NUS CSC: Chen Su Lan

Thank you for your continued support this year!!

Hope you have had a super year thus far=D

There will not be any tuition the following week, 17th Feb=)

Enjoy your CNY and collect lots of  ang pows!

Of cos most importantly, if you do play mahjong…

HUAT ar!!

Hope to see you the week after next and Have a rocking tiger year!!

ROARrrr!!

Hi everyone:D.

I volunteered to write the blog entry for last week’s visit because I have gained a different perspective about tutoring the kid in CSL since the new year.

When I first joined CSL, I thought that my main aim was to interact with the kids and befriend with them. Teaching does not occur to be the priority to me. As a result of my “over-friendliness”, my kid didn’t do her work properly despite my repeated reminders. It was Jiejie Nancy’s briefing a few weeks ago that made me realize that my job should be to make sure that my kid really learn something from the tuition.

So I decided to be stricter with my kid and make her concentrate when she was about to talk about other staff or walk around to find other kids to play with during the 1-h tuition . Though I can see that she wasn’t very happy about it, both of us felt a slight sense of achievement at the end of the tuition session. I am sure we are going to improve further in future visits.

I do admit that sometimes the long travelling time to CSL “intimidates” me a little (I am staying in campus) especially after a long day of school. But I believe that everything that was started should be ended properly(有始有终in Chinese:D). I am responsible for my kid so there is no excuse for me to not going for visits without valid reason. Plus, it really warms my heart when my kid  cries out “oh my volunteer is here!” every time I go to CSL.

Hope everyone else is having a great time with CSL:D

Cheers

Guo Si

A new term has started, and I am glad to say welcome back to all children in the home and students in CSL.

When I stepped into the hall in the first tutoring session, I first thing I saw was my tutee running towards me, holding my hands and walked together to the table, while telling me that she missed me a lot during the holidays. During that moment, I felt not only I warned her heart by being her tutor, her volunteer, but also she warmed my heart so much at the same time. Although she did not really like to study, did not really listen to me sometimes, I felt that whatever I have done for her is worth for it, to both of her and me.

When I met her in my first tutoring session in CSL, she told me that she was new in the home. She was very defensive, kept herself in her own world, did not talk to any other child there, even did not talk to me no matter how hard I have tried to console her, to catch her attention. However, now, I am very pleased to see her playing with friends although it was during tutoring time, shared with us the interesting things happened around her, shared her happiness and sadness.

I am looking forward of even greater changes in her in this semester. Hope she would enjoy herself in the home, in school and even with me during the tutoring time every week.

-Yan Hao-

Hi guys! I’m back and staying for good!~ XD

Well, let me start my not-so-sabohed-post with this. This is my second week back in Singapore and I noticed many things had changed since the 5 months I wasn’t around. Science Faculty had a new dentistry building, YIH looks different and even the colour of my block changed. But one thing remained the same; that is my kid at CSL. Well, her hair did grow longer, besides that, everything about her was pretty much the same as before I left on my SEP. And today, on my way to CSL, I was still wondering if my kid remembers who I am. I mean, I was gone for 5 months and I don’t think she’s that good at remembering names of people. The first few times we met, she kept forgetting my name and who I was. However, today, when her sister saw me, she immediately recognised who I was and even called out my name. I was really happy! After that, when I was done with the tutoring, I went down to the canteen and saw my kid. The wide smile on her face when she saw me more than enough tells me that she remembers me. I must confess, it really feels good to be back in CSL again, teaching her or any other kid. Though, CSL is really far away from where I stay, the endearing kids all but makes up for it. XD

-Hui Ling-

hellO!!

Another new year, another fulfilling year ahead with our CSL kids=D Anyway in case you are somehow not informed yet, our tutoring programme has already started, so if possible please make your way down to join us! And o yes, blog posts by our tutors will start soon too, so if you wanna contribute please inform any of the committee members=)

The latest newsletter from CSL is up too, read it @ your leisure @: http://www.cslmch.org.sg/images/CSLMCH_NEWS_2009.pdf

P.S. After hours of fiddling with wordpress, I realised that this blog skin CANNOT be changed to a customised one! So looks like we are stuck with this skin, please bear with it for the time being!

Interested to bring the joy of christmas to the kids @ CSL??

—WAIT NO MORE!—

——Contact Adeline now to reserve a slot for yourself!——

Details as follows:

Date: 11 Dec 2009

venue: CSL home

Cya there!

As Jerome has writen in his post below, CSL mentoring has ENDED officially for this sem!!

Just a word of thanks to all:

~Thank YOu everyone for putting in your time and effort to tutor the kids. We really hope you’ve enjoyed it all, and hopefully your efforts have really made a difference in their lives=)~

On a side note:

I think the last 2 sessions were pretty disappointing for alot of us, cos alot of our kids were not there. Well, after all… who wants to study and face a bunch of boring Kor Kors and Zair Zairs after the exams??

