Reflections on GESL

My End-of-Project Reflections

Project Title: ___________Party with Pangolins

Name of student teacher: ____Lau Seng Loong Russell___________________

 

Group:  26       Programme:  PGDE (JC)

Guidance questions for end-of-project reflections

What tasks did I do during GESL? 2.      What did I do well? 3.      What do I see as my 2 most important contributions to the project? 4.      What were some difficulties I faced? How did I overcome these? 5.      How well did my group work? 6.      In working on this project, what prior knowledge had I made use of? As part of my group’s logistics team, my job was to secure any necessary equipment and other paraphernalia required by my group. Furthermore, on the day of the main event, I had to arrive much earlier in order to prepare the venue for the event. Due to the funding problem our group had initially, we were unable to confirm the list of equipment needed as the budget was not finalized. It was only until the week of the event itself that we received confirmation of our funding and our team had to source out a list of over 20 items within 2 days. One of the more difficult items I had to find was paper bags for the goodie bags. Besides being affordable, these bags had to be environmentally friendly as well, which was not an easy task. As such, I had to scour a few places in the West before I finally found a suitable type of bag. Our logistics team was only able to acquire all the items due to excellent teamwork and great camaderie we shared, allowing us to split up the work efficiently to ensure success. We encountered another setback in the form of our logistics team leader being injured in a car accident and thus had limited capabilities. During the main event, I was in charge of a group of children. Other groups had 2 leaders each but my partner was down with stomach flu. As such, I stepped up to take on the mantle of a solo group leader. I led the children successfully through all the events we planned and they had a wonderful time while also learning a lot from the meaningful activity. As I used to help out at my church’s camp for Primary School children, guiding my group did not pose any problem for me. There were definitely some children in my group who were more mischievous and had to be constantly reminded to remain with the group.

7.      What have I gained from working on this GESL project? 8.      What new skills and knowledge have I learnt from working on this project? How can I apply these in my work or personal life? 9.      GESL was intended to develop social & emotional competencies & skills necessary for you to recognize and manage your emotions, develop care and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, as well as to handle challenging situations effectively. To what extent did you develop the skills of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management, and responsible decision-making? Through this GESL project, I learnt how to work with many different people. Initially I knew none of my group members as they were not from my CS. This meant that I had to improve my relationship management skills in order to work amiably with such a variety of different backgrounds. Initially, our group had disagreements regarding what type of project to embark on, but we all had to compromise in order to make responsible decisions for the group’s benefit. Furthermore, due to our varied time-tables, it meant that it was very hard for us to meet up as a large group. Thus, we divided ourselves into smaller groups which made it much easier to facilitate meetings. In this case, cooperation by dividing and conquer trumped collaboration. This taught me that there are times when collaboration is better and others when cooperation would be far more efficient.

10.  What would I do differently the next time I embark on such a project? I would take on a more leadership role to experience what it would be like to lead such a large group with varying interests and priorities.

11.  The NE initiative was introduced by the MOE to schools to develop    national cohesion, cultivate instincts for survival and instil confidence in Singapore’s future.  The objectives of NE were crystallised into six NE messages                                 i.            Singapore is our homeland; this is where we belong.                               ii.            We must preserve racial and religious harmony.                             iii.            We must uphold meritocracy and incorruptibility.                             iv.            No one owes Singapore a living.                               v.            We must ourselves defend Singapore.                             vi.            We have confidence in our future. Bearing in mind the NE initiative in Singapore, please comment on how your GESL project experience was relevant to National Education. With reference to the NE messages, 2 messages stands out clear: we must ourselves defend Singapore and we have confidence in our future. In this case, I am not referring to the physical defending of Singapore’s shores. Rather I am referring to the defending of our biodiversity like our pangolins for our future generation. By cultivating socially aware and responsible youth, we have confidence that our rare biodiversity will be able to survive for our future  generation.