说真话 - My reflections

Phew!
After much thoughts, I decided to pen down my thoughts and vision of this beloved school of ours, and share it with the school. Here's what I said, I really hope everyone can chip in to make this school a home we are all proud of... well, let just say, I will do my very best.

passion, heart and soul... even though I am rather tired these couple of weeks, hope it is just tiredness.

here's my reflectons, since I am not good at impromptu speeches,

"When I come up on stage, many of you will associate me with something serious. I confess it is serious, But let me approach what I am going to say from another angle.

It is now Term 2 Week 5. Allow me to spend a few minutes to share some thoughts with you about our school, about Dunman High, about this closely-knitted community (what we would like to work towards).

Many things have taken place so far, and many of these were great and pleasant but some fell short of what we would want to see. Let me talk a little about the great and pleasant things that I have witnessed, from the tremendous fighting spirit that our sports CCAs (the Badminton, the table-tennis, the basketballers, the vballers, the trackers, the wushu-ers, the soccer players), to the school spirit that was burning strong during the combined schools sports meet, to the great atmosphere during the combined UG campfire, to the great music extragavanza in the concerts by Choir, CO and Band.

Underlying all these, I see a great sense of commitment and high level of discipline, from the way you trained, the way you prepare for the actual events and competitions and on the actual events themselves, (some of which I have the privileged to be there).

Now, our challenge is, can each one of us transfer this level of commitment and discipline into other areas? Can this be seen in our daily behaviour, the way we carry ourselves? Can this be seen in the learning enviroment that we are in? Can this be seen in our day-to-day interactions, be it among your peers or between students and teachers? Can this be seen in the daily assignments, homework, projects, tests?

I hope to see each and everyone of us to be committed in making school a better place, a home which we are all proud of; in which everyone has the discipline to uphold the code of conduct, to be responsible for ourselves and to respect one another.

So that, we will no longer need to conduct spot checks and cut your hair, remove your extra ear studs or pull out your blouses to check whether there are draw strings,

so that we don’t have to walk around classrooms during flag raising to discover wallets, handphones and mp3 players being carelessly placed on the tables,

so that we don’t have to find the classrooms in an untidy state, with bins filled with leftover food containers, food wrappers, drink cups and ants,

so that we don’t have to frequently receive calls from the public about less-than-appropriate behaviour of Dunman High students, hogging the pedestrian paths, hogging the roads while crossing, rowdy behaviour on the MRT,

so that we don’t have students who were found to play truant from school, from lessons, late in submitting work, copying answers from peers instead of working out the solutions yourselves,
So that we don’t have to constantly reprimand you, (even as I speak), to be respectful to the speakers during announcements and assemblies,

How do we achieve this? It will require collective responsibility from all of us, to remind one and another when things are not right, to take responsibility when things need to be corrected, and I am sure that each and everyone of us can do it.

The Question is, Do we have the HEART?

I really want to channel our energy to positive areas and not on punitive measures to curtail inappropriate trends, that is really not befitting of a school like ours,

so that we can work together towards realising this place called Dunman High, which each one of us, and the future generations after us, can proudly called a home.

I would like to end this with the following two quotes:
"We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act, but a habit."
— Aristotle

We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.
- Jesse Owens"

can we all move in the same direction?