Mdm Phoo Wey Wey Michelle
Class Mentor on Education and
Career Guidance
When Sharmini d/o Kumar first joined the school, she was worried she might not be able to adapt well. Little did she know, she was able to fit in quickly and love school life very much!
As school is a vibrant and warm place to be in, Sharmini often finds herself hanging out with her friends after school just to relax or do work together.
“I find that our school is accepting of everyone, regardless of their differences. It provides plenty of opportunities for students who wish to shine and the teachers also motivate us to excel.”
Sharmini who is currently in Secondary 3 is also a student councilor. She hopes to carry with her the good traits she had picked up as a student of the school by showing care and concern to her juniors and being welcoming to the Secondary 1 students in 2022.
“Not only are the teachers caring, they are always constantly finding new ways to make learning enjoyable!
Ms Goh Hwee Keng Carol
General Office Staff
Ms Carol Goh has been with Queenstown for 17 years.
While her job scope revolves mostly around administration, there are days when Ms Goh gets to see the interesting side of students who walk in and out of the general office. A balance of different episodes, sometimes amusing or funny, are just part of how each day unfolds.
"…sometimes the interactions are unexpected. I remembered how a persistently defiant student once casually shared with me out of the blue, his plans to skip his detention. All I did was to remind him, casually too, that there will definitely be consequences to that…”
That simple reminder got the student to change his mind and even ‘reported’ back to Ms Goh to update that he took her advice. The interaction led both to more casual chats, with him sharing even his dreams of going overseas to work in the future.
“…it makes you feel good to know that you managed to reach out…even if it’s just one student, who happened to be so comfortable just chatting with me…”
It was a simple idea suggested by the class – to plaster a corner of the noticeboard with photographs of their memorable school experiences. It became the Wall of Memories of Class 3F in 2019. Over the year, we watched the colourful Wall outgrow its allocated corner and became the pride of the class. Students from other classes came over to admire the photographs, read the captions and catch a glimpse of our stories. When we moved up to 4F the following year, the class carefully transferred the Wall to our new classroom, where it continued to grow.
The Wall is precious because it reminds the class of our journey from a humble beginning to a class that everyone is proud to belong to. As a Normal (Academic) class, many believed they could neither change how others looked at them nor overcome the struggles they faced in their family, studies, and behaviour.
To get them to find purpose in their studies, a great deal of time was spent at the beginning of secondary three on Education and Career Guidance (ECG) counselling. As the Normal (Academic) stream has the widest post-secondary options, they need to know very clearly the criteria and considerations for each option. Navigating the range of options was not easy. Some even had to see me one-to-one outside class to align their strengths and passions to possible fields of post-secondary study. However, once they have clear goals in mind, many became determined to overcome the challenges they face in their studies. As a result, several of them were able to attain incredible breakthroughs in their results by secondary four.
Also, since they know what they want to pursue early, the students in class were able to effectively prepare for the Early Admission Exercise (EAE), where students are enrolled early into their chosen tertiary courses based on evidence of their aptitudes and passions rather than their national examination results. Those in class who wanted EAE were able to accumulate good evidence of interest through active participation in various school programmes related to their targeted post-secondary courses. As such, the few who eventually applied for EAE were all offered the courses of their choice. Through participating fervently in many school activities, their secondary school days became very rich and were captured colourfully on the Wall.
We were always very proud to see members of our class in key supporting roles in school events or addressing the whole school. I would take pictures of them and pin them on the Wall. Students were always very eager to point out these pictures of themselves to their parents during Parent-Teacher-Meetings.
As the year progressed, pictures of exciting class events like birthday celebrations, Chinese New Year classroom decoration competition, Quest Day Out, students-led Teachers’ Day celebration and the year-long Values-In-Action (VIA) project filled the Wall. These served as constant reminders that they are capable of accomplishing amazing outcomes when they support each other and follow through to the end.
The final group of photographs on the Wall showed them receiving awards in school. The school believes in affirming the different strengths of all students. Being driven and united, the class was unstoppable in achieving what they set out to accomplish. On top of their various academic, physical fitness, CCA and Class of Excellence awards, our class’ monthly Value-of-the-Month (VoM) awards were especially endeared by everyone in the class. When giving out the VoM awards, I would always describe to the class how the awardees were observed to have acted on the values. Such affirmations helped them to realise they can also be good students who are grounded in values. When students repeatedly act on their values, their characters are formed.
As the class graduates this year, I hope they can remember that success does not come overnight. Just like how our Wall of Memories was formed picture by picture, success requires consistent, disciplined effort. These baby steps may not seem significant at that moment, but when accumulated over time, the results can be beyond what we can imagine, like how we had never imagined our Wall to be able to overflow the space we carved out for it at the beginning of our journey.
Sharmini d/o Kumar
4A, Student Leader Exco