Touching Hearts, Forging Bonds --> :)

Hello blog! Today, I would like to express my learning journey in Service Learning with a project entitled "Touching Hearts, Forging Bonds"

For Project's Day this year, I decided to try for Service Learning with 3 other close friends, Lionell, Kim Yao and Mickey from 2P2. We also roped in volunteers from HCI to help run this project.

Touching Hearts, Forging Bonds is a tuition project aimed at tutoring Primary 5’s and 6’s to help them with their Primary School Leaving Examinations. We are working with the organisation Assyakirin Mosque. In addition to teaching them Math, Science and English Oral, we will also bond and build up their confidence.

Service Learning might seem like an easy thing to do and thus appeals to many project’s day groups. However, this is not the case for us. Let me share my experience.

In Term 1, our project group was formed. We had a timeline and everything was nicely planned and organised, due to the many hours of hardwork and brainstorming. We planned and produced worksheets and lesson materials for the upcoming tuition sessions. Although it was rather tedious as we had to juggle term tests and project work we gave our best efforts. We spent 4-5 hours each week on this project and are optimistic it will work.

We managed to convince the Prelim judges and got ourselves into the Semi-Finals. When we finally started the tuition sessions, we encountered other teething problems.
During our first session with the students, we had originally planned to conduct a bonding session with simple lessons, but only to be told that it was expected of us to give no work that day. The session was supposed to be 4 hours long, but only lasted 1.5 hours on that day. I also had to make an impromptu speech within 10 minutes to the parents of the students. To add to the complications, some students did not take Science for their PSLE. We would thereby have to split them into 2 groups and teach them differently, so our lesson plans that we made had to be changed.

After much efforts and cooperation from the team member and volunteers, we put together a enriching session. We also completed the goal setting worksheet so as to help them set goals and ultimately work towards them. We worked even harder to put together a lesson plan for the second session. Before each session I will have a briefing session with my team members and the volunteers. We want to make each session count and the students will benefit.

Now as I write this blog post may I remind myself that tomorrow is my 3rd session with them. My team members and I have been meeting and working tirelessly for this session. Despite having 4 class tests last week, we mugged through and have everything organised. I feel a sense of fulfilment being able to contribute to society. I know there will be many more hours of hard work but my team and I are ready to take on the challenges.