Victorian Music Teachers Association: Fill & Download for Free

In Australia we have a site called AMTR (Australian Music Teachers Register). This is a great online resource with varying levels of membership. I have had many leads through this.I also the use VMTA listing which is the Victorian Music Teacher Association.If you want to focus on your local area create a great looking A4 size ad and make copies to post in shop windows and libraries etc. The same notice can be shrunk to quarter size and put into local school newsletters. Most schools offer advertising space but you might need to pay something.Try imagining that you are a parent searching for a teacher. Where do you look?

I attended Hwa Chong for six years, starting from the age of 13 to the age of 18. Four years were spent in the all-male secondary school and two years were spent in the co-ed college. I will not talk about my two-year co-ed college experience. To my mind the two years had less impact on me than my four years in an all-male secondary school.After finishing my PSLE, I was required to fill in the list of secondary schools that I wanted to enroll in. If I am not wrong, I made the following choices in the order of: (i) Hwa Chong Institution; (ii) Raffles Institution; and (iii) ACS (I).So I was admitted to Hwa Chong Institution (High School). The all-male secondary school that I entered as a 13 year old (more than a decade ago) was known as The Chinese High School. I still associate my secondary school experiences with this name. As I write this, I feel a strong sense of nostalgia. There is no question about how much I enjoyed my time at the sprawling Bukit Timah campus.The consortium system and studentsConsortiumsI found the consortium system in Chinese High to be extremely pleasant. Students are sorted into four consortia when they first join Chinese High: Aphelion, Pro-Ed, Ortus and iSpark. iSpark is reserved for gifted kids (the really brainy ones; they basically destroy the competition when they join the general pool again in the co-ed college). There is no competition amongst these four consortia (unlike in Harry Potter); it is just a management approach taken by the school.Four classes in one level (i.e. four in the secondary one batch, four in the secondary two batch, etc) belong to one consortium. Each consortium has its own teachers. So over four years, I was taught by the pool of teachers belonging to my consortium, Aphelion. Once a month, the entire consortium (secondary one to four) comes together for a three-hour consortium session. A variety of activities may take place at such sessions.The consortium system made me know the students in my consortium very quickly. It also made me closer to my teachers. Additionally it was also easy to identify people in school. For instance, it was common to hear, "Are you talking about Tom? That guy from Ortus?".StudentsStudents who attend Chinese High come from all walks of life and are, by virtue of the cut-off point, academically competent. The most intelligent and driven people I have met in my life are friends made here at Chinese High. Many of them are now attending prestigious universities worldwide. Crucially, many of them are not mere bookworms and also excel in sports and the arts. Although Chinese High routinely admits the top 3% of PSLE students every year, I guess the biggest thing about the school is that the students don't compete against each other. We just grow up together. Many of us, even as adults facing the challenges of grown up life, remain as very warm and sincere people.TeachersI credit my teachers at this institution for my personal development and my current ability to face adversity. The teachers I had at Chinese High were brilliant. Superlatives must be used. They always trusted the students. In general the teachers there made the students believe in themselves and their abilities. That we will be able to conquer the challenges we face, no matter how tall these challenges, as long as we desired to do so. I have held this belief since then.Values and personal developmentYou've got to see it to believe it. At my age I've finally seen the importance of all the values that we were taught to embrace. I'm also more grateful for the rich experience that I had in Chinese High.Values that I now find very importantWe were taught, amongst other things, the philosophy of "win-win" and not to do unto others what you do not wish for them to do to you. Some of the values that I now consider to be the guiding lights of my life are Chinese phrases taught to me in Chinese High. For example, we learnt to never forget the source from where you drink water. Most importantly, as engraved upon the hills of the school, we were taught to be resilient and ceaseless in our pursuit of excellence.Projects' DayIn terms of personal development, I was given a world of opportunities to learn. There is an annual Projects' Day in Chinese High, where students choose an area that they are interested in, identify a problem and come up with a solution. They then make presentations to a panel of teachers. After several rounds, the best students across the entire school will reach the grand finals after and win some prizes. It was here that I was first exposed to problem solving. Very grateful. At the age of 16, I did my first community service project under this Projects' Day programme.Major Research PaperWe were also required to write academic research papers. It was called Major Research Paper. I wrote it when I was 15. I must admit that I wasn't the most conscientious student back then, so I probably did not do well for it! Back then, the school was already involving students in more than the traditional education that students go through in Singapore. We were assessed not only on exams, but also class participation and various coursework!Curriculum (other than normal academic subjects)On top of normal academic subjects, we had classes in Physical Education (really intense in Secondary One - all of us were made to come back on Saturdays to run laps), Art, Music, Wei Qi (a form of Chinese Chess), Calligraphy and a weekly three hour session with our entire cohort (the entire secondary level batch) in the school auditorium. In this session we can have items such as a dialogue with our principal, guest lectures or etiquette lessons. In one instance we had a stylist come to school!SabbaticalsWe also had sabbaticals! This was very very interesting. We could learn random things for one week every semester. So for one entire week there will be no normal classes. Instead we attended courses heavily subsidized by the school. In my time there, my sabbaticals were, if I recall correctly,... photography lessons, stock-picking (yes investing) and an overseas camp in Perth. I think I also took part in one Model United Nations programme.Specialized education programmesIn Secondary Three, we could choose certain programmes to be streamed into. You can find out more at Hwa Chong's Wiki page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwa_Chong_Institution), but I must say that the programme I joined was very amazing. Although I was a triple science student in Secondary Three and Four, I also joined the Humanities Programme.This meant that I did not join my class for the humanities subjects. Instead I joined the other Humanities Programme students and was taught by specialist teachers in the areas of Geography, History and English Literature. Very interesting! Some of my close friends today were from that programme. I also had the chance to visit the UK on a subsidized Humanities Programme trip.The campus and foodFor a secondary school, I think the school's campus is huge. It is in fact bigger than my university. I don't think words do it justice ... the Victorian architecture of the Clock Tower perched upon a hill, the old elegant trees in the driveway, the sheer number of buildings and land space, the extensive facilities (we had a workout gym, swimming pools, dance studios, street soccer courts, soccer field, basketball courts, various lecture theatres, air-conditioned classrooms, squash courts, tennis courts, track and field, research labs, drama theatre etc).Our food is damn good. I love the food there. Ask any old boy and they will tell you that the food there is really good. Many of us return to eat the canteen food every now and then. More than a decade since I entered the school, the same stalls remain. My personal favourite is the mixed economic rice (purple plate) stall. Bravo!Life-long friendshipsDon't think I need to talk too much about it. I made some of my best friends here. It was a boy's school, so lots of fun stuff happened. Getting scolded by our teachers for playing football in our school uniforms, changing in the classroom because there are no girls, heading to KAP McDonald's after class, playing chapteh, broken classroom fans, exploring the school (it is a very big campus) and the "kiddy room", rushing down from the Clock Tower to the canteen in 5 minutes, looking at the view from the Clock Tower's summit ... memories. Fun times.I have never regretted going to The Chinese High School. I only regret not making full use of the learning opportunities there.It is also funny for me to realize how much I hated my school uniform back then (we were always laughed at by others in secondary school because of our uniform).Today, the uniform serves as a source of great nostalgia.

