Fun fact: all our Primary and Secondary kids are back in class right after their EOY exams. Why? Because they want to. They know we want the best for them. And they appreciate that there’s someone who cares. We do. And we’ll keep on caring. If we take care of our younglings, the world will be a better place when they grow up… Always…Â
What are we up to? More differentiation for the Sec 4’s Additional Mathematics, Sec 3’s are doing their second subject in Indices, the Sec Two’s are in Algebra and the Sec 1’s (fresh from PSLE) are now onto Real numbers. As for the Primary English Math and Sciences, they are starting this week after a week off last week. And we have a strategy here to get A1 for all of our students. Do it earlier, do it better and do it more than anyone else.Â
Our job is to bring them home safe and sound. Get them the results, and get them to be the best they can be. We’ve had the Covid pandemic setting all of us back two to three years, so 2022 have been us clawing back those lost time. If only we have a stronger gravitational field that we can slow time down to 28 hours a day, would be an awesome party trick to teach so much more that way. However, those lost time, unfortunately, shall be salvaged only by being a more efficient tutor for the last twelve months. And we did to the best of our abilities. But…
No more!! 2023, 2024… we are going ballistic and insist that we go earlier, faster, higher, better and stronger. Our kids are back and they are willing.
Learnt a lot from the last three years of unrelenting pandemic and we have now incorporated a lot of what we learnt and have more technology integrated into our lessons. Let no amount of money or hardwork stop us from being any lesser than the best. We grew stronger in the face of adversity. I think the whole world did.
That day when we went into lockdown, our physical lessons went to zero, and it’s suddenly all online. Battle stations! Scrabble like pants on fire, in full haste as if there’s no other way. There we go upgrading wifi and networks, ordering cables, mics, webcams, headphones, Zoom subscriptions, MacBook Pros, monitors, iPads, Apple Pencils, and distributed them to all our tutors and students that don’t have access to HBL. It was a mad rush for things that started running out. Everything became a scarcity since everyone WFH’s and HBL’d and turned their home into mini offices and classrooms, and that mass buying made every shop empty out in no time.
It became a fight of the haves and the have nots. The quick and the quicker. Early birds got the worm. Later birds just sat there weeping in despair. It was an aunties dream in a Robinson’s sale. Take out the weaker competitor with a well positioned elbow and that bedsheet’s yours. All played out in real-time on the computer screen. It was desperate times. Indeed.
We had to level the playing field, ordered from Amazon, Shopee, flying things in from USA, UK, China, anywhere we can get our hands on the equipment we needed. We had lady luck beaming down on us too because we had backup tech lying around since we were using laptops and iPads in our physical classes before Covid came along. So we were thankful for that and our job was to help the have nots asap. Share them around. Passing equipment throughout the week so that everyone had equipment to have online classes with no distruptions. It was crazy, to say the very least. Because we couldn’t meet but somehow we have to get equipment across to our students. Managed to with a lot of disinfecting our equipment too. Well, it took 2-3 weeks before everyone started getting their own equipment and all lives normalized.
Wow, looking back, it was such a trip! Did we learn so much to help each other, to lean on those that could help us, and take care of those that were left behind. It was a time where things looked bleak, but yet, we fought it, hard. We didn’t think it was the end, we just survived, to the next day. And then the next day, and the next. Days turned to months into years. But slowly, there was a glimmer of hope named Fauci, and we knew hope was our ally out there after all. Patience was the lesson we learnt best. If we all did what was needed, and we did the right thing, it will always end well. (It should, with lots of elbow grease involved)
Fingers crossed. Knocks on wood. To boot, maybe a charm twiddling around our fingers as we prayed for the best for insurance. Never enough charms I tell you. Never enough.
Well, with those school of hard knocks raining on all of us, we have our newest iteration of eduKate. Leaner, more efficient, stronger and ultimately, razor focused on being the best when it comers to teaching our kids. We manage to design and incorporate a whole suite of technology. We also learnt there are a level of mastery to teach kids offsite. It’s not just teaching online HBL on a novice level, we had to figure out how to teach kids at a pro level, because when it’s online Zoom lessons, a screen becomes the new classroom. Not so easy to make sure our lessons are delivered to our standards across the screen. No rest for the weary, we had to relearn how to teach our classes online to the same effect as the physical classes that we have been so accustomed to for the last 20 years of our tutoring lives. And we kept thinking where we can improve constantly. Still at it, and will do so for a long time to come.
The first few days on Zoom was like playing soccer with two left feet. Or is it two right feet? Actually forget feet as we were all hands that time, with ten thumbs, absolute novices in a game we have never played in and one that haunted us. But! We adapted. We learnt. We kept at bay a worthy adversary and hoped for the best. We all did. The whole world did. Everyone put on their thinking caps and gunned it. Set targets and took it all down one by one.
The streets were empty, a horse ran through Bukit Timah, more than a few Britons partied on a yacht, nurses looked like they were on set of the movie Contagion, and all the rest of us were busy at home getting it done.
So, candidly, it took us 2-3 months to keep on perfecting it. We had it slightly easy though, because our physical classes are small groups of 3 pax and we know all our kids on a first name basis. That closeness helped tremendously. It means they knew what we wanted from them and was walking in step to our beat in no time.
Please sir I want some more.
Kids being kids, adapting and be so moldable in quickstep means they got on with the work with lesser a complaint. That, is truly rainbows for all us tutors. Godsend. Bless their hearts. They just lapped it all up and asked for more.
Top tip, know every student like they are our family, it always makes the bad times easier. For that matter, let’s treat everyone else like our family, and I reckon bad times are easier to be dealt with… full stop!
Funny thing, our students were so happy to see us online instead, with the novelty being quite refreshing to them. It would have been a lot harder if our classes crossed into the dozens of students and students that we are not familiar with. So we had it lucky. Thank god for that.
Fun fact, we are now back to physical lessons, but we still have our Zoom and WhatsApp used effectively till today. We realized what we learnt in the pandemic had a miracle hidden there. Our students could have access to us even after class. This silver lining is still around, and we will keep it.
Sit down for one of our classes, for Primary or Secondary, and you will have a whole host of new tech that works for you. Want to ask us a question out of class, sure! It’s all good! 24/7/365 we will help you because we learnt how to use Zoom, WhatsApp, and our Websites to deliver our lessons anytime, anywhere. Our current students is trained to learn from us offsite and knows they can ask us anything, anytime. Come for our physical lessons and we teach you the best way, from scratch. Then go on home, and you have our support whenever you hit a snag.
New students, come along for the ride, give us a message and we’ll have you obtain all these skills too. To ask questions when you don’t understand, to improve your study skills and be an ace student, learn how JC/Uni students study so effectively. Because we don’t just teach you school curriculum, we help you to learn as an A1 student.
It is not what you learn, it’s how you learn it and how you become the ace student flying by the seat of your pants. Obtain Study Skill 101, we go there… and you will A1 those exams once you understand the culture of being a super student. Yes, we can!
And we will teach you how to get good grades by understanding your lessons as easily as possible.
Send us a message here.. let’s get an A1! Yes, we will!
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