City Harvest Community Services Association organized another round of the Step Up program and this time, it was for parents. On 25 May 2009, a group of parents gathered at Blangah Rise Primary School to attend the talk on “Giving the Child the Excellence Edge” by Esther Lai who is a Master Coach and family life Educator. Some of the parents had taken leave to attend the session.
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Skills were imparted with slide presentation, intertwined with a sharing from her own experiences. The points were further enforced with practical hands on participation.
The first point — the child’s best teacher is the parents — was comically demonstrated using a short video clip in which children mimicked their parents’ behavior. A parent needs to be aware of how his/her child’s thinking and value system are being molded; but for that to happen, the parent must get involved in the child’s daily activities and be his/her advocate.
The next point — 10 traits your child needs to achieve lifelong successes — was about how a quality producer is one who does more than is expected and is committed to continuous improvement. Quality presentations will exhibit a spirit of excellence, an eye for detail and will be performance driven (Competence+Improvement=Quality).
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| PHOTOS: Aaron Low |
This point was reinforced with a cookie test, where two parents volunteered and gave a rating based on the cookie’s taste, shape, size, color and number of chips in them. Both the volunteers rated cookie A as 5 to 8 times better than cookie B. This apt experiment drove home the point of being a quality producer.
The second trait on being a creative thinker was clearly explained using slides. Some of the points such as ‘a natural ability we all possess to think of unique ways to make things better’ and ‘employ fluency, flexibility, originality and sensitivity in our work’ stood out.
Ronnie Goh Han Peng, a 46 year old parent commented “It would have been great if there were more of these talks.” Another parent, Karim, 53 years old, said, “The talk was a good refresher.”
Both speaker and parents alike look forward in anticipation to the next talk organized for Step Up.
