Blog Posts

In honour of World Mental Health Day, we’re sharing five evidence-based coping strategies so that we can flourish even in a pandemic-stressed year like 2020

What do we need to rethink in this country if people over 70, who have probably worked all their lives, have to keep working? Cleaning up hawker centres, toilets, picking up rubbish and collecting cardboard. We cater so much to tourists and the ‘atas’ … how empathetic is our society towards those who don’t have all the ‘bling’?

In reality does anyone really only use one tactic when it comes to parenting? So when it comes to different parenting styles, it might be more sensible to think of them as pieces of a well-rounded repertoire of approaches, seeing them all as compatible instead of exclusive. After all, what every parent wants is the best for our children.

Waiting seems to be a fundamental human activity. How much of your day is spent in waiting? Here are some thoughts penned by one of our staff.

“You are from Singapore? How is it you speak English so well?”

Have you ever been asked this question? In a country that is home to a myriad of races, nationalities, ethnicities, religions and cultures, have you ever wondered why English is our primary language?

"Larks” are up and at it early in the morning, and tend to hit the sack at a respectable evening hour. “Owls” on the other hand, are most alert at night, and typically turn in long after dark. They need a lot of time to wake up and to start working and be productive.

Here’s a free writing piece one of our teachers wrote with 2 students for a writing workshop over the school holidays:

Instructions – don’t stop writing, don’t think, every 2 minutes, a random word will be said and you have to keep writing with that. Begin with, “Dear ….., I’ve been dying to tell you…”

I wonder how many of you have memories of boisterous laughter and hilarity as the cards were shuffled or the dice was rolled and family games reached its peak of friendly competition. Scrabbles, Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders, and lots more. Now that we have digital games, does anyone play these board games anymore? With so many things gone online - even schooling - perhaps it’s time to unplug and gather the family around the board once again.

Many of us in Singapore grew up behind books, closed doors, computers and classrooms. The outdoor world existed in urban playgrounds, school fields and Olympic-sized swimming pools. Weekends spent camping in the woods, surfing in the ocean and hiking through mountainsides were done only by other people, people who weren’t here. People who spent their days milking cows, feeding the chickens and fishing for subsistence were the ones on television.

An anthem is a musical composition of celebration, usually used as a symbol for a distinct group or country. National anthems are a powerful part of the paraphernalia of national packaging, alongside flags, state crests and pledges of allegiance.

Streets and drains have been littered with waste. There have been viral pictures of birds tangled in masks. The amount of rubbish in parks are increasing. During the circuit breaker, Singapore produced an extra 1334 tonnes of plastic waste. Imagine the weight of 92 double-decker buses and then imagine them full of trash. That’s how much extra waste we produced over a span of a few months.

When was the last vacation you took? Sigh! Too long ago! Yet most of us don’t remember the hassle that we went through preparing for the vacation and also forget that we returned thinking that we need a break to get over the journey! And oh! the dread of the pile of work awaiting us at the office!

Foster care is a temporary care arrangement between a foster parent and a foster child under the age of 18. It aims to provide the child a stable family life until the child is eventually reunited with his/her parents. This is a big responsibility which few of us are prepared to take on.

Work-life balance is an important aspect of a healthy work environment. It helps reduce stress and prevents burnout in the workplace. But what does a balanced work-life entail?

Prose is the best format for expressing meaning; poetry for the expression of emotion. This is because poetry uses forms and conventions to evoke emotive responses and can have multiple interpretations. The use of images enables the poet and the readers to uncover layers of connections, often not perceived ordinarily.

The COVID – 19 experience may have made us more aware of what really matters to us in life and how we want to live it. Hopefully it includes being a more responsible consumer.

If the simple act of getting dressed can bring a little joy during these dark times, why not include a little pop of matching colour on our faces to brighten up our day?

Winston Churchill said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” Paying it forward provides people with a strong sense that they're doing something that matters. And it often kicks off a chain reaction of giving. The next time you stop to help a stranger, you may be helping not only this one particular individual but potentially many others downstream. And who knows? In the end, maybe what goes around will come around.

The discrepancy between spelling and sounds has led to the formation of the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA.) Each symbol used in the IPA represent a unique sound in the English language. So there will be no inconsistencies. All good dictionaries show the phonetic symbols next to the word. Thus, armed with phonetic knowledge, anyone can ascertain not only the meaning of a particular word, but also the pronunciation in Standard English.

There are so many skills learned behind the skills taught in schools. This week, as we go back to school, think about everything and everyone you’ve missed and be grateful for an education, for the freedom to learn, to move and to be around people again. We wish everyone a happy return to school life!