My "Cheap" Thrill

After busying with my P6 students in preparing their PSLE (Primary School Leaving Exams) and the younger ones in their final year exams, I've finally gotten a chance to take a break and catch up in my blogging.

As a tutor or teacher, I'm glad that most of my kids have done well. I was thrilled when I heard news of their academic results particularly how much they have improved.

Joanne, for example, a slow learner managed to leap to 53% from 38% in her Science. Kristal, my brillant P4 girl, scored 79% from 65% in her Maths. Adeline, who flung her P6 Preliminary Exams Math, managed to get a B from C in her PSLE even though I only spent a month to help her. And Yee Xuan who got 249 in her PSLE T-score from 220 plus in her prelim exams. There are many more...

In short, news of my students' improvement simply thrills me.

Most parents I know would simply look at the grades of their child. Whenever the kid could not get 90s or the perfect 100 score, they would deem their child academic performance as weak. I find such perception of their kid is so unfair and unkind. The goal or target they set for their child is so unrealistic. Often I would have to re-direct them to see their child's progress - the percentage of improvement from previous work. To me, this is a more realistic view of the child's academic effort.

My Niece, the Motivated Saver

Not long ago, I brought my niece and nephew to deposit their savings. Surprisingly the girl had managed to accumulate a substantial amount of money since our last trip there in June. With a single deposit of $100 into her POSBkids account, she was awarded with a “well done” rubber chop.

Beaming with pride as we trudged out of the bank, she audaciously declared that she is aiming to save to hit the next level of $300 by year end. The cheap plastic hand-held game, which worth $5 or less, is now her new target.

I told her frankly that amount was too ambitious to achieve within 6 months. Base on my calculation, it would take her a year to accumulate this money.

Maybe her Math is poor or she is plain ignorant. The 10-yr-old, nevertheless, seems to have made up her mind to achieve that goal by this December.

On top of her daily school allowance of $2, my niece reasoned that with the $4 she earns from her mum in babysitting her baby brother, and $10 from dad in washing up their master-bedroom toilet, she is very confident that she can work to earn and save the $300.

I’m really very amazed as well as impressed by her gungho and entrepreneur spirit.

My Niece, the Self-Motivated Learner

Two weeks ago, before the Nov-Dec school holiday started, my 10-yr-old niece called and told me that she had some good as well as very bad news for me. She disclosed that she had done very well in her English and Chinese final year exams. Her English is Band 1 with 25% score improvement, her Chinese is Band 2 with more than 100% improvement. Her Science has improved by 18% but her Math is in red.

I appraised her for such drastic improvement in most of her subjects and asked her if her school teachers have done anything special in helping her. Without any hint of bashfulness, she boldly claimed that she has made up her mind to do well and has been pushing herself hard to excel.

I saw my 10-yr-old has become a self-motivated learner.

For years, she has been having remedial evening classes with her school teachers but her academic results are often hovering around 40s and 50s.

I noticed that ever since the bank trip, my 10-yr-old has matured and learnt how to set targets herself – first in her daily saving, now in her academic achievements. I’m very proud of her and hope that she will overcome her apprehension of Math and strive to excel in that subject soon.

Finally My Nephew is Learning The Value of Saving

Last Thursday I finally brought my 9 years-old nephew to the bank together with his sister. The last time he went to deposit his saving was two years back in 2008.

Unlike the sister, the boy did not save much. He splurged on soft drinks, stationary and others with his daily pocket allowances. Hence, he only managed to accumulate $40 over a span of 2 years while his sister has achieved 4 times that amount of money.

He was all excited admiring the new numeric updated in his bank book when we left the bank. His sister was awarded with a "Well done" rubber chop for her $100 deposit that day. And the boy was determined to have his future saving to catch up with the sister's.

2 days ago, my sister-in-law told me that the boy started to "charge" her $1 for making her coffee. She was quite amused.

My niece told me that her mother would award her $4 for babysitting her baby brother for her. She proudly told me that's one of her best and quickest way to generate money for saving. Concerned about her character-building, I casually asked her about her motive whenever it comes to helping her mum. Does it always have to be the monetary awards or simply because she is being helpful? Without blinking an eye, she said it is the second one.

I'm quite pleased that the kids have began to be more aware of the importance of saving after the bank trip and are creative in ways to accumulate wealth at their level. On the other hand, I do hope that this new found desire would not "contaminate" their childlike traits of being helpful.

How The Rich Perceives Things

This is a funny story i heard from the pulpit...

A son of an oil Sheikh is studying in a university in England. Everyday he would drive his golden Lambogini sport car to campus.

He emailed his dad one day telling him his shock that all his classmates and even lecturers took trains and buses to campus. A few days later, his dad replied: "Son stop embarrassing yourself and disgracing me, here is $ 20 million pounds. Go and get yourself a train."

:)

Educational stress in Singapore

Just yesterday, my pastor sounded out her alarm of how stressful Singapore kids are nowadays. Many local parents have to teach their kids how to add, subtract, write and read BEFORE sending their kids to primary school. Foreigners who are not familiar with our system often would find our educational system stressful and their kids suffer some kind of "cultural" shock.

