Secondary One Orientation

It is approaching the start of a new year and the freshmen are coming in. It is a councillor duty to welcome these freshmen into the Hwa Chong family, and I was fortunate and privileged to be selected as buddy of a group in the Orientation.

To help us refresh our memory for the cheers, as well as learn some useful techniques of facilitation (being a buddy), the organizing team held a short training session for us last Wednesday.

The teacher-in-charge, Mr Teo, first gave us a crash course on what it takes to be an effective facilitator, including some techniques we can adopt to build rapport with the freshmen, and some rules we have to follow as buddies.

Some useful techniques involved - relating to the students, asking them about general things in their life and what is happening, asking questions to check their mood and help them learn, getting feedback etc.

The Organizing Team helped us refresh our memory of the cheers through prompting us when we forgot the lines. Most of us are still in holiday dreamland mode, so the enthusiasm of the Organizing members really helped us warm up to the mood. They also taught us some useful icebreakers we can use during the game times allocated to us.

The theme for this year's SSO ( Secondary One Orientation ) is Ignition Drive. In order to produce fire, one needs fuel (wood), heat and oxygen. Oxygen is something we cannot control, the freshmen are like dry wood fuel; we can't control their mood either, but one thing we can control is the heat, ourselves.

In order to warm up the freshmen and make them feel welcomed as one Hwa Chong family, we ourselves have to be passionate and enthusiastic. They must feel our passion and see the fire in our eyes.

I hope this year's Sec 1 Orientation would be a success. My buddies during last year orientation, had greatly inspired me and welcomed me to the school, so I hope I myself can be a blessing to the next batch of Sec 1s too. I hope I can gain their respect as well.

I can understand the difficulties of adapting to a totally new environment from the six years in Primary School. I hope to learn the skills of warming up and breaking the ice with people through this orientation. Building rapport with others is a extremely handy, useful and relevant skill.