| The story of a Normal Tech pupil |
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| Why this Story? |
| I'm writing this story of Ben as a form of encouragement to EM3 and Normal Tech students. Life is not the end just because you are an EM3 or Normal Tech students. There is always a road to success if you work hard and you believe that you can do it. To the teachers. I suppose that you don't get much opportunity to hear success story of EM3 and Normal Tech students. I hope this will give you some moral booster. To parents. If your children are in EM3 or Normal Tech stream, remember that they still have a future ahead of them. Give them the encouragement they need. |
| When I first met Ben, way back in June 1999, he was a Secondary 3 boy in May Flower Secondary School. A friend had recommended me to tutor him as she felt that I was more competent to tutor a secondary school boy. I met his parents and talked to him to assess his attitude toward learning. As far as school result was concerned, he failed his Mathematics and English during his mid year exam. However, I was quite impress that he was willing to learn. My thought was this boy still had hope! So, I started to tutor him. Initially, he had some bad habits, just like any students. He didn't do the homework that I assigned him. Being also a school teacher then, I understood that he had other school homework to do, so I didn't assign him many homework. All he needed was to spend an hour or two during the weekend to complete it. It was really pure laziness. After being told off by me, he always completed all my assigned homework. I did accept good excuses sometime. |
| The next thing I felt was he needed to understand what he was taught in school. Instead of having my own agenda for him, I wanted him to tell me what his teacher had taught him in school and the things that he couldn't understand. In that way, I could help him to understand his lessons in school. He was always free to ask me about his school homework which he encountered difficulty. In that way, I was reinforcing what his school teacher had taught him. Of course, I also needed to help him catched up with whatever he missed in the early part of the year. He did have a problem of learning things slowly. It took a lot of drilling and practice to make sure what he learned was committed into his memory. I "warned" him not to return to me or his teachers everything he had learned. Knowledge is for him to keep. |
| At Sec2: Ben (left) and his classmate. |
| In the next few months, I slowly built up his confidence. I noticed that when he understood his lessons and know how to do his Maths problem, his motivation also increased. In fact, sometime he challenged me to give him tougher Maths problem to do. At the end of year, he had improved from a student who failed both Maths and English to a student who score at least 70%. I thought that was quite an acheivement for him. He was proud of himself and his parents were happy. They wanted me to continue to tutor him the following year when he was in Sec 4. |
| Ben successfully completed his GEC "N" Level exam with excellent result. He was admitted into Yishun ITE taking Electronic Engineering course. He originally intended to study Automotive Engineering because of the his interest in cars. His father had strongly recommended him to study electronic. Anyway, Ben had no particular preference. |
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| The story of Ben |
| At Sec2: Ben(right, standing) and his classmates. You can see that he was just another playful boy. |
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| Ben with his sec 3 classmates |
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| Ben was with the school table tennis team |
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| Maybe it was my influence, he likes cars, especially Ferrari |
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| Ben in ITE class with trainer and classmates |
| Ben with ITE classmates |
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| Ben with a female ITE classmates. I asked him if this cutie is his girlfriend, he refused to admit. |
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| I don't have any doubt about it at all. He refuses to admit it. She is in Nanyang Poly now. |
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| Wait a minute, he's a playboy too. I'm going to get him into trouble with the other cutie.. haha |
| Once Ben showed me his primary school report book. I was puzzled that certain years he did very well and the following year he just failed miserably. I asked him for the reason. This is what he replied, "When I can copy from my friends, I did well lor. When the teacher was very strict and I couldn't copy, I failed lor." |
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| The following year was a crucial year as Ben would be sitting for his GCE "N" level exam. It was fantastic that Ben was so highly motivated. This demonstrated the confidence level he had built by aiming to be the top in Maths in his class. It was not an impossible task, but there were a few students in his class with potential of stopping him. That was his personal goal. He often asked me to teach him topics in advance of this class lessons so that he could get a chance to show off his intelligence (or sometime the lack of it) in the class. Sometime he wanted to do some challenging questions from the GCE "O" level questions. Of course I needed to select the right questions that he could managed. |
| He spent 2 years studying electronic and he excelled in ITE. In fact, he thought it was a 2 relaxing years for him. I believe you can tell from the photos. Ben had excellent result in the ITE's electronic engineering program. After completion of his training, his excellent result got him a place to Temasek Polytechnic in 2003 for Diploma in Electronic Engineering course. |
| Life in the polytechnic won't be a relaxing 3 years for him. There will be a lot for him to learn. In fact, I expect that it will be some tough years ahead of him. In the middle of this year, he approached me to help him with some Engineering Maths and Electrical and Electronic problems. The positive aspect of him is that he is still as highly motivated as before. He still showed the spirit of willingness to learn. He is still hardworking, even though he may be slow to grasp knowledge. I have confident that he will make it. |
| The story of Ben should be an inspiration to many EM3 and normal technical stream students. It shows that if someone is willing to put in hard work, given the chance and properly motivated, there is always a path to higher educational learning. ITE is not the end. |