BUT fret not, cos we will still get to play with them during our annual CHRISTMAS celebrations!! yep!! Details will be annouced soon via this blog and via sms, so stay tuned!

And Oh yes, Good Luck for your exams and get lots of As!!=D

P.S. I know the blog looks rather plain and stuff, but no worries, I’ll try to revamp it when my exams are over!

Ok this is my 1^st time blogging for Chen Su Lan so here goes…

4^th November marks the end of Chen Su Lan volunteering sessions for this year T_T. Memories of all the previous sessions with my tutee and the rest of the kids came rushing back into my mind – Trying to get them to listen to me while tutoring, pasting volunteer stickers on the back of one another, gossiping and discussing about their boyfriends and girlfriends, playing yoyo and making lanterns… the list of nostalgia goes on. Although on the last day, we only had very little time to sing and learn the songs that they are going to perform for Christmas, it is all the fun-filled experiences with the kids that make volunteering at Chen Su Lan an unforgettable one.

Being a year one with no prior volunteering experience, tutoring the kids from Chen Su Lan can be quite challenging! But we had lots of fun along the way =). My tutee can’t seem to remember my name and gave me funny names like “Professor Jurong” (I still don’t understand where the word “Professor” came from -_-). She told me that she couldn’t find my name on facebook and I’m quite amazed how fast kids nowadays are growing. I doubt there is anybody out there who uses the name “Professor Jurong” on facebook haha .

We sang Christmas carols like Silent Night together and I almost died of laughter. Being a lousy singer myself, I only helped to spoil the song and had to rely on the “angelic voices” of my tutee and her friend to finish the song. Being a very humble girl, my tutee said that her voice is not as good as her friend but I seriously can’t tell the difference. Both of them sound wonderful to me and in the end, they had to teach me how to sing the song instead haha .

Although it’s now time for us say goodbye to them as we prepare for our exams, I believe we will see one another in the near future and I hope that their performance in December will be a successful one. So looking forward to the next Chen Su Lan volunteering session‼ & Good luck for your exams too=)‼

Jerome

Joining CSL is the time I am tutoring a primary school kid. I can still recall being nervous, not knowing what to expect when I went for the first session. However, the moment I started tutoring a kid, I wasn’t nervous anymore and quite enjoyed the process of tutoring. I enjoyed it not because I was playing with the kid (the kid will surely be overjoyed if I just kept playing with him haha), it’s the sense of achievement, being able to be of help to the kid. However, it was sad that I was only his temporary tutor as the tutor in charge of coaching him was absent that day. So I had to change to another kid in the end.

I’m thankful to have taught the 2^nd kid. Teaching her made me realized the difference between teaching fellow classmates about assignments and teaching at CSL. In order to teach the kid, a great deal of patience and effort must be put in on top of being able to answer any queries she has. Being a kid, the approach to take in communicating with her is significantly different from how we interact with each other.

From tutoring the 2 kids, I learnt a great deal from them about communicating with children, and at the same time develop more patience. I look forward to going for tutoring sessions every Wednesday, as I get to see their bright smiles and listen to their stories about school life. =D

jinsen

How time flies, it has been almost 2mths since i joined CSL already! Overall the experience was great and memorable so far. I guess i was pretty lucky as i was allocated only 1 kid throughout this period which has allowed me to communicate and bond really well with him. Initially it was a little hard getting him to sit still and he was a little apprehensive towards me too, however after about 2-3 sessions we could open up to each other and he would share with me about the things he did throughout the week which i enjoy listening too. He would also ask me about my life, my studies and on many occasions, about my army experience! I realized that most of the boys there are pretty interested in asking about army happenings, the feeling of holding weapons, and especially if we had any ghosts experiences there.

The kids there are pretty adorable yet a little mischievious at times, but it is entertaining to see them having so much fun and playing around with each other. At times i would look around and see some volunteers getting quite fierce with their kid and asking them to settle down and do their work. I guess they had to do it as some of the boys really lacked motivation and needed some pushing before they could do their work. I’m glad I do not have to do that as i believe I would not be able to! I don’t think I can bring myself to get fierce with them as it is just not in my nature to do so! haha.. But I realized it is important that they do so or not the kid would certainly be wasting precious tuition time.

It was a great idea suggested by one of our own volunteers that we can now bring laptops there to entertain and serve as a motivation for the kids to do their work! I believe it was a great idea! I believe that 10-15mins of just playing a computer game would already make the kids very very happy. It certainly makes me wonder how fortunate other kids are when they have access to such entertainment easily and 10-15mins of gaming would certainly not be anything special to them. Hence I will continue helping the kids in their work, and being somebody they can confide in and depend on throughout my stay in NUS and hopefully bring smiles to their lives!

Andrew.