being reflective

Actually this post is to respond to what one of my student, Siyin, wrote in her tag – that she finds it hard for her to know me as being so reflective. So I think I will just blog about being reflective in general and what is it for me to be reflective.

I think being reflective simply means giving one time to be alone and be still. This is very rare and getting rarer in this society of Singapore. Everyone is so rushing for things to get done. Every student is rushing for homework to be completed, projects to be discussed and also excelling in his or her CCAs. Every teacher is rushing to complete his/her syllabus, ‘enriching’ the students with programs and also marking homework from students and meeting datelines. Time has become so precious that it is as if our 24 hours has become 12 hours per day. A big ironic thing is that as technology advances, it is supposed to shorten the time for meetings for work and thus giving the family more time to spend together. However, what one discovers is that there is now less family time, children are not interacting as much as before and that most of the time parents are not at home but somewhere. We ask – where have all the time ‘saved’ being spent? When do we start spending time with those we love?

But posing these questions is easy – answering them is tough. Even harder is knowing the answers and acting upon them. Recognizing that even spending time with love ones is so tough, what can be said to spending time with oneself? When will we begin to realize how attention seeking is the flowers that are besides the road? When will we begin to realize that in order for us to learn and grow, there is aspect of giving oneself ample time to be still and be reflective? Not to mention also the need for space for us to be truly with ourselves without any distractions or implications? There is a need for the practice of being alone – where being alone is not about being lonely. And in this MLS course, it really helps me to being alone.

In my life, I have been enjoying being with people, especially youngsters. For the past 12 years when I first stepped into teaching, I have been enjoying human interaction in my profession. It is always going and keeping on going with minimum breakaway from what I am doing. If it is doing curriculum time, it would be teaching and marking; if it is during holidays, it would be bringing students to overseas trips or improving on my notes for my students.

In this course, I am given time to do reflection – away from my normal life of teaching and preparing notes. This is very difficult for me initially. I have been so bonded with what I am doing that I felt so detached from the very thing that I am passionate with. However as time passes, I find that it is important for me to get detached away so that I can spend time learning more and greater things. My scope of Singapore education has begun to open up and deepen at the same time; my readings have given me different perspective of leading and guiding people that I am with; and as I reflect, I find more and more things that I can improve as a subject head and a teacher. I recall and recollect my journey so far as a teacher, I go back to my fundamentals; I go back to my values.

So, Siyin, if you are reading this entry, I just want you to know the importance of being reflective – that you will go back to your values and that you will go back to your goals that you set before you start to journey. And I also want you to know that it is tough to reflect because you are breaking the norm of being busy – being blindly busy. But when you do reflect, not going to the mountains to mediate but to just spend perhaps 15 minutes each weekend to be still and quiet, you will slowly begin to know who you really are and why are you doing the things that you are doing. You will clear the mist in your life and be more passionate on the things that you are doing. So, as your teacher, I encourage you give yourself time to do reflection – you might find something that you have never known about yourself before.