Teaching Sunshines is a Service Learning Project initiated by a group of 6 students from Hwa Chong Institution.
These group of students want to give back to society, as society has allowed them to enjoy the better of life.
This project aims to help unmotivated students at Ananias Student-care Center.
We seek to give them a holistically rounded development, not only in academics but also in aesthetics.
Hoe Kang
It has been a great experience helping out in the student care centre.
Even though it started out rather chaotic, the children soon settled down.
They were very active, thus their attention span is extremely short.
One must be patient, helpful and friendly to be able to connect with the child, and be effective as a student teacher.
Some of the students are really shy, and dare not come up to me to ask questions.
Therefore, I have to walk around the classroom and be really observant.
There was this girl who took a long time to finish her Mathematics worksheet.
Even though she said there are no problems, I soon realized that she had trouble doing division.
I took some time teaching her the proper methods, and then let her try out a few questions.
I had to repeat myself a few times. There was also this student who kept trying to run away from the class.
Only when the teacher was around, he could keep quiet and continue doing his work. I gave him extra attention, trying to help him if he was daydreaming.
He soon began concentrating and started doing his work.
In this few hours helping out in the centre, I have learnt how to interact with little kids, being patient and had a great time being a student teacher.
However, H1N1 proved to be a huge obstacle.
We did not want to go down as we are putting ourselves, the caregivers and all the students at risk if we were infected with H1N1.
Therefore, we are not able to continue with our project.
We are still waiting for the all-clear signal so that we can go back to the care centre to help the students.
Jie Yang
During this period before the semi-finals, I have further improved myself in social skills, especially when relating with younger children.
With different intellectual skills and social lives, I have tried to find many other creative ways to get my ideas through them so as to teach them more effectively.
Sometimes, they just want to have fun and not just writing and thinking all the time, thus I had to go through my primary school days and have mini-games with them.
However, due to the H1N1 pandemic, we stopped going to Ananias and I felt that there was something important missing from my schedule.
I have unknowingly been emotionally attached to the children there, and they make up part of my life.
I feel that it has been a wonderful and enlightening time volunteering to help the kids at Ananias.
Although marred greatly by the H1N1 flu crisis, it was a chance to make full use of what we have learnt in books, not in the academic sense, but to use our brain matter to help our younger ones.
Imparting a bit of our knowledge back into our future generation really satisfies me a lot as I know I’ve done my little bit to contribute back to society, and hopefully they’ll remember that I’ve taught them a little Math, or coached them with a little Science.
I would like to take a broader view.
Ananias was my and our stepping stone, as I believe so also for my group members, to taking a greater interest in and a greater appreciation of volunteerism.
In the past term, we’ve learnt about volunteerism and civil society through numerous discussions and essays.
However, picking up info on these activities is nothing compared to going down to ground zero to help these kids out.
Volunteerism, on writing, is a bunch of words, punctuations and nothing more.
Volunteerism in real life, is a canvas of life stories twined together, meeting somewhere, embracing at some point, to become a sentient entity.
It goes beyond the hours we spend with the children, we are friends, ‘comrade-in-arms’ even, as we take on the challenges of their school books.
Our friendship is alive.
Admittedly, perhaps this cannot be considered much, but quality is imperative in volunteerism, simply put ‘quality over quantity’.
Volunteering at Ananias with an open heart, at least for me, has helped me become a better person.
A little more patience, a little more ability to put things in perspective, maybe a great jump in our hoaxing skills.
A little more than a sense of nostalgia to see the ghost of my past, Ananias has truly benefited me in more ways than I can say.
Isaac Ng
Our initial plan was affected quite a lot by the current worsening H1N1 situation, and many visits were cancelled due to the centre trying to reduce the amount of time the students come in contact with outside people.
Many precautions have to be taken which shortens our time spent with the kids and affected the relation between us.
We feel that as long as this H1N1 situation doesn’t improve, many things cannot be carried out.
Currently, we have learnt to cherish the very limited and short amount of time we get to spend with the students, and try our very best to understand them and see the change in them since our first visit.
This is quite hard for the time we spend is too little.
Nevertheless, we will give our best.
Marcus Goh
After the SLC programme, getting to interact wth kids, I feel that kids like them need extra attention.
They were put to the childcare center for a few reasons.
Either their parents are too busy to teach them or they do not know how to teach them.
These neglected children often seek attention and some used means of bad behavior.
I feel that every child is his/her parents' responsibility.
I finally realized that point when I get to know more about the children and I firmly think that parents nowadays should pay more attention to their children and not neglect them so as to nurture them better.
