PRINCIPAL'S MESSAGE

Road only in 2001. Over 20 years, under the leadership of several principals, Zhenghua has grown from strength to strength, and has become a school well known in Bukit Panjang for our emphasis on character development and outdoor education.

2019 – Our 20th year as a school. What a memorable milestone year this has been for Zhenghua Secondary School! Centred on the theme: Our Heritage, Our Joy, Our Dreams, we marked this special year by unveiling the Milestone and Community walls on our 20th Awards Day held on 12 April, and we celebrated with alumni, parents and community partners at our very own ZEST Carnival and Arts Festival on 6 July. We even had the privilege of having our President, Mdm Halimah Yacob, visit our school on 17 April to chat with our students and observe how we provide an inclusive educational environment for all our students.

Our Heritage

We have come a long way since our first two years of being housed in containers at another secondary school campus. We took in our very first batch of students in 2000 and moved to our current school building at Senja

Ms Cynthia Goh, our founding principal, established our school identity, and in particular the colour of our school uniform. This distinctive red and black continue to make our students stand out in the neighbourhood, and serve to remind our students that they are ambassadors of our school. Our focus on sports and outdoor education was planted during her time through schoolwide activities like the mass exercise day. She also created the first version of our school song, and established the first set of school values – Commitment, Competence, Compassion.

Mr Lim Kuan Min, our longest serving principal transformed the school under the mantra of No Discipline, No Learning. Character education was greatly emphasised through the CCAs, and our Uniformed Groups were established as our niche. Since then, at every National Day celebration, our Uniformed Groups proudly put up our very own National Day Parade march past in the parade square. Mr Lim established outdoor education as a core part of the Zhenghua experience through the construction of the many outdoor elements that are still in use today to bring about character and leadership development.

Mrs Fiona Tan strengthened our Character, Leadership and Citizenship programme, with the inclusion of our Moral Reasoning module. She expanded the Normal Curriculum experiential learning programmes, which led to us achieving the Lee Hsien Loong Innovations in Normal Curriculum award. The sabbatical programme at the end of Term 1 was also started under her time, which allowed students to develop themselves in various aesthetics and sporting pursuits. Building on our strength, Outdoor Education was then firmly established as our Learning for Life Programme.

Our Joy

Today, we have much to be joyful about.

Character education through outdoor education has now become part of the Zhenghua DNA. All our lower secondary students learn basic first aid and kayaking and water confidence skills. Into our 7th year now: all our secondary 3s embark on a selfled, self-planned 3D2N expedition and camp during the sabbatical week. Our students plan their own route, their budget and their meals. Their expedition takes them to places that they would not have normally gone to. They cover great distances on foot and learn so much about themselves and one another. They also learn how to pitch tents, how to cook outdoors, and most importantly how to bond as a class by overcoming a common challenge.

We are into our 4th year of implementing our Applied Learning Programme (ALP) in game design and robotics. All our lower secondary students learn how to do simple coding and simulation, and they get to control mobile robots to react to the surroundings. We have since expanded our ALP to teach students how to code with Microbits – a programmable array that can be made to do many things. Students use the same Scratch programming software that they learnt in ALP lessons to programme this Microbit array. One example of how our students have programmed this Microbit was that they coded it to function as a thermometer. They then used it to find out the amount of energy released from different food types when they go through combustion. Through the process, they not only learn coding skills, but also scientific inquiry skills. We have also included Microbit coding into the learning of climate and weather in geography lessons.

We have also sought to take learning outside the classroom into authentic settings. Ever since we have adopted Pang Sua pond through the PUB ABC Waters programme, we have created our very own interdisciplinary programme which we call E3 or Explore, Engage, Experience, involving mathematics, science, MTL and the humanities. At Pang Sua Pond, students conduct geographical investigation by sketching and indicating the various amenities that they observe around the pond, and explore the mathematical properties on a math trail there. Students have even embarked on a Mother Tongue Language project there too.

Learning indeed goes beyond textbooks and the examination curriculum. Through our Stretch Programme, we have sought to expose selected students to unique opportunities outside of school. For example, in photo-journalism, students get to learn from experts, and come up with their own journalistic articles. These articles written by our students can be found on our website. Beyond workshops, we have also sent more of our students for external conferences and competitions to stretch their horizons. We are very proud that one of our teams obtained the Honourable Mention at the Future Problem Solving Competition. At the National Schools Literature Festival, our secondary 4 Set-text Debate team emerged winners, while our secondary 1 Choral Reading team managed to achieve the Bronze award. At the Singapore Mathematics Project Festival, two of our teams won the Bronze Medals. At the Istana Heritage Gallery Challenge 2019, our team emerged 3rd. This goes to show that our students can compete against the top schools in Singapore.

Our Character, Leadership, and Citizenship programme has become a mainstay of our curriculum, with teachers guiding our students through lessons in these three domains. We want our students to live out the values, live up to our school vision, and demonstrate what they have learnt. We have thus put in place more opportunities for students to take ownership of their own character and leadership development.

