Clara Khoo

I’m a fourth-generation teacher — my maternal grandparents, paternal grandfather and Mom were all teachers before me — and fourteen years into the profession, I still find immense joy in the History classroom. I currently serve as Head (Student Development) at St Nicholas Girls’ School, after years teaching JC History at Catholic Junior College and Hwa Chong Institution and a stint at MOE HQ shaping the ‘A’ level History and China Studies in English syllabuses.

Outside the classroom, I’m a heritage explorer. I’ve traced the Chinese clan associations of Telok Ayer and Ann Siang Hill, climbed inside the Clock Tower at Hwa Chong to help digitise it with the National Heritage Board, written about the red brick edifice of the old National Library, and walked the historic remains of the Berlin Wall on my first visit to Germany in 2012 — where I left parts of my heart in Berlin. The places change; the question doesn’t — what stories can be told from everyday places?

I read history at NUS as an undergraduate and returned more than a decade later for an MA in Asian and Global History in 2021, finishing it part-time while teaching full-time and raising a baby through the pandemic. Three years later, and after three local Teacher Work Attachments (TWAs), I embarked on my own self-curated overseas TWA across Europe to document WWII sites. This is the proof I offer to my students that it’s never too late to chase one’s dreams.