Orientation

After taking a day to get settled, I started Fulbright DA Singapore orientation on Monday, January 6. My two primary contacts with the Ministry of Education, Reeja and Christine, picked me up from my apartment and accompanied me on the one-hour bus ride to the Academy of Singapore Teachers. On the way we stopped for kaya toast, a popular breakfast staple in Singapore and Malaysia. Kaya is a jam made from sugar, coconut milk, eggs, and pandan leaf, served with butter. There are worse ways to start the day.

I'll elaborate on this in a future post, but the Singapore education system is highly centralized, especially when compared to that of the United States. The Academy of Singapore Teachers is an agency of the Ministry of Education, the government organization that creates and implements education policy in Singapore. AST is charged with providing Singapore's teachers with ongoing professional development. It is in the western part of the island, occupying a campus that used to house a secondary school. With its colorful posters, signs, and interactive exhibits lining its corridors, AST feels like a school. Once I entered the main offices I was happy to see my fellow Fulbrighter, Jenn, and to finally meet the MOE Fulbright team in person. It was nice to put some faces to the names I knew from months of email exchanges.

Over the next few days we took a short hike through Telok Blangah Park and up Mount Faber, sampled Singaporean cuisine at restaurants and hawker centers around the country, and visited various landmarks and places of worship around the city. We spent our afternoons in informational sessions that provided us with overviews of Singapore's education system. Throughout the week, Deputy Director Derek Tan and his team of Joey, Selena, Reeja, Christine, and others kindly guided us around the city, answered our questions, and made sure we felt welcome at all times. I cannot thank them enough for all they've done to make my experience a positive one so far.

Random thought: over these first few days and on several occasions since, I've been reminded in one way or another of Singapore's short history as a sovereign state. It's only been independent for half a century. In this short time Singapore has transformed from an island of rural kampongs into a highly industrialized nation with a robust economy and highly ranked education, housing, and healthcare systems. And its leaders have made this change happen, despite the island's size and relative lack of natural resources, through careful planning and intentional social engineering. In the words of an MOE official I met this week, "Singaporeans love to plan."

Anyway, in my next post I'll share a bit about the National Institute of Education and the course that I'll be auditing this semester.

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