The Secrets of My Tuition Success

I take on tuition assignments every now and then, as a means to earn some pocket money when I was studying and to supplement my main income after I started working. There are two students who are worth mentioning because I helped improve their grades drastically from a 'F' grade to a decent 'A' or 'B' grade. I achieved this through my "teaching formula", which amazingly is still working despite teaching the two students 10 years apart. Today I will share with you this set of principles, in hope that you can help yourself/ your child achieve academic improvement, even without engaging a private tutor. This is my act of kindness to all Singaporean students/ parents :)


Background

Student A:
In year 2003, I took on a tuition assignment to coach a Sec 4 'O' Levels student, who was very weak in Pure Physics. I had less than half a year to help him prepare for his 'O' Levels as I only received the assignment around May/ June period, while his 'O' Levels exams were around October. His Physics grade eventually improved from a 'F9' (Mid Term Exams) grade to a 'B3' grade ('O' Levels Exams).

Student B:
Earlier this year (2013), I received an assignment to teach a Sec 4 'N(A)' Levels student, who was very weak in Combined Science (Physics/ Chemistry) and Maths. Similarly, I had less than half a year to prepare him for the 3 subjects because I took on the assignment around Mid April and his last paper was on Mid October. His grades improved from 'F9' for both subjects to 'A2' for Maths and 'B4' for Combined Science in his N(A) Levels Exams. Due to his good grades, he is allowed direct entry into Polytechnic and thus skipped a year of not requiring to study Secondary 5 and taking 'O' Levels.


Tuition Principles

My tuition formula is based on 5 key principles and they are as follow:

1. Motivation
The first guiding principle is motivation. A student without motivation for studying is akin to an employee doing a job that is not to his/ her interest. Without motivation, a student will just be going through motion and study for the sake of studying. I tried to instill motivation in my student by giving them encouragement when they do well and explaining to them the true purpose of education, that is to equip us with useful knowledge, that might be applicable in our everyday life. I highlight their strength, to make them feel confident of their abilities because they will be more motivated to study when they develop more self-confidence. At times when the student is losing motivation, I work with the parents to see how best we can motivate the child. The parents have spent years nurturing the child so they know best how to motivate their child. If the student is motivated to study and improve, half the battle is already won.

2. Foundation
This is the part which caused many students to struggle in the later part of their study curriculum, especially when they are nearing the major examinations. We must understand that any structure that is built upon a weak foundation is prone to collapse. Therefore, I always believe that we need to painstakingly build the foundation in any subjects before moving on to other things. I will not let my student practise assessment questions without getting their foundation right because it is a waste of time, they will not likely to do well for those questions too. For major examinations like 'O', 'N' or 'A' Levels, the curriculum usually spans across two years. Some students may just do enough to get pass the first year but when syllabus gets more difficult, they find themselves in a pool of doubts because their foundation in the subject is not strong. Besides engaging a private tutor to explain these concepts, students can do their due diligence in clarifying concepts that they are unclear with their school teachers.

3. Hard Work
Thomas Edison once said that "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. I strongly believe that hard work is the key to success in any area of work. No matter how smart a student can be, if he don't put in the effort to study, he will not score as well as he puts in the effort to study. This gets more true as we progress in our education journey (If you don't believe, try not studying for your modules in your undergrad studies). I always encourage my students to do two things; summary notes and mindmaps. I believe reading through the textbook is not enough to make you understand and remember. When you put the pen to the paper, you gain a better understanding because you break down paragraphs of text into point form. Also, these notes will be useful as it facilitates easy revision and reference the next time round (just imagine you have to comb through your thick textbook for reference or revision). Mindmap is a good way of giving a pictorial overview of a chapter and will be useful for last minute revision, especially hours before the examinations. You certainly don't want to carry your thick textbooks to examination venue, let alone browse through them for any last minute revision.

4. Plan Ahead
If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I advocate that my students have their own study timetable and it must be planned far ahead, say 2 months before a major examination like Prelims or the 'O' Levels. The study timetable will give a guide on what subjects to study, how many hours, what are the topics to study for a particular day. It can be vague as to what subjects to study on that day or it can be as detailed as the chapters to study, the time allocated for each chapter. The idea is to ensure that all subjects are covered and there is sufficient time allocated to study every subject. Planning ahead means that you do not leave everything to the last minute, which will add on to your stress if you find yourself having to cope with too many subjects. I did study plan from Secondary school all the way to University and they always give me the reassurance that things are under control.

