Ms Ruby Ng was a former student of River Valley High School and Hwa Chong Junior College before graduating from the National University of Singapore (NUS) with a Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in Mathematics (with honours). She took up a MOE Teaching Scholarship and went on to obtain a post-graduate Diploma in Education from the National Institute of Education (NIE).
Before joining the tuition industry, Ruby taught Mathematics (A-level syllabus) at National Junior College. During her time there, she served as teacher advisor for the college’s Math Society where her role was to oversee the training of students for local Math competitions as well as international ones such as the Australian Math Competition. Passionate about making Math accessible to all, Ruby spearheaded a community outreach project where she and her students in the Math society partnered a Community Development Centre to offer free Math tutoring services to needy secondary students in a particular precinct. In a similar outreach project, she also oversaw the design and implementation of a Mathematics curriculum that is designed to facilitate the teaching and learning of Math to children who struggle with numeracy since young. Besides her involvement in Math Society, Ruby was also the teacher-in-charge of the College’s Innovation and Enterprise Club where she led the students to garner stellar results in several Innovation and Enterprise competitions.
Being a logical and innovative thinker, Ruby is always in the search for newer and better ways to simplify complex mathematical concepts. Over her long teaching career, she has developed her own unique set of Math hacks which she incorporates into her lessons and her lecture notes. She takes a student-centric approach to organizing and designing the content of her teaching materials, prioritizing how most students approach new knowledge rather than how a teacher, who already has mastery of the content, would prefer to teach it. No matter how diverse the learning needs of her students, Ruby’s ability to put herself in the shoes of her students and approach the learning process from their lens rather than hers, gives her the edge of pre-empting questions and misconceptions even before they are formed in her students’ mind. Her emphasis on critical thinking, problem-solving, and real-world applications help students develop a deep appreciation of mathematical principles.
Two other strengths that Ruby possess are her perceptivity and affability, both of which allows her to profile the personality of a student quickly, so that even from the very first encounter with the student, she is already beginning to build a rapport with him/her. She firmly believes in creating a positive and inclusive learning environment where students feel empowered to explore and engage learning on their own terms. But most of all, Ruby is passionate about fostering a growth mindset in her students, encouraging them to embrace challenges and persevere through difficulties, of which Math is but one out of many in life.
Outside of work, Ruby has two loves: A love for nature and a love for some risk-calculated adrenaline rush. Hang-gliding, para-sailing, sky-diving, and canyoning, each being an amalgamation of these two loves, are some of her best experiences in life. And her preferred places to do these things? Switzerland, Australia and most of all, Iceland.