A Thousand Miles: Making small imprints in the lives of students in Teach Singapore

Teach SG mentors at an after school academic coaching session at Tanglin Secondary School.

We hear from a student mentor from Teach SG, Gan Jia Xin, Year 1, Life Sciences who volunteers at Tanglin Secondary School. She shares salient points on what’s it like to become student mentor.

Q: Why did you choose to join Teach SG as a student mentor?

Jia Xin (JX): I volunteer because I wanted to give back just like how I’ve received help earlier when I was younger!

Q: What makes volunteering at Teach Singapore a unique experience?

JX: Teach Singapore is unique in the sense that each of the mentors have a chance to plan out the activities every week. I had a whole new experience planning an outing from scratch! It’s also very flexible! Students can tell us what they want to do for the activities, if they want to play volleyball or other activities, and we can make the necessary changes. It is better than doing things the students may not like!

Teach SG mentors brought their mentees to the ArtScience Museum as part of a learning journey.

Q: What have you learnt as a student mentor with Teach Singapore?

JX: I must be this caring figure but also maybe a figure that will be able to pass on knowledge to them as well. As we help the students with their work, they will tend to open more. The teachers also encouraged the students to ask us questions and this allows for more sharing and casual conversations.

Q: How can one be an effective mentor?

JX: I learnt that a positive mindset is quite important. For example, my mentee can be quite negative because once he encounters some problem sums, he does not know how to do, he’ll say “Oh, I’m just dumb.” So at the start, I had to do some encouragement like “No, it’s not because of that, it’s just that you were careless over here.” Encouraging words like this help my students gain a more positive mindset.

When the students ask us something, then we’d have to think on the spot and tell them what’s the answer. And we have to really be enthusiastic to perk them up because they’re very tired after school and I understand.