Edited Reflective Writing: BP-NP Mentoring

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 allocated and dispatched students to specific schools and family service centre over Singapore to mentor children ranging from primary to secondary school. The mentors not only provide academic guidance, they would also 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 other 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 the 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  had no problem with my students in terms of interacting. However, it was 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 feared to teach English Language was not because I am weak in it, but I felt that it would be better for other mentors who possessed 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.