Farhana: Do you know that you need not have a diploma or degree in mass comm to be a journalist for BH?! I was surprised to learn about this. They welcome prospective journalists from all walks of life and backgrounds e.g. ex-entrepreneurs, ex-lawyers and of course, ex-teachers! This is a trait of their working force that BH appreciates and values as it allows for a huge networking that can provide them easy access to a wide range of information and resources for printed and digital publications on various domains/areas e.g. politics, finance, human interest stories etc. Clearly, interconnectedness is a feature of the 21st C and should be a T&L model that we adopt in Singapore schools (interdisciplinary/interdepartment programmes or activities).

Insyirah: This learning journey allowed me to understand the rationale behind using certain forms of language in Berita Harian. As a ML teacher who believes that the newspaper should be a reference for good use of language to students, I am often critical of how ML is being used in BH. However, from this LJ I have learnt that the editors do a lot of homework to ensure that sentence structure and vocabulary are as accurate as possible and do not affect consumers' understanding of the news. As a teacher, I need to continue to remind students of the importance of context when using ML so that they can use appropriate language in different contexts.

We also learned that newspapers must innovate to stay relevant. The news agency's addition of short video news segments and electronic editions highlights this adaptation. These changes make news more diverse and accessible.

In addition, the sharing by the different presenters was very engaging. The presenters brought us through all the thought process that they have behind every articles or photographs, as well as the behind-the-scenes (operational) work that they have to work on, in order to present the news accurately and timely.

The curation of news for the Zaobao's douhao e-magazine for students are also well thought out, so that the students will find the news relevant and be engaged in the activities provided in the e-magazine.

All in all, I learnt that it is important to always learn, seek improvement and evolve, in order to stay relevant, while we never forget on why we started in what we're doing.

I am particularly impressed by their resilience in driving digitalization efforts to expand their readership and broaden their audience, especially among the youth!

This exercise brought the past alive as I was able to envision how China Town was from the perspective of the narrator who was supposed to be a peasant from China. It is a good exercise in perspective taking and walking in the shoes of a character to understand setting, motivations, feelings and experiences.

The interesting part of the tour was that the tour guide took on the role of a peasant who came from China and it was as if we saw the changes of Chinatown from his eyes/perspective.

What stood out to me was:

1. Effectiveness of a strengths-based approach. The instructor emphasised that they always start from their client's strengths. E.g. if the person can only move 1 part of his body due to stroke, they trained him to operate a machine which only requires minimal hand movement.

2. There are endless possibilities. The ingenious ways deployed by the organisations to bring out the best in every individual inspires me to strive to do the same.

At the end of the trip, we were all left with a deep sense of appreciation for the contribution of these people to present-day Singapore. It was an enriching session about understanding Singapore's multicultural heritage. Moreover, it made us contemplate about universal human emotions like ambition, finding ourselves and finding love in the process. I also had a great time interacting with my department teachers outside our usual school routines.