Jie Yang
From this project working with Ananias, I have learnt many things that will never be learnt from the textbooks.
When teaching the primary school children, I have reflected on what I was like years back when I was around their age, as energetic and active.
However, some of them were very easily distracted, leaving me no choice but to give incentives to make them do their work.
Although some of them were quite hard to teach, I still had a new experience and gained a deeper understanding of others’ lives.
Through this project, I have also picked up new skills like social skills and dancing.
I have learnt to socialize better and to get along with people who are apart from my age group, which will give me a better edge in society in the near future
Since I will have to conduct a workshop for dancing later in the year, I have picked up a skill from friends and also the internet.
This, I believe, will be of an advantage to me in later times when I might have to perform.
I hope that this project will make me a better person and of good use to society.
Ezor
After visiting Ananias at Ang Mo Kio for the first time, I tried to learn more about the primary school students there.
I found that they are very active and each of the students is unique in their own way.
Our group had to learn about a particular student very well before adopting the most suitable teaching style for efficient and effective learning.
I had already encountered different kinds of conflicts during this short period of time.
The main factor that is creating all this conflicts is manners. We will try to teach them some forms of politeness and etiquette throughout the whole service.
This is to ensure that the next generation of Singapore’s children to be civilized citizens to create a better living society.
Shawn
After the first two visits to Ananias Center, I realised that some of the children there lacked motivation.
I was tutoring a girl who was playful but yet soft-spoken.
After looking at her work and interacting with her, I realised that her basic foundation of math was not strong.
Thus, I did not continue teaching her on her school work.
I concentrated more on strengthening her basics.
Although this will take a longer time, she
Through this service learning project, I hope to help these children find some motivation, help them academically and to develop them as a whole.
I also look forward to fine tuning my skills of communication, interaction, leadership and compassion.
This experience will benefit me as it would give me an edge over others as I would have learnt to communicate with people of varying age groups.
I also hope to give back to the community through this project.
Hoe Kang
It has been a great experience helping out in the student care centre.
Even though it started out rather chaotic, the children soon settled down.
They were very active, thus their attention span is extremely short.
One must be patient, helpful and friendly to be able to connect with the child, and be effective as a student teacher.
Some of the students are really shy, and dare not come up to me to ask questions.
Therefore, I have to walk around the classroom and be really observant.
There was this girl who took a long time to finish her Mathematics worksheet.
Even though she said there are no problems, I soon realized that she had trouble doing division.
I took some time teaching her the proper methods, and then let her try out a few questions.
I had to repeat myself a few times.
There was also this student who kept trying to run away from the class.
Only when the teacher was around, he could keep quiet and continue doing his work.
I gave him extra attention, trying to help him if he was daydreaming.
He soon began concentrating and started doing his work.
In this few hours helping out in the centre, I have learnt how to interact with little kids, being patient and had a great time being a student teacher.
Isaac
During my time at the centre, I tasted the true atmosphere of happiness, joy and friendship.
Unpretentious were the children and eager were they in their learning journey.
I hardly faced any problems in coaching them with basic mathematical calculations and only needed to explain the occasional odd term to them.
There was a boy, Jovan that stood out though.
I was assigned to take care of him and to give him a hand in his erratic mathematical multiplications.
He was eager to learn at first, but I soon found out why he was labeled as a problem in the centre.
He is one of the most easily distracted and playful among the rest of his age.
Always asking to go to the toilet every 10 minutes and bursting out in hysterical giggles when he was in his cubicle, he was the epitome of mischief.
However, I saw a little part of myself in him when I was in Primary 4, just as he was.
I was constantly refusing to do my work and made many excuses to avoid do assessments.
But discipline cannot be cultivated in a short period, just as Rome was not built in a day.
I hope that through the passage of time, I can do more for him and teach him more about values and studies.
Marcus
After visiting Ananias Centre located at Ang Mo Kio for 3 times, first for administration and the second and third marking the start of the project, I have came across many different type of students.
Some can be mischievous, whereas some is far too quiet and obedient, unlike typical children who is active and cannot seem to stop moving around.
I have had the chance to interact with all kinds of students there, some which I really enjoyed and am looking forward to the next visit to see their progress.
However, there are some that seems like monkeys, and it is really a chore to make them sit and do their work.
Most children at the student care can understand the concept after teaching them 1-2 times.
However, some just refuse to listen, and even if they do, they do not put their mind into remembering what is taught and they can forget what I have said just barely 5 mins have passed.
We are in the course of planning excursions for the children and hope that it can be successfully held, probably after a few weeks.
On the whole, this experience is very fun and definitely I will look forward to this again.