About Me
My name is Daniel Sun
My Previous Career
I am formerly an A-level Mathematics teacher in one of Singapore’s junior colleges for many years. I am not stating how many years I have taught and which junior college I taught in because this is the internet and I do not intend to share too much personal details. It is unnecessary for me to do that.
However, you can easily verify my claims by looking up the school magazines from school libraries. There are not many junior colleges. At one point, there were around 20 of them. You can easily leave out the relatively newer junior colleges and focus on the older ones if you are really that keen to verify my claims.
My Education
I studied in National University of Singapore (NUS) and majored in Mathematics. I went through the Postgraduate Diploma in Education programme at National Institute of Education (NIE/NTU) as a compulsory training to become a teacher in Singapore.
After teaching for many years, I went on to do my Master of Education in Mathematics Education. My Master Dissertation is entitled “Effects of the use of a Computer Algebra System (CAS) on Junior College Students’ Achievement in Mathematics and Their Attitudes Towards CAS.”
My Current Status
I have resigned from my teaching job and currently I am exploring many different arenas, learning new skills and doing things that fascinate me. One of those many things are building websites and learning digital marketing.
Many people have urged and advised me to go into full-time private tuition to make a living but that is not a path I intend to head towards. I don’t mind giving one or two sets of private tuition per week, either to individuals or groups. I still need the time to attend to the many things that I am doing. I still have my clients to serve in my digital marketing business.
My Beliefs and Philosophy
My Attitude Towards Teaching
I am not very enthusiastic in giving tuition because I have my belief that in teaching Mathematics, I have to impart the complete knowledge which encompasses the understanding of the subjects and the thinking skills meant to be cultivated in learning Mathematics. It is disappointing teaching Mathematics to students whose purpose is solely to pass examinations bypassing the understanding and the benefits of studying Mathematics.
It is insulting to tell me, “Just teach me how to get the same answer to this question that is provided.” Notice how I phrased my sentence, “get the same answer to this question that is provided.” That may not be the exact words but that is the meaning behind it.
It is not even “how to solve this problem”. Solving the problem or getting an answer is not even what they want but getting the same exact answer provided and many times, the answer provided can actually be wrong.
Similarly, I do not like my ability being judged by both parents and students according to the grades the students got from tests and examinations. Well, every teacher has students who have done very well and students who did not make it. So how are you going to judge the teacher by the students’ results? Much can be said about this and this can be a lengthy blog article on its own.
Nevertheless, I have occasionally lowered my personal standard in helping students just to pass examinations both as a teacher and those few rare times as a private tutor prior to my teaching career, and responding to the urging of my ex-students who were re-doing their A-level as private candidates during the early years of my teaching career.
My Attitude Towards Learning
As a student during my junior college and university days, I was a student who struggled with keeping in pace with my daily assignments and my grades were not that glorious.
Looking back and having understood myself better now, I have realised that I am someone who needs to understand absolutely everything, including things that are not taught and not mentioned by the teachers before I can move on with the subject.
Fortunately I could still figure things out for myself in the subject of Mathematics but that took me a longer time than I was given at a hurried pace in the school context. Thus, I had challenges keeping in pace with my teachers. That was a tremendous challenge especially in the university.
Back during my varsity days, I was fortunate to have a peer and a senior who helped me along and my senior was somewhat like a coach to me. Both of them have done very well in the academic arena, having become highly celebrated professors. I will not name them here for the sake of their privacy. This academically high achieving peer of mine, understood the challenge that I had during our days as undergraduates. He used to say to me, “If you do not understand, just accept it and move on. Don’t get emotional about it.” That was something I could not, and cannot do.
There was also this favourite professor I had who gave me my Eureka moment halfway through my first year as an undergraduate. His slow and rigorous approach in teaching helped me saw the light. I had always done well for the examinations set by him while many other students did badly and cursed him because they were only seeking to memorise tutorial questions and answers instead of understanding the fundamentals. Unlike other teaching staff, he expected his students to understand the fundamentals to pass his examinations.
Moving past the pressure cooker days as a student, I began to have the time to piece things together for myself and understand as much as I want, comprehending each and every little thing I want in learning, both the new as well as those old things I once studied during my school days.
It is also this nature of mine that enables me to see and understand things more completely and in turn, explain them to others.
My Experience in Teaching Scholars
During my teaching career, I seldom had the opportunity to teach scholars. Once in a long while, I did have some very bright “ordinary” students who were very good at Mathematics and had very good attitude towards the subject. It was a pleasure and honour to have taught them.
For a short few years, it had also been very enriching and rewarding to have taught the overseas scholars. The scholars could appreciate what I was teaching them and I could sense their Eureka moments. It was like someone has scratched an itch that nobody had ever helped them scratch. Many times we thought that scholars knew everything because they eventually do very well in their examinations. I learned that this is not true.
Scholars have the fundamental difference that they have good learning attitudes and good academic foundations. They seek to understand what they are studying and not just getting the “right answers”. Even if they do not fully understand a subject matter, they will still work hard and as a mean of survival, they still know how to do well in the examinations despite not having fully understood what they studied. Like other students, they too have doubts and challenges. They too need to be helped except that they have better attitude and know what they want to achieve.
My Fundamental Skills and Abilities
Nevertheless, Mathematics and teaching are two fundamental skills I have. I can easily pick them up again when I need to but of course I need a little ignition to start my engine and a little reading up and practice to recollect my memories whenever I need to. I still like Mathematics and teaching but at present, I want to give more time to things that I never had the time and opportunity to explore in the past.
Building a website on learning Mathematics has always been at the back of my mind. I started a mathematics blog for my Mathematics Department around the year 2012 when I was still teaching but eventually I let the domain name expire as my department colleagues did not make use of the blog. I have retrieved the articles that I wrote and will probably deploy in this website some of the materials I once wrote in that expired and defunct blog.
Purpose of this Website
In marketing, this should be one of the first things to be highlighted but strangely I have put it last. I have put this last because the purpose of this website has to fall in line with my beliefs and philosophy. Moreover, it is still at an evolutionary stage.
Currently, I will discuss more about the learning and teaching of Mathematics. In the long term, it will probably evolve into an online teaching platform, as creating all the teaching materials will take a great deal of time and effort similar to that required from a full-time job. I have never forgotten the first 10 years of my teaching career when I laboured day and night way past midnight each day just writing my lecture notes, solving problems and designing questions for tutorials, examples, tests and examinations.
In concluding my introduction, once again, my name is Daniel Sun. I was a teacher, a Mathematics teacher, and this is my website on Mathematics.
Testimonials
From My Students
Mr Daniel Sun was my Maths tutor at JC and probably the most passionate teacher I ever encountered. He would always make time to answer our queries and was one of the better teachers that students liked. He didn’t waste our time at class (unlike other teachers) but was serious about imparting his knowledge. Thanks Sir!
– Tania Oh (DPhil, Oxon)