immediately come to mind. Number one: Must be Ace's singaporean accent his special brand of singlish (sometimes when Ace speaks in english, you need to translate it to chinese in your mind before you understand him...)
I am slightly ashamed to admit though that the second thought was an immediate judgement on his teacher as in.."Wah, your accent also very difficult to understand wor... dun see us chinese so think we cannot speak ang moh.. in Singapore, ENGLISH IS FIRST LANGUAGE... not a SECOND LANGUAGE... nim peh is writer and got A for the GP and English for GCE O Levels one.. cannot be so jia lat right?:P"
After discussion with Max, I decided we will let it go and skip the extra english lessons as we feel that Ace merely needed time to acclimatize to the accent and that in time to come, he will be ok... cos I make him read alot and some of the words tat he cannot pronounce properly.. he hasnt been able to do so since young one.. go extra lesson also no use... if can be corrected, i long long already corrected lor...
And then the teacher also suggested we sign up for some math programme on computer one... cos they are using it in school.. so tat they have to practice at home.. I gave it a pass too as it means additional $$$... I will try to teach on my own first I think....
And that was it lor...
We found out that they have an interesting lesson structure and their classroom is divided into parts.. one section is for reading, one section for numbers, one section for art, one section for a theme topic like the topic for the moment is UAE... one section for english... and depending on which group you are assigned to.. you are doing a different thing as compared to your classmates... I think learning is very general so Ace cant really tell me what he has learnt...
We were also offered a chance to volunteer in the school to help... so the reason why they can do this is because they have many parent helpers.. all the ang moh expat wives with nothing to do when their children are in school:)
And in the school, everything is posted on the net and as parent, you are supposed to go and check what is up coming... i din know till now then I realized i missed out on quite a bit:)
Anyway, some 2 weeks ago, Ace's swimming teacher asked if we would like to let Ace take part in the school extra swimming class... we gave it a pass as we felt since swimming is part of cirricullum, that should be enough...
But yesterday, his teacher wrote in the SOS book again and requested that we let Ace have swimming lessons as he is struggling with just kicking across a small pool and so we agreed to let him have extra swimming lessons.. which translates to another extra hour of free time for me on wednesdays:)
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