Thank you for sharing, I love your blog posts! Always a nice read. I am over 30 now from Singapore and i always felt that my pri and sec sch education were super fearful and anxiety-triggering or maybe I'm just generally a very anxious person. Those were the days of feather duster caning by our teachers... half the class incl me getting caned for being noisy while the teacher was out of the classroom, another time getting caned for forgetting to sign my 10/10 spelling test....
Agree that most schools and Kindy here are not equipped on how to deal with learning/development differences. My son who has anxiety and highly sensitive was being asked to leave his Kindy because the school said he needs constant attention. Even after communicating with the school that we are sending him to therapy and explaining to them his condition. At that point I felt so helpless and guilty as a parent. Luckily we found another better Kindy and my son is doing great there. I am actually thankful they asked us to leave else my son would be miserable there.
awww thank you for sharing. it must have been difficult but I'm glad they were honest in telling you they're not equipped to handle it and that you were able to find a more suitable place!
I put my ASD son in a PPKI class within an SJKC too when he started Std 1. Surprisingly the primary medium used was BM vs. Chinese. I'd always assume SJKCs would broadly teach in Chinese regardless of type of class. But BM was fine by me. I myself was from an SK so it was basically an education medium closer to home. I had the same consideration of wanting my son to be less of a banana than I am, hence the decision to put him in SJKC. I pulled my son out eventually because it just wasn't the right fit. The PPKI class merges all types of special needs kids into a class of the same academic year - so it was almost impossible for teachers (whom I think didn't had the luxury to be specially trained) to manage all kids, let alone develop them or help them progress. He was regressing. My take is that our special needs education can and should do better. I pity the teachers too sometimes. They tried their very best but lacked the right skill training.
I'm very curious what sjkc primary medium is bm cos that sounds good hahaha. i agree that the special needs education and offering here still leaves very much to be desired.
i went to an sk which had an attached special needs section which they called kelas khas. most of the kids there had down syndrome, I don't think anyone knew about asd and adhd then. but there was so little awareness and education surrounding this that we the students were terrified of the kelas khas kids! until we didn't dare to make eye contact even when we passed by for fear of getting attacked wtf now i remember back it was so ignorant and mean. :(
Hi Audrey, thanks for sharing. You have mentioned they teaches malay in Chinese. How about English? Same way as well? I believe not all students are with English speaking background
english is taught in english! i think this probably differs from school to school but our school is an urban one with quite a lot of well to do families also.
Thank you for sharing about sjkc & your adhd boy. My son is in sjkc yr2 with adhd as well. Considering to change him to smaller group sjkc. Still looking into it..
Thank you for sharing, I love your blog posts! Always a nice read. I am over 30 now from Singapore and i always felt that my pri and sec sch education were super fearful and anxiety-triggering or maybe I'm just generally a very anxious person. Those were the days of feather duster caning by our teachers... half the class incl me getting caned for being noisy while the teacher was out of the classroom, another time getting caned for forgetting to sign my 10/10 spelling test....
Growing up I also went to a SK school, and like you, wondered what the heck why prawns so important need to be on every exercise book wtf lmao
HAHAHAHA yea like what was this fixation on prawns hahahaha
Agree that most schools and Kindy here are not equipped on how to deal with learning/development differences. My son who has anxiety and highly sensitive was being asked to leave his Kindy because the school said he needs constant attention. Even after communicating with the school that we are sending him to therapy and explaining to them his condition. At that point I felt so helpless and guilty as a parent. Luckily we found another better Kindy and my son is doing great there. I am actually thankful they asked us to leave else my son would be miserable there.
awww thank you for sharing. it must have been difficult but I'm glad they were honest in telling you they're not equipped to handle it and that you were able to find a more suitable place!
This is unrelated to your content but I think you meant to say rukun negara, not tetangga!
YES HAHAHAHA
I put my ASD son in a PPKI class within an SJKC too when he started Std 1. Surprisingly the primary medium used was BM vs. Chinese. I'd always assume SJKCs would broadly teach in Chinese regardless of type of class. But BM was fine by me. I myself was from an SK so it was basically an education medium closer to home. I had the same consideration of wanting my son to be less of a banana than I am, hence the decision to put him in SJKC. I pulled my son out eventually because it just wasn't the right fit. The PPKI class merges all types of special needs kids into a class of the same academic year - so it was almost impossible for teachers (whom I think didn't had the luxury to be specially trained) to manage all kids, let alone develop them or help them progress. He was regressing. My take is that our special needs education can and should do better. I pity the teachers too sometimes. They tried their very best but lacked the right skill training.
I'm very curious what sjkc primary medium is bm cos that sounds good hahaha. i agree that the special needs education and offering here still leaves very much to be desired.
i went to an sk which had an attached special needs section which they called kelas khas. most of the kids there had down syndrome, I don't think anyone knew about asd and adhd then. but there was so little awareness and education surrounding this that we the students were terrified of the kelas khas kids! until we didn't dare to make eye contact even when we passed by for fear of getting attacked wtf now i remember back it was so ignorant and mean. :(
Hi Audrey, thanks for sharing. You have mentioned they teaches malay in Chinese. How about English? Same way as well? I believe not all students are with English speaking background
english is taught in english! i think this probably differs from school to school but our school is an urban one with quite a lot of well to do families also.
Thank you for sharing about sjkc & your adhd boy. My son is in sjkc yr2 with adhd as well. Considering to change him to smaller group sjkc. Still looking into it..
all the best in your journey!