From