Yes, I also find this amusing. Many primary 1 and 2 teachers often expect their students able to read and write before being enrolled into their schools. Those students who cannot read well would often be separated to a different reading class for catching-up work. As far as I know, not many teachers enjoy teaching these slow developers. It’s carnal, with such kids, it is difficult for the principal to grade your performance as a teacher or appreciate you.

Many teaching materials in school are catered for the so-called "mainstream" students who know how to read and write, and can do pretty well academically. So the test or exam papers set by the school would be for this kind of students. Those kids who are not often struggle and not able to do well. It's hilarious - out of 10 classes, only 1-2 classes are made up of "mainstream" students. So you can imagine how an average student would fare in their exam papers.

I have a bright P2 tuition kid whose parents are companies' executives. At her age, she can read relatively well. She can easily answer many direct comprehension questions but not those with hidden meanings. She goes to a neighborhood school. However, her parents are often stressed out by the frequent tropical tests the school would conduct fortnightly.

On top of my tuition assignment and schoolwork, the girl has to complete those issued by her anxious mother. This is the normal trend I’ve been observing as a tutor for bright and intelligent kids. Often thing would spiral to a point that the child loss the interest or motivation to excel because their “work” never seem to end. This I often caution the parents but still not able to tame down their fear.

On the contrary, I have a P4 girl whose parents are blue-collar workers. Unlike my P2 girl, she does not read well. She struggles in her comprehension, composition, vocabulary and even grammar. Her mother shows concern of her academic performance but is not consistent in “helping” the girl.

Two weeks ago, there was a short term break from school, just a week. This girl was found absent from my tuition class. Her mother reasoned that since it was a school holiday, her child deserved a break from tuition too.

Yes, the kind of background or occupation the parents have does make a lot of difference in their kids' academic performance. But how does a school cope with such disparity in the performances of their kids?

Amongst my school teacher friends, it’s a known fact that many of our local principals are young and ambitious. They strive to be successful in their career and achievement. Look at all the medals of achievement they have gotten for their schools. And they are still collecting.

Genuinely caring and loving principals are rare gems. I remember I have such principals in my school years back. They showed concern for latch-key kids and started activities or programs for them. They visited and encouraged these kids often. They would regularly stroll around their school compound to engage their students, teachers and even school-workers. They are the one who have left a legacy of goodness and grace but most of them have already retired.

If we would have this kind of educational leaders in our system, I believe our kids’ academic and personal development would be more enjoyable and meaningful.

Lanterns of Mid-Autumn Festival - 22/9/2010

As we move into 21st century, the annual mid-autumn festival has been celebrated with different fanfare than those in the 70s-80s. Those are my growing up years.

I remember clearly that during those days we only have one type of lantern to carry about and that's the paper lantern. They usually comes in 2 versions. One with transluscent colorful papers stick onto bamboo structures of various shapes and sizes. The other is the circular collapsible one which can be easily erected by pulling up the wire over its top to form a simple cylinder encasing the burning candle.

As young kids, my siblings and I would often need our parents to help us light up the candles and fix them into these paper lanterns before we ventured into dark corners with these fanciful "toys". Their dim glow gave us a sense of unexplainable delight in the dark "mysterious" corners of our playground. The challenge then was how to carry the bamboo ones in such a way that its flickering flame would not be blown-off by the wind. Those who were reckless or inexperienced would quickly have their lanterns burnt into ashes, ending their fun in the dark playground.

Later as we grew older, we began to light-up our own lanterns. It was a different fun for us. Alighting the candles, sticking them into the metallic candle-base and erecting the collapsible lanterns all need different set of skills and were challenging to us. Nevertheless, we began to enjoy this more. We started to volunteer to light-up the lanterns for the younger playmates in the neighbourhood instead of carrying our lanterns around. Sometimes, we would get so carried away in this newfound joy that we would burn anything we got our hands on with the candle flame.

Present day, we have a wider range of lanterns for kids to carry around during mid-autumn festival. There are the plastic ones which run on batteries. Some of these are so sophicated that they have music embedded in them. We still have the paper ones but the colorful ones on bamboo frames are a rare find now.

A few days ago, on the 15th day of lunar 8th month (22/9/2010), I was on my way home after an evening tuition. I saw parents helping their young kids alighting their lantern's flame in my neighbourhood playground. Some were demonstrating to their kids how to wave the sparkling sticks while the elderly folks gathered around chattering and savoring their mooncakes and tea. Of course, there were also clusters of mischievous older youngsters squatted at corners figeting the flames. It was quite a relaxing mood then.

I was glad the mid-autumn festive was celebrating with similar traditional fanfare here in my neighbourhood, with candles and paper lanterns. I did not see any plastic batteries-operated lanterns that evening. Maybe, there is a conspiracy amongst the adults that the paper ones are much more fun to "play" with.

I smiled on my way home.