During my life in Ngee Ann Poly, I took up BP-NP Mentoring
Club as one of my co-curriculum activities. It was part of community service
whereby the club will allocate and dispatched students to specific schools and
family service centre over Singapore to mentor children ranging from primary to
secondary school. Not only teaching, mentors would organize fun activities
after lesson to release the stress of the students.
However, in the case of mine, I was allocated to a family
service centre that has established a club for low –income families to send
their kids in for extra tuition lesson. As the club is managed by the centre,
there were others volunteers beside Ngee Ann who has rendered their service to
the club. Each mentor was assigned to at least one student and the whole
session was solely based on teaching of the subjects that the student has
queries for. Hence, this is where my journey of a mentor begins.
For the first few sessions, I have no problem with my
students in terms of interacting. However, I find it quite challenging for me
to teach especially on the English subject in the subsequent sessions. My
English standard for grammar and vocabulary was poor enough to make me feel
afraid and stressful to teach my student. Hence, every time I would have to
double check the answer key or even request help from other mentors to teach
the English subject. Being inferior to
English language, I will always try to avoid teaching English subject if
possible. I knew it was inevitable so I would
have to trouble my friends to help me tutor my student on English subject
whenever is needed.
The reason why I fear to teach English Language not because
I am weak in it, but I felt that it would be better for other mentor who have
higher English standards to mentor the students as foundation is really
important for them. They have to grasp the basics for English in order to learn
and score well. Besides that, I myself do make use of opportunity to sharpen my
English language through English modules required in poly. Although there is
not much progress, I would still continue to take the step slowly to build up
my foundation and confidence to teach the students.
In fact, I am glad to be required to attend the English
classes in National University of Singapore as I will not have the courage to
register for English courses outside. Therefore, I would treasure the
opportunity given to me to brush up on my English foundation in the many years
to come.
