This is Keng Chee. I'm so sorry for only posting the reflections now, but anyway, here are the reflections!
Chun Yin:
Last Wednesday my group made our last trip down to Chaoyang School for the term. The lesson conducted would be a summary of what they have learnt for the previous weeks. With everything that they’ve learnt, these kids are ready to serve at the Café.
The students were as usual excited about the lessons, and displayed much enthusiasm towards learning in our lessons. On the whole, the students benefitted much from the 4 lessons that we have conducted for them so far, and most of them, if not all, have mastered the “art of serving in the Café”. The students, however, might need some adult supervision for the first few times since they are, after all, Primary 4/6/ kids who are doing this for the first time.
To sum up the learning experience so far, I must say it has been a really enriching experience working with these special kids, especially for the hands-on part in the last two lessons. Despite the hard work that we have to put in preparing the materials, thinking about the running and flow of the lesson, our hard work finally paid off, the lessons were successful, and it was heartwarming seeing the smiles on the children’s faces and their enthusiasm in participating in the lessons. The group was extremely touched when all of the students said they felt “happy” after attending our lessons, and they really learnt a lot during our lessons. The only one which ticked the sad face describing her emotions explained that she was sad because she wanted to learn more. This reaffirmed our abilities and put a smile to our faces when we saw that the children actually appreciated our lessons and had such a great passion for learning.
Next term the students are going to start work officially in the Internet Café, and I’m sure that along with the teacher’s and our supervision, that they would excel and be able to run the Café well.
Eugene Gan:
The visit to
To start by being a little bit objective
Good things:
Students could complete our worksheet and survey
They were able to remember what we have taught them from past lessons
We completed our lesson plan on time
We were prepared and efficient in our lessons
Things to improve:
We could have conducted lesson in a big group instead of individually
Language used in worksheet could have been slightly simpler
Communication with students could have been established well as to telling them what was needed to be done
To be subjective
I really saw the passion and pride of the students in doing work, even though maybe their handwriting wasn’t the neatest in the world, or maybe their trend of thought wasn’t the fastest. They rejoiced in understanding something, and they leaked a smile when they got an answer correct. I guess it’s the simple pleasures of life that we see as we make an impact on the students. It makes a difference that they know that their efforts are appreciate.
To reflect on this whole experience, from teaching the six steps to serve to money counting, it has really been an eye opening experience, for me and my group members. Firstly, being a teacher to slightly disadvantaged students is not an easy tasked. They want your attention, you want everyone’s attention. Nevertheless, coming out of lesson knowing they have learnt something is really cool
Through all these teaching, I’ve learnt to regard those students like friends, or little buddies. No they are not students, and definitely they are not pawns of our project. They are the joy we get in putting paper to action, and definitely service learning.
I’ve learnt from them. A whole lot. For lack of a poorer background and lower intellect, these people should be in the mainstream schools. Nowadays, people in our environment go behind people’s backs to get what they want. Or maybe they’ll just tell you they don’t study for a test and tell you not to study when actually back home they are mugging their heads off. We need a bit more sincerity, honestly, and upfrontness like these students. Their innocence might make people think they are the lesser lot, but character wise, they represent what we need to look to.
Oops, maybe this is too far fetched. I don’t think so. It’s what I felt from say 3-4 weeks of teaching and interaction.
Keng Chee:
Today, we had our last lesson of the term with the students at Chaoyang School and we took up the challenge of taking both the 4/1 and 6/3 classes. I would say that it had been quite challenging as we were a bit short on manpower to interact closely with them and that through the short revision session, the completing of worksheets and the feedback session today, I have realized some of my strengths and weaknesses amongst learning other things.
In summary, I have learnt to not accept things for what they are, but to make sure that I always seek to look more deeply into things and be more understanding. Like the creating of the worksheet, although we added more pictures to try to make the worksheet more interesting, we assumed that the language was fine for the children and that they would understand everything. That poor assumption did cost us some difficulty in the conducting of the lesson to complete the worksheet. However, from this mistake, I learnt that we must always be not assuming in anything we do, and this does apply to other things in our lives.
Also, I have learnt more about handling the different students at Chaoyang School, and to be more sensitive towards different people’s feelings. Like for those who are more shy, I have learnt to try making them feel a bit more comfortable while constantly giving them encouragement to speak up. For those who are weaker at something, I have learnt to be much more patient while trying my best to explain more point clearly. For those who are more active and seek to have attention, I have also learnt to be much more understanding by giving them chances to speak up without neglecting others. All these lessons on people relations skills have indeed allowed me to learn much through this journey of interaction and service.
So finally to round up, I learnt that these students are really just like us. Yes, they might be weaker in some areas, but from all the past interactions with them, I realized that they are just normal students like us, with the passion to learn and make friends with others. Before this project, I was really a bit worried as to how I can interact and make a difference in the lives of people whom I thought was more unfortunate than I am, however they were the ones who have made a difference in my life, by letting me learn so much about them and myself.
