Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Of Homeroom
The concept of homeroom in AJC is a curious one. AJC constantly reminds students of the fact that AJC is one of the few JCs in Singapore that provides homeroom for the students, ignoring the fact that there are still classes without homerooms.
The word, "homeroom" is made up of two very simple words with complex concept. However, to put in simply, the homeroom assigned to a class means that that room is that class's "home", where students belonging to that class can use the room and its facilities freely. This is the case for JCs in Singapore that has the homeroom system. This situation, however, is not true for AJC.
In AJC, homeroom refers to the room where most of your tutorial take place in. For example, further maths, general paper and physics tutorials all take place in this room, so AJC tells us its our "homeroom". Yet, other students or teachers can actually book our room as well, and use our "home" without our permission. Imagine returning home one day and discovering that the town council had re-alocated some other family to live in your house. Fantastic feeling isn't it? With feelings like this hovering in our mind, AJC is trying to instill school spirit. How can school spirit come about with no sense of belonging?
In schools like HCI, they adapted a "class bench" system, where there is a wide area of benches and chairs with each bench assign to each class. Classmates would gather there to study and do work, while interaction with students from other classes are easy with them only a bench away. While not as impressive as the "homeroom" system, it goes a long way to instill a sense of belonging in the students there, as the bench really belongs to them. In AJC, "homeroom" is just a name. I visited my HCI friend quite recently, and after wandering around, he brought me to his class bench to chitchat, pointing to the particular bench that belongs to him and his class with pride. Even if my friend from HCI were to come and visit me in AJC, I wouldn't bring him to my homeroom or introduce it to him with pride. The reason is simple. Chances are some other classes are using the room. Secondly, we are not supposed to use the air-con.
When we were first given this homeroom at the beginning of this year, I thought I had finally discover the good of AJC. Our room is well located, near the canteen and toilet, faciliting easy access to food and easy answer to nature's call. Better still, the room used to be a computer room, until AJC decided to do away with the computers and give the system admin an easier job. It seems that there is an unwritten rule that all computer rooms are air-coned. My homeroom, which is actually an ex-computer room is no exception.
The problem lies in the usage of the air-con. While the auditorum and the LTs have their air-con on throughout the entire school hour regardless or whether there are students or teachers inside, we were told strictly by the school's operational manager that the air-con is not supposed to be on unless there is a teacher inside. We, being sensible students, would gladly abide to his orders, if not for the fact that our windows are blocked by container classrooms and there is no fan in the room. We had to endure the heat and be baked alive if we want to use our homeroom when no teachers are around. AJC claims to value students' feedback, so when we brought up the matter to the OM nicely, he spoke to us nicely, "You are not supposed to use your homeroom when there is no lesson." Well. That explains it.
According to him, whenever our subject teachers want to teach us in our homeroom, they have to make their way down to the general office, withdraw the key to the tiny container that stores the air-con remotes, come to our homeroom to teach us, and return the key when the lesson is over. Strangely none of our teachers did that before. I think they did not even know such a procedure exists.
Anyway, the OM came for a "routine" check again today (he even when as far as moving the fake security camera from the back of the class to point directly to the container) and discovered the container storing the air-con remotes is opened. So he locked up the remotes and asked my class leader to remember to off the air-con when we leave.
The word, "homeroom" is made up of two very simple words with complex concept. However, to put in simply, the homeroom assigned to a class means that that room is that class's "home", where students belonging to that class can use the room and its facilities freely. This is the case for JCs in Singapore that has the homeroom system. This situation, however, is not true for AJC.
In AJC, homeroom refers to the room where most of your tutorial take place in. For example, further maths, general paper and physics tutorials all take place in this room, so AJC tells us its our "homeroom". Yet, other students or teachers can actually book our room as well, and use our "home" without our permission. Imagine returning home one day and discovering that the town council had re-alocated some other family to live in your house. Fantastic feeling isn't it? With feelings like this hovering in our mind, AJC is trying to instill school spirit. How can school spirit come about with no sense of belonging?
In schools like HCI, they adapted a "class bench" system, where there is a wide area of benches and chairs with each bench assign to each class. Classmates would gather there to study and do work, while interaction with students from other classes are easy with them only a bench away. While not as impressive as the "homeroom" system, it goes a long way to instill a sense of belonging in the students there, as the bench really belongs to them. In AJC, "homeroom" is just a name. I visited my HCI friend quite recently, and after wandering around, he brought me to his class bench to chitchat, pointing to the particular bench that belongs to him and his class with pride. Even if my friend from HCI were to come and visit me in AJC, I wouldn't bring him to my homeroom or introduce it to him with pride. The reason is simple. Chances are some other classes are using the room. Secondly, we are not supposed to use the air-con.
When we were first given this homeroom at the beginning of this year, I thought I had finally discover the good of AJC. Our room is well located, near the canteen and toilet, faciliting easy access to food and easy answer to nature's call. Better still, the room used to be a computer room, until AJC decided to do away with the computers and give the system admin an easier job. It seems that there is an unwritten rule that all computer rooms are air-coned. My homeroom, which is actually an ex-computer room is no exception.
The problem lies in the usage of the air-con. While the auditorum and the LTs have their air-con on throughout the entire school hour regardless or whether there are students or teachers inside, we were told strictly by the school's operational manager that the air-con is not supposed to be on unless there is a teacher inside. We, being sensible students, would gladly abide to his orders, if not for the fact that our windows are blocked by container classrooms and there is no fan in the room. We had to endure the heat and be baked alive if we want to use our homeroom when no teachers are around. AJC claims to value students' feedback, so when we brought up the matter to the OM nicely, he spoke to us nicely, "You are not supposed to use your homeroom when there is no lesson." Well. That explains it.
According to him, whenever our subject teachers want to teach us in our homeroom, they have to make their way down to the general office, withdraw the key to the tiny container that stores the air-con remotes, come to our homeroom to teach us, and return the key when the lesson is over. Strangely none of our teachers did that before. I think they did not even know such a procedure exists.
Anyway, the OM came for a "routine" check again today (he even when as far as moving the fake security camera from the back of the class to point directly to the container) and discovered the container storing the air-con remotes is opened. So he locked up the remotes and asked my class leader to remember to off the air-con when we leave.
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