I have been busy teaching. On Thursday and Friday, together with a colleague, I taught a class of 14 year olds career and financial management, about 3 hours each day. At the end of the second day, I was drier than straw, stickier than toffee and smellier than cheese.

It was hard work! Firstly, unlike the office which has Chocolate Lava Cake smothered in a blanket most days and topped up with gloves some, the classroom was sweltering. There were a couple of ceiling fans on full speed, but the temperature simply refused to budge. Secondly, addressing 29 kids who prefer to address each other whilst we address them, requires a massive projection of voice. The toll on our lungs was huge.
Finally, it proved impossible not to be a nag (tigress) when dealing with a classroom of teenage boys and girls. Somehow they have a shorter memory than my twenty somethings. Instructions were forgotten within 3 minutes?! By the end of it, I felt truly my age. All forty years of it. Just from nagging.

It’s funny how there are specific characters in each classroom which stay unchanged through time. I taught for 9 months in a secondary school before departing for Oxford. I saw the same characters those two days as I did then, which is not unexpected I guess given that a classroom is a microcosm of society after all. Let’s see. There’s the disrupter, the one who loves to ask smart ass questions to challenge the teacher, all the time. My favorite this time was “Teacher, why isn’t there a PhD for road sweeping?”. There’s the clown, whose aim it is to make the class laugh. And there’s the “in” crowd, i.e. the popular ones. I believe the au courant term for it is, well, “IT”. Not forgetting the studious lot, and the switched off few. I found myself mentally matching these new students with those I taught more than twenty years ago. Which character were you?

Straw, toffee and cheese aside, it was most satisfying. I am a member of The Firm’s charitable foundation and this is part of the activities. Idea was to equip these kids from less privileged backgrounds with information and knowledge on how to plan for their future. To encourage them to start thinking about what they want to do when they grow up, and what it takes to get there. To teach them about choices and consequences, so they will have a better shot at making more of their lives. I don’t know how much of what we taught would stick, but I know if there is just one of them who starts to think about his/her choices differently, it’ll be worth all the toffee and cheese in the world.

I have been involved in the charitable foundation for a number of years now. Most activities are about offering direct help – preparing or delivering meals for the under-privileged, raising money for charity organizations, etc. I must say teaching resonates most deeply with me. Don’t get me wrong, I do not doubt the value of direct help, but teaching goes to the heart of the issue, an issue that is close to my heart – to break poverty cycles, the most effective way is education, as my own experience has taught me. And education has to go both ways, to the kids, and to the parents. The goal of educating the kids is amongst others, to equip them with knowledge so they can make the most of their lives after leaving the cocoon of the school. In this, the school shoulders the bulk of the responsibility. Volunteers like us merely add a different perspective, one that is hopefully useful for having been honed by the “real world”. The goal of educating the parents on the other hand, is to encourage them to act responsibly so that they can give their children their best shot in life through provision of an education, the only way the entire family has a fighting chance of being lifted out of poverty. Here, given the lack of formal help, I’m inclined to think volunteers like us have a bigger role.

Today, also as part of the foundation’s activities, I gave a talk to about 50 parents from low income households, defined as those with less than $650 of monthly per capita income. Goal was to teach them concepts like budgeting and saving. It was a mix of parents from different age groups and ethnicities so I had to speak in both English and Chinese, without losing either group’s attention, which made it err… interesting. I encouraged them to see that they owe a duty to their family to be financially prudent so they can provide their kids with an education that will allow them their best shot in life. I also asked them to demand responsibility from their kids, that they have, in return for the sacrifices made for them, to do their best. I hope if there’s one thing they brought back with them today, this is it…

I was initially concerned that these parents would not relate to me, as someone from a different economic stratum. But my worries were unfounded, as they soon realized from the stories I shared, that I came from a similar background. At the end of the session, a few parents told me they had learnt something today. I have made hundreds of presentations in my career, but this was the most rewarding feedback I’ve ever received.

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