5. Practice Makes Perfect
Once a student is motivated, has got the foundations right, the difference between passing and scoring lies in the amount of practice he/ she has. I like my students to finish all the papers in the Ten Years Series (TYS) at least once. It will be good if they can do a few more rounds. The student with the greatest determination to do well will stop at nothing, he/ she will do the TYS a few times, go through his/ her Prelims papers, try to practise other school Prelims papers and so on. The more a student practises, the more confident the student gets. Another key point would be to practise under exam condition, i.e. if the student is only allowed 2 hours for a paper, he will time himself and make sure that he stop writing after 2 hours. After which, he will be able to gauge if he is too fast (may be more prone to carelessness) or too slow (need to speed up else questions not attempted will get zero marks) and fine tune accordingly with more practice. I also encourage my students to bring a watch or a small clock to examination hall, so that he/ she can keep track of the time during the examinations.

There you have it, all the secrets of my tuition and academic success are listed above. I hope it is useful and can help you/ your child in your/ your child's education journey. If you have the gift of being a cut above the rest, please be generous to help your friends along. We don't have to keep everything to ourselves because that type of behavior will make us more selfish and will not make our world a better place. Helping your fellow friends with their studies is a way of reinforcing your concepts and you may even find out what you don't know as you guide someone along. The bottomline is, be kind and be generous to share your knowledge. What you achieve will definitely be more satisfying! 

The 7 Secrets of Happiness

One of my friends is writing a book featuring short stories of happiness and thus looking for people to share their thoughts and experience on attaining happiness in their everyday lives. These are the 7 pointers that I shared with her, based on my reflection and personal experience:

1. Count your blessings.
When we are thankful for what we are blessed with in life, we will be happy. On the other hand, people are unhappy because they are deprived of something, be it material possession like money or emotional attachment like friendship, love and kinship. For me, I am thankful for my family, my friends, my health, my job and even this very day that I am alive. I am thankful for being to be able to be born in Singapore where we are free from the natural disasters. I am thankful that my hard work in my studies are paid off with a stable and well paying job. I am thankful to be able to do many things I enjoy, which includes eating good food, watching nice movies and spending time with my family members. I am thankful that I am able to travel to other countries for holiday trips and learn more about different cultures and lifestyle. I am thankful to meet good people who inspire me to do more for this world. I am thankful for all the help, advice and guidance that people have given me throughout my life. I am thankful to be given the opportunities to make a difference to the lives of others. Lastly, I am thankful to be reminded once in a while on how blessed and fortunate a person I am.

2. Spreading happiness to others.
I have learned from a young age that bringing happiness to others is one of the best form of gaining happiness for myself. Whenever I am able to help someone or make someone happy, I feel happy too. It is this belief that propel in me to reaching out to help the less fortunate. Through participating in volunteer work during my studies, I learned that helping others can be a very meaningful and fulfilling thing to do. When I graduated from school, I am bogged down by my commitment in work and personal life. However, this does not mean that we stop helping or giving happiness to others. There are still many ways to give happiness to others and that is why I am advocating that we engage in acts of kindness for others. This is especially targeted to friends who want to do good but are very busy to participate in volunteer work. We can all engage in acts of kindness because an act of kindness is easy to do and does not take much time to complete. When we give kindness to people and make their day, we will feel the happiness inside us too. Helping others, making another person happy are all acts of kindness. Again, I am thankful to discover one of the secrets of happiness, that is to bring kindness to others and lend a helping hand whenever possible.

3. Do not be obsessed with material desires
I have to say that money is important because the cost of living in Singapore is rather high but we should be too obsessed with making money. The society defines success as the person who drives luxury cars, own luxury apartment, wear branded from head to toe and has lots of cash in the bank. However, before we aspire to reach that "successful" level, we should ask ourselves this, "Will we be happier if we have the big cars, the houses and the money?" The question is not will we be happy but will we be happier, much happier if we have all these material possessions? If we are already happy with what we have, should we still strive towards this target and make ourselves unhappy if we don't accomplish our goals? The pursuit of the material desires is never ending and often people who are chasing this dream get sucked into a vicious cycle of greed and unhappiness. When we achieve our first million dollars, we want more, we are unhappy with one million dollars so we set the next target of two million dollars. When we have two million dollars, we think how nice would it be if we have three million dollars. The greed of human nature will keep us wanting for more. In the end, we will never be happy because what we have is always never enough to satisfy our wants. The question boils down to how much do we really need. If we only need ten thousand dollars, why do we want to set a high target of one million dollars? I believe in fulfilling our basic needs and setting a contingency sum for rainy days, the rest of our time and effort can be spent on doing something more meaningful. Also, people barely remember you for how rich you are because there will always be someone richer out there. The best gift that we can pass to others is the happy memories we created for them, the moments we touch their lives with kindness and love, not how much money we have given them.

