Post-ReflectionOn 17th May, my class returned to THK for our second visit. Prior to this visit, we were told that we would be assigned to an elderly to interact with. However, when we arrived at the location, we were met with some confusion since we were told that we could choose the elderly we wanted to interact with. After a short period of confirmation, though, we were ready to officially start the programme. Since this was our second visit, we were not as nervous or awkward as the first visit, so we were able to find an elderly to interact with in no time. To start off, I firstly introduced myself to the elderly lady, and my group followed suit. After the elderly lady introduced herself, we began to start to communicate with her. At the same time, we had to ask her the questions we had planned beforehand. After we got to know her better, we jotted down some of her interests so that we could fill the poster with some of her mentioned interests. Following the “get-to-know” session, all the elderly present took part in the Bingo session organised by some of the students. To conclude the session, a karaoke session was held and we took a group photo with our ‘chosen’ elderly lady and a ‘solo’ photo of her to include in the poster.
On 3rd July, my class returned to THK for our third and final visit. During this final visit, we were finally able to show the elderly the posters and video we made! When we all got to the venue, I first spotted the elderly lady we did our poster for while she was using the massage chair. At first, when my group walk past her and greeted her, we assumed that she did not remember us since she did not respond yet. However, after looking at us, she started smiling and waving at us. Because of this, we were pleasantly surprised and glad that we left a good impression of her that helped her remember us. After a short period of waiting for other students to arrive (and the setting up of the projector), the videos that the two classes made were shown to everyone there. Fortunately, both videos were met with applause, which tell us that the elderly there enjoyed the two videos that we made within our respective classes. After presenting them the videos, we started handing the elderly some origami paper to make origami with. Some of the objects they were taught to make included a heart and a crane. Naturally, being a hands-on person, I followed the video and made the origami while sitting beside an elderly lady and providing help when she needed it. After the origami-making session concluded, a karaoke session was held where some of my classmates went up and sang! It was interesting to see that some of my classmates actually have good singing voices, and it was entertaining to see so many of the elderly being involved in the activities. To conclude the final session, a small speech was given by one of the students to thank everyone who made this programme successful. After interacting with the S-L beneficiaries, my opinion of them has not changed much. I still feel that our visit there is memorable for the elderly who went to THK while we visited. While my group was talking to our ‘designated’ elderly lady, she told us that she would often come to THK because there was nothing else she could do when she is at home and would want to interact with other people at THK. After learning about this, I became encouraged to perform better in order to make this S-L programme a good and fun experience for the elderly there. In order to improve communication with the S-L beneficiaries, I have learnt a few things. Firstly, I have learnt to be more understanding/sensitive in different situations. This is because there are things that one cannot say when speaking to the elderly. Even though I have not mentioned any sensitive topics at THK, I understand that when a sensitive topic is brought up, the elderly may feel pressured or even insulted/offended. Secondly, I have also learnt to be more resilient in terms of how I respond to different situations. For instance, I have learnt to think of topics to continue conversations between me and the elderly. I have also learned some important lessons over interaction with the beneficiary. Some of the lessons I have learned include the need to push and work hard to succeed and “if you live until you are old, you learn until you are old”. These are just some of the many lessons I have learnt from the elderly lady my group was designated to. Being much older than us, she shared many of her life lessons/experiences with us and we naturally listened since we became interested in them. After the programme, I feel ‘touched’ and I learn to appreciate our elders more. I noticed that many elderly go to THK as a place to interact with others because they have nothing to do or feel lonely. This reminds me of my grandmother who currently lives alone with very little interaction with others apart from my father/uncle and aunties. After interacting with some of the elderly I began to understand that my grandmother also feels as lonely while staying at home most of the time. In turn, I am encouraged to plan my time wisely to be able to visit my grandmother at least one a week. I also observe some things that can possible be linked up with my course. During the visits, I notice many of the elderly with good phones (e.g. iPhone X), but many of them do not know how to use the basic functions of their phones (e.g. phone, message, camera) and are always asking students for help. For those who know how to use their phones, I noticed that they play games like Candy Crush. After observing this, I started to develop ideas that are related to my course (IT). One idea is to develop a mobile application that can handle most basic functions like phone and messaging. Using this application, the elderly will have a ‘one-stop place’ to be able to use the functions they want to use. Another idea is to make an educational game that the elderly can play together to interact with one another while learning a certain topic. During the activities, I have observed some social issues. Firstly, some of the students are quite awkward around the elderly and are mostly walking around without doing much. In order to help them to participate in the activities, I can encourage them to do so, but if they refuse, I prefer not to force them to participate. To encourage such students, the school can introduce incentives and present them to students once a certain goal is achieved. A mini inter-class competition can also be held so students are encouraged to participate to help their class win. Secondly, I noticed that some of my non-Chinese classmates had difficulty in communicating with most of the elderly there since most of them are Chinese. As a classmate, I can help them translate what the elderly is saying, but I feel that the school can organise the programme ‘better’ so that non-Chinese students can contribute as much as other Chinese students. Personally, I feel that I have done well in some areas. For instance, I was more sociable and I was not as reluctant to talk to strangers as I was in the past. Also, I was less afraid of participating in activities, so this programme turned out to be a relatively pleasant experience. On the other hand, I also feel that there are some areas where I can improve. One area where I can improve is I could have communicated better with the elderly there. During the second visit, an elderly lady asked me questions on how to use some of the basic functions of her Android phone. Since the text was in Chinese and my Chinese was ‘average’, it took me some time to properly adjust the phone’s settings and teach her how to use the basic functions of her phone. I feel that there are some ways to improve the S-L activities for our School. Firstly, the S-L activities can be better by having more than the current three visits to our designated beneficiary (e.g. 5). This is because having only three visits does not give us enough opportunity to properly interact with the community, especially when we are supposed to make a poster and video for them. By having more visits, I feel that we will be able to relate and empathise more with the community/elderly when compared with having fewer visits. Secondly, there should be a proper/better way for us students to demonstrate and implement our IT skills. For the S-L activity my class participated in, some of the ways to implement our IT skills was to use software to make a digital poster and make a video. In my opinion, I feel that these do not fully show what we can do with our IT skills as any ordinary person can easily pick up the skills to use a video editing software or make a digital poster. To better showcase our IT skills, we can make programmes (in Python, for example) to improve the lives of the elderly or make a website that displays the posters we created. Thirdly, in terms of the visit to THK, the school/mentor should provide us with the profiles of the elderly who go there. That way, we will be able to get to know them better since we can potentially spend less time getting to know their basic information (e.g. name, occupation).
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