About Rachel

I've known Rachel since she was 8 yrs old. She was loud, outspoken and tomboyish then.

Not long after she was in the student care centre where i worked as a teacher, i got to learn that her parents had divorced, and Rachel and her 2 older brothers live with their mother and grandmother.

Things had gone from bad to worse for Rachel when her mother later re-married and has 2 other girls. She had left Rachel and her brothers to fense for themselves with the 80 yrs-old grandma.

For a seaon, Rachel was not motivated to study and became very tempermental. She would often come to school very late and drowned herself with long-hours of computer gaming in the arcade, and even in her friends' homes. Her addiction had become so bad that she would squandered away the $60 monthly pocket allowance, which her estranged dad provided, within a week in the arcade.

With no money left for the month, I would often see the girl skipped her lunch and sometimes chew sandwiches brought from home. I had a hard time in coaxing her to be thrifty with her allowances. I had even handheld her in weekly budgetting but my effort was in vain. The girl could not and did not want to quit her gaming addiction. And this habit had isolated her from building meaningful friendship with kids around her. For a while, the girl were lazy and unmotivated.

Rachel is now a teenager studying in secondary one. She came to visit me on 1/9/2010 Teachers' Day together with the other kids. She was ceremonially late as usual. However, unlike before, the girl has exercised the initiative to help me to pack right after the others had left my place. To me, this is new milestone from Rachel 'cos previously she never seemed to take any initiative to help me in anything.

Being a class monitor now, she explained that she has gone for leadership training in school. And if she should fail to exercise intiative, she would be reprimanded by the teachers. I told her that I am very pleased with her transformation and encouraged her.

With given time, a child surrounds with positive influences would surely be transformed into a beautiful "butterfly". We, as adults, just have to be patient :)