Art Class: Tree of Life Self Intro

Students' work

This year is my first time teaching graduating students. For a start, I've asked them to introduce themselves through this tree of life activity. It looks like a straightforward activity but it does require students to think deeply because it is a visual metaphor in which a tree represents your life including your past, present and future. You can see an image taken from my fellowship programme. 

From this activity, I could see that the students are influenced by the events happening around them. Even though they are not directly receiving the impact of say troubled times, they are aware of current affairs. The objective of this work is to get them to reveal a part of them that I would perhaps never see in the classroom context. When I'm kept updated of their taste in music or other forms of entertainment, it also helps to inform my lesson development and pitch my instructions in class. For example, a number of them expressed interest in memes and I have an almost perfect plan for blending pop culture and Art. 

Artventure: Girls in Tech 2018

Happy New Year! 1.5 weeks of school just zipped by at the speed of light! Just a few months ago, I was a mentee in Girls in Tech mentorship programme(GITSG) Singapore 2018. GIT was founded by Adriana Gascoigne in San Fran in 2007 and GITSG had its first chapter in Asia.

British philosopher, Alain de Botton says that anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough. This is probably the reason I joined the programme - because it makes me feel slightly uncomfortable. It's usually easier to blend in with your own tribe and coming from a non-geeky background, I was asking more questions than having conversations. Their IT-lingo goes along UX/UI, data scientist, data analytics etc. For most of the time besides using language that I had to internally process for 5 seconds, there were common threads within the workplace which I could resonate with. For example, relationship management, HR matters or PD. 

During our first meetup session, we had ice-breaker games and something else that was new for me was the speed networking which we went for separate interviews with 3 different mentors. The shortlisted mentors for us were based on a set of survey which we did prior to the meeting. Then, we had to rank them in order of preference. Before the ranking, the organiser even told us to chose the mentor whom we dislike! I guess it's to get the most of the experience. When we were 'forced' to work with people who are unlike us, it creates friction and opportunities for our growth by struggling to find similarities and complements. 

We were assigned six one-to-one sessions with our mentor and my mentor worked in a multinational organisation based in Singapore. For half a year, we had our sessions and mid-programme check-in and also met and interact with other mentors and mentees. 

One of our activities that I would remember for a long time is 'fly on the wall'. It was so simple yet effective. We started by gathering in a group of 2 mentors (not assigned) and mentees. Each mentee shared a challenge (e.g. work relationship) with the group. Then everyone would clarify with the presenting mentee for a minute. This is followed by the mentee turning her back to everyone (we have the swivel chair) and the rest of them would take turns to discuss the challenge as though the presenting mentee is not present. According to one of the mentees, this exercise is used by UX/ ethnographic researchers for their work. When the presenting mentee had her back turned, she is to be an observer and not maintain eye contact with others to minimise any change in their behaviours.

I was enthralled to be part of the programme. While it has come to a close, I’m glad to discover more about myself.