4. Don't compare yourself with others.
I feel that people will be unhappy if they compare themselves to others who are better off in some aspect. We can admire someone for their talents but should not make ourselves any worse off by measuring up against them. We must be ourselves and love ourselves for who we are and not be unhappy with what we don't have or are not. It is easy to be envy that someone has a job that is more well paid and less stressful, having a spouse who is more attractive or rich parents who can splurge on them, but bear in mind that no one is perfect or leads a perfect life. What we are seeing may only be the superficial side of things but they could have their issues in life to deal with. By comparing ourselves with people who are better off in some ways, we are making ourselves unhappy. You never know that the same person might envy you for something that he/ she doesn't have. The way to find happiness is to be happy with what you already have and make the best out of it. Not comparing with others saves us much worries and unhappiness.

5. Be positive
Staying positive about life is one of the most important attitude that one must have to be happy. The obstacles and issues in life can make or break you, it really depends on how you see them and how much you want to learn from them. Being positive means that you can focus on the solution rather than the problem and you will solve the problem faster instead of approaching it with a negative mindset. Waking up every morning for work can be a dreadful feeling but it can also be a happy feeling for the positive person who feels blessed to be given another day to do the things that he/ she enjoys. When the going gets tough, it is important to approach issues with a positive mindset because negativity breed more negativity and vice versa.

6. Have a purpose in life
We should aspire to find our purpose in life and live life to the fullest. The saddest thing that can happen is to look back when we are in our old age and have regrets about the things we should have done when we have the chance, time and energy to do so. Also, we should not going through motion in life; studies, work, career, family planning, retirement are what most people go through and it seems like that is how life should be. However, while going through these stages in life, we have to find meaning and fulfillment in the things we do, otherwise we are really doing it for the sake of doing or following what others define as the norm. I can be going through these stages happily if I find meaning and purpose in the things I do while I can drag my feet through these stages because I do not find any significant purpose in doing the things that others think I should be doing.

7. Love yourself
There is time to work hard and there is time for rewards. Loving oneself is as important as loving others. If we are hard on ourselves and can't bear to spend any money to reward ourselves, then we can't be happy. I am not advocating the other extreme of splurging but we should love ourselves more and give ourselves a good treat every now and then. Some ways of loving oneself include buying yourself a nice gift, treating yourself to good food and engaging in enjoyable activities like going on a holiday, never mind the money spent but to keep the activities in moderation. The miser may be happy that he is accumulating a lot of money in the bank but he is likely to lead an unhappy life if he watches every spending closely, to the extent of sacrificing his happiness just to save up the money. Other than spending the money to pamper ourselves, it doesn't harm to remind ourselves once in a while that we are proud of who we are because we have worked hard, helped others and are useful members of the society.

Update of My Kindness Diary

It has been almost 2.5 months since PARK started on 22 September 2013 and I am really thankful for all the support and positive responses that our kind friends have given us. Thank you for all the likes on our Facebook Page for the articles, quotes and photos posted. Thank you guys for coming on board the ARK as we sail along this lifelong voyage of spreading kindness to anyone who needs it, and making the world a better place for everyone to live in.

I would like to share with you some of the acts of kindness that I have done since my last update. Hopefully, they provide good reference to you and can inspire you to do an act or two:

• Gave words of encouragement to a friend who was feeling down
• Reminded someone that he had forgotten about his umbrella as he was leaving
• Helped an auntie picked up her purse after she dropped it
• Helped a couple take a photo
• Returned trays and plates after consuming my meals
• Gave my friends a treat over breakfast
• Helped a family take a group photo
• Offered my last piece of tissue to a friend
• Offered to top up drinks for my friends
• Volunteered to take on some ad hoc duties to help out in a running event
• Held the door for my friends to enter a room first
• Shared my food with a friend
• Helped a friend make some DIY cushions for his shoes using tissue paper as he was having abrasion on his ankle
• Gave my seat to a lady so she could sit with her daughter
• Brought a family member for shopping despite feeling unwell
• Donated money to help Typhoon Haiyan victims
• Helped to grab the attention of the cashier for a lady who was seeking help
• Allowed someone to exit the station first after she was stuck waiting the queue to clear
• Donated extra money to a charity organization selling greeting cards when making payment
• Chipped in some money for a colleague who fell sick
• Bought tissue paper from an intellectually disabled man and gave him extra money
• Gave directions to someone in the train station
• Provided information to a visually impaired man on the bus
• Gave advice and guidance to a fellow colleague
• Helped a family member make copies of a travel video
• Offered advice to a family member on relationship issues
• Wrote a letter of compliment for a friend
• Made space for more passengers to board in a crowded last train
• Pressed the lift open button for other passengers to exit the lift first
• Took a leaflet from a lady handing out leaflets in the MRT station to lessen her workload
• Raised awareness for ongoing initiative and charitable drives
• Encouraged my family member to save the snails which crawled out of the grass patch but putting them back into the grass patch

I always believed that giving kindness can change someone who received our kindness for the better. I come to realize that, at the same time, giving kindness is also changing ourselves for the better.