One of my more memorable events in SST was Badge Night back in secondary one. I recall proudly singing the school song with my peers and collecting my SST badge with pride.
Fast forward 3 years, it feels surreal that now I am helping to welcome the new Secondary 1s formally into our school! Due to the COVID-19 situation, this year’s Badge night was adapted to be done via ZOOM. To ensure that the event goes smoothly, we had 3 rehearsals.
Despite all these practices, we still encountered technical difficulties during the actual day itself. For example, it was a mess when we tried to send the students/parents to their respective breakout rooms to receive their badge.
However, the teacher would later explain to us how we could have minimised these problems. e.g. when we first received this task, we should have clarified much earlier and did the dry run ahead of time. So that we had more buffer to tackle the possible problems that we could have encountered.
Despite these technical difficulties, most things went smoothly. We were able to solve all the problems on the spot.
Our biggest challenge was to control the class. It was a challenge to maintain the attention of 27 excited secondary 1 students. However, we held firm and stayed calm and composed. We eventually managed to get the class to trust us to lead them through the event. From then on, things generally went smoothly.
I am lucky to have such collaborative partners like Don and Xuan En. They helped to set up the ZOOM and usher the teachers and students out of the classroom. This allowed me to focus on my main responsibility of facilitating the class as MC. I was not nervous at all. It may have helped that I could not see the audience faces since this event was done via Zoom.
To avoid pronouncing the students’ names wrongly, I practiced several times before the event. I was glad that I did that as it allowed my presentation to go smoothly.
However, the same could not be said for our class Sec 1 representative, Rui Hao - who was tasked to share his SST experience. He was noticeably very nervous and occasionally mumbled during the rehearsal. I tried to help him by reminding him to just focus on doing his best and remain calm. It worked and I was glad that he recovered and presented himself well for the actual event.
From an SC’s point of view, this year’s badge ceremony was vastly different from past years. I.e. SCs now have to engage the secondary 1s in many activities, from planning to, hosting and ushering. Compared to last year, where the SCs simply stood around like wooden statues.
However, I found this year's arrangement to be more meaningful. Some new insights gained:
Be confident and proactive. Always take initiative.
Dare to try (& fail). Do not expect the teachers to solve all your problems.
Seek clarity. Always clarify your doubts early.
This was a meaningful experience and I hope that I was able to leave a good impression on the new SST students and hopefully influence them to be better versions of themselves in the future.
Howie Chia
8 January 2021
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