I Am Not Bad After All!

7979 Guide & Care · Written by Sow Yee

“Teacher, teach me”
“Teacher, I don’t know”
“Teacher, come…”

        Whenever Ah Ye (pseudonym), a companionship class student from Lighthouse Community Center A/G encounters problems with his homework, he immediately requests the teacher’s assistance, calling the teacher in charge of the lower primary class to come and help him. This situation happens every day in the class. “Ah Ye,  you read the question on your own first.” If the teacher is tutoring another child, and can’t attend to his request immediately, she will ask him to try it out first. However, without the teacher’s company, Ah Ye would not be interested. He would sit in his chair and stare, spin the pencil in his hand, draw in his book, and wait until the teacher came to him and taught him personally, only then he would be willing to complete his homework. Looking at his passive learning style, the teacher couldn’t help but feel worried.
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Ah Ye’s parents were not on good terms, he always witnessed his parents quarrelling at home.  This disharmonious family atmosphere caused him to have big mood swings, and even the smallest thing would make him cry or get angry. There was once when he was doing homework in the companionship class, he disturbed other students’ studies by moving around too much. The teacher rebuked him for this behaviour, he immediately shed tears in grievance which later turned into crying non-stop loudly. 
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One day after school, Ah Ye carried his heavy school bag and walked up the stairs into companionship class as usual. The moment he took out his homework and naturally he wanted to call out to the teacher, he suddenly remembered what the teacher said: “Ah Ye, you can try to read the question first.”, “You can do it on your own”, “Give it a try”.  While flipping through and reading the homework assigned by the school teacher, Ah Ye took the courage to try to read the questions by himself and then answered them.  “Hey! I know the answer to this question.” “This question, the article has the same phrase as this question, I think that should be the answer!” How does one know if he or she doesn’t try? Once he tried, he was surprised to find out that: He was not bad after all! Slowly, Ah Ye became interested in learning. Now whenever he looked at his homework, he would turn on the automatic mode and start doing the homework without hesitation.

​Year after year, Ah Ye had grown into a big boy. Now he is in the upper class, and the subjects he faces are getting too much for his brain, and he still headache with his homework, yet he has now learned to read the questions patiently and try his best to answer them before asking the teacher. He no longer relies on teachers and can complete his homework on his own, consequently his learning ability has improved rapidly. Not only that, Ah Ye also learned to express his emotions and no longer cried and wailed easily. Occasionally, he would respond to the teacher’s love with a hug. Seeing the teacher’s surprised expression, Ah Ye laughed mischievously.