This year, our Student Council organised Camp Elevate, a day camp which saw 5 primary schools send a total of 75 of their student leaders to come experience what it means to live out the Leadership Challenge Model. Our student councillors got to live out and demonstrate their leadership skills by guiding their juniors from the primary schools through various challenges, both indoors and outdoors.

We launched our Peer Supporter programme last year to get students to support one another. This year, our teachers guided our peer supporters to come up with their very own lessons on cyber-wellness. A group of peer supporters went to learn about being advocates in this area and they shared their learning with their fellow peer supporters in the course of creating their own customised lessons. While the process was more time-consuming, it was worthwhile having students lead their classmates in learning about issues such as copyright matters and handling inappropriate content online. In this way, they become active advocates and content creators rather than just passive learners.

In getting our students to volunteer for causes that matter to them, we organised a Community Champions Festival where we invited 7 unique social service organisations and community partners such as Youth Corps Singapore (YCS), Wildlife Reserves Singapore (WRS), and HCA Hospice Care, to share with our secondary 3 students about their work in the community. Students also got to hear the volunteering experiences from other youth such as Afzal, a YCS leader and Zhenghua alumnus Kyler, who continued volunteering with WRS after her own VIA experience as a student. Students then initiate VIA projects with peers or on their own to serve the community. Having the autonomy to lead and champion causes of their choice gave them a greater sense of ownership and gave them an authentic platform to create positive impact on the community.

This is also the third year that we mobilised the whole school to contribute towards making Chinese New Year hampers for needy families in Bukit Panjang. This year, our secondary 5s led the entire project, going out into the neighbourhood to find out the specific needs and requests of the residents in the rental blocks. The secondary 5 students were enthusiastic advocates and addressed the school several times to urge everyone to donate daily food items for the hampers. Mr Liang Eng Hwa was kind enough to come distribute these hampers to some of our residents once again. On top of that, this year, our students hand delivered the customised hampers to the same families they spoke to, thus bringing much joy and cheer to them during the festive period.

We truly want our students to be leaders, and they must first know how to lead themselves, know where they are going, and what they want to do after leaving Zhenghua. Thus, this is the third year that we have organised our ECG symposium, inviting speakers from over 20 different professions to speak with our students, including military personnel, veterinarians, musicians, engineers, lawyers, nurses, and entrepreneurs. We also invited many of the post-secondary institutions including Jurong Pioneer Junior College, the polytechnics, ITE, LaSalle, NAFA, to speak to our students about the various pathways they can pursue.

To top it all, learning can be made more authentic by experiencing the world of work. During the November school holidays last year, some of our secondary 3 students had the opportunity to go for work attachments and experience for themselves the many skills that they actually require to do well in the working world. Ahmad (3N1, 2018) shared with me that from the work attachment, he realised the importance of balancing accounts in a business; Lindsey and Yixuan (both 3E4, 2018) mentioned how important it was to be able to speak well. Nothing beats learning about the usefulness of what we learn in school than being out in the real world of work. This November too, more than 30 secondary 3 students will be taking part in work attachments across 14 different organisations, and may they have a fulfilling learning experience.

Through all these efforts and programmes our students go through, there is much to be joyful about as our students go on to attain stellar academic and cocurricular achievements which you can read up on in the following pages.

We cannot achieve what we hope to do for our students without capable teachers and staff. Our teachers exemplify the passion for lifelong learning, are committed to the development of the whole child and strive tirelessly to help the school do better. Two of our teachers stood out this year at the national level: Mr Muhammad Andi Bin Mohd Zulkepli was awarded the Arif Budiman Malay Language Teacher Award (Motivation Category), and Ms Tan Mei Ying was conferred the Distinguished Service AwardChief Scout’s Commendation. I am pleased to also announce that 19 of our colleagues were promoted this year, with four of our key personnel being promoted to Senior Education Officer 1 and three of them to Senior Education Officer 2. 18 of our staff were also conferred the Long Service Award this year, ranging from 5 to as long as 25 years. I want to also make special mention of two of our support staff who have been with us since the first day our school was founded: Mdm Susila and Mdm Normah, who were both conferred the Zhenghua 20 Years Long Service Award this year.

Our Dreams

Our dreams are encapsulated in our school vision, that every student can and will be a principled, future-ready leader. Over the past two decades, we have had many students who go on to do very well in life and who do us proud. At the post-secondary educational institutions too - the JCs share with us the excellent results of our exstudents, and some even go on to clinch the pinnacle LKY awards at the various polytechnics. Many are now active contributors to society in their own ways.

Zhenghua has indeed made great progress over these two decades; there is much to be proud of in terms of our heritage, much to be joyful about in terms of our achievements, and much to be hopeful about the future. Just as the first line of our school song goes: Our Dreams, Our Future. These dreams are written large on the faces of each and every one of our students. So to all the Zhenghua students past, present and future, you are our dreams, you are our future. Dream big, work hard, and may our school continue to soar to greater heights as we embark on the next decade of our growth and development.

Happy 20th Anniversary, Zhenghua!

OUR 20th anniversary