I do think Term 2 was a term in which we had a great chance to interact, make friends and learn much from the students at Chaoyang School, and with the ending of today’s lesson, I look forward to our interaction with others next term.
Samson:
Today was basically a refreshing session for them where we revised the topics that we have taught them over the past few weeks. We taught class 4 and 6 at the same time in order to finish the lessons on a high note. It also gives us more time to spend with them. I guess the main part of today was probably the doing of the worksheet and the feedback form. I realized that teaching them to do a worksheet is not easy at all and it is impossible to teach a group of them at the same time. They need one to one attention as they all learn at different paces which mean that we have to adapt to their learning pace. In order allow them to understand the question asked in the worksheet, I decided to get the group to read out the question together in order to clarify any doubts that they might have. This proved to be a good move as many of them are not able to understand what the question is asking for. Later, I focused on teaching 2 students. This was actually very difficult as I had to attend to both of them at the same time. Perhaps it would have been easier if I had gotten them to do it together. Nevertheless, I tried my best to help them complete the worksheet. I was very surprised but delighted when Veera came along and wanted to help out on teaching one of them how to do the question. Their spirit of helping each other was really touching.
Next up was the filling up of the evaluating form. This was meant to allow them to give us feedback on the lessons that we have conducted over the past few weeks. At first, we merely gave them the evaluation form and asked them to fill it in and give us comments. However, after some advice from Mrs Suwandi, we decided to read the questions to them one by one in order to make sure they give us honest feedback and not just randomly tick the boxes. I was very happy when I saw the evaluation forms as they were all very happy with our teaching. I was even more touched when I saw a tick in the no box for the question “Are you happy with your leaning?” Below, she wrote “I want to learn more”. This shows how positive their learning attitude is and this is something that we can really follow. Instead of complaining about the huge amounts of homework that we have, we should be more positive and take it as a learning experience which would help us in the future.
Overall, I have certainly learnt much from teaching these students and I hope that I would get such an opportunity again in the future.
Zhuo Yang:
The lesson we had on 21st May was a recap of all the previous 3 lessons we had conducted, namely serving with a smile, courtesy & respect, and money skills/exchange. We set out wanting to complete a full practice of the steps in serving, a worksheet which would test all the knowledge which they should have by now, and an evaluation form to be done by all our students from P4 and P6 such that we can work on our areas for improvement during the holidays.
The place we were in today was the internet café once again. The ventilation was good and the place was well-lit. However, the internet café was a bit too noisy today as there was another uninvolved class seated in a corner of the enclosed room and making too much noise.
We worked as a whole big group when we did a verbal recap of all that we said since the first lesson, before breaking up into 2 groups, by level, to practise the steps of serving at the counter. This ensured that their attention span can still be kept to observing others while doing their own practice at the same time. After that, we broke up into individual mentoring when the students did the 3-page worksheet which required them to think for themselves and differentiate what should be done and what not to be done. This also gave them the chance to be on their own totally and test themselves, while we guided them from the sides if they had any difficulties.
I think that the major problem was during the individual work on the worksheets. We were not able to attend to everybody who needed help all at the same time as we were outnumbered, while 1 of us had to take care of the video-camera as well. The body language of some of the girls told me that some were in trouble and needed help, or jealous that they did not get the help that their friends were getting, thus they were getting fidgety or even angry; but most of their body language told me that they were very enthusiastic about the lessons and that they had a clear grasp of what we taught through their confidence while doing the worksheets. If we had done this activity together as a group of perhaps 2-3 students to 1 volunteer, the results could have been better as everyone would get the attention of the volunteer at the same time, while discussion amongst the few of them can go on as well.
When I first got there, I was looking forward to a good lesson put off by us as we had prepared our necessary logistics, and I wanted a good end to the string of lessons and ending on a high going into the June holidays, both for us and for the students. After the lesson, I felt very satisfied as the response was great, in fact better than what I had expected, and so I had met my own emotional expectations before the lesson. Through the worksheet and the evaluation form, I learnt that some of my friends are able to create simple but pin-point questions which can identify the students’ knowledge or feelings straight away, and I feel that that is a very good asset to the team. I am particularly proud of guiding Fira through doing the whole worksheet all by herself and helping her to complete it with a perfect score; she was definitely very pleased with herself. More importantly, I managed to convince her that copying from her friends would not do her good, and why she should attempt to understand the concepts instead. Eventually, she sat down and did the question all over by herself again.
There was 1 little problem which I saw today. The few of us had a little argument with each other about the answer of our own worksheet in front of the students, and I thought that was not very nice as it reflected negligence when it was a mere misunderstanding. We can work on communicating in a more silent manner, or double-checking our logistics before using them in the future.
The past month of lessons on café management was certainly a joy, and I’m glad that the students had so much take-away from these 4 lessons. By the next term, they should be able to operate the internet café, at least in providing the hospitality and service. I look forward to more planning in the June holidays and a new set of curriculum for the lessons on the applications of the internet café in Term 3.
Keng Chee
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