I was born and raised in rural Upstate New York, outside Ithaca in the Finger Lakes region. Since graduating high school I have traveled extensively and lived in Europe for many years. Though I love getting out and seeing the world, I still think that the area I'm from is one of the most idyllic places in the world!A lot of the things you've mentioned are definitely true, sweaters and colored leaves and such in the fall... but the area also is known for its brutal winters and sweltering hot summers. Each season has something great to offer, but also can be extreme.Being that most people associate New York with New York City, one might be surprised to learn that almost all of the state is actually rural farmland and wilderness. The Adirondack Park comprises 6.1 million acres of protected nature; which is bigger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon and the Great Smokey Mountain National Parks combined!That being said, the rural lifestyle does have many positives, as well as negatives. The town I grew up in was a farming town with about 1000 people living in the boundaries of the village and only 1 stop light in town (we just got a 2nd last week though!) My high school (grades 8-12) bused kids in from the bigger town and about 5 other smaller villages around it, and still only had 600 students. Everyone knew each other in town and even after not living there for many years, when I'm in town I'll run into my old English teacher at the post office or our former Homecoming king at the gas station. It's quaint to say the least. People are friendly and are always eager to lend a hand to help a neighbor out. On the other hand, gossip tends to spread quickly and I've often heard complaints that people can be very nosy.The scenery is beautiful with rolling hills, small valleys and of course the Finger Lakes. The seasons can be beautiful, especially at the end of summer and during the height of autumn. Right now the colored leaves are gorgeous! This weekend my town will be hosting its annual Apple Festival, which takes place at the historically preserved homestead on the outskirts of town. Lots of traditional crafts, bluegrass music, local food and tours of the historic buildings. One of my favorite things about my hometown! :)On the other hand though, a lot of rural Upstate New York has a lot of poverty. Farming doesn't make a lot of money, and as that tends to be a very prevalent career passed on through generations, much of the area has a very low income. Money isn't everything of course, but with the agricultural, low income lifestyle tends to come other things as well. I don't know why, but there seems to be an inexplicable amount of "rednecks" upstate. The types who listen exclusively to country music, wear cowboy hats with their "shit kickers" and fly confederate flags. We live in New York for crying out loud! Being so far from the "city" is also a problem. It is sometimes necessary to drive at least half an hour to find a grocery store or somewhere to go out to eat. You pretty much can't live here if you don't have a car, which is unfortunate with gas prices today.Overall though, and referencing back to your question of whether there is a certain feeling that goes with living here, I'd have to say "Yes. There is." With the small towns, beautiful old homes (many old Victorian farm houses and early 1800s estates), slower pace of life and many people who tend to stay pretty much their whole lives in the same place, it sort of feels to me sometimes like the area is stuck in time. I don't say that as a bad thing though... I absolutely love it here! I find it easy to imagine what it might have been like to live here around the turn of last century and sincerely hope it stays the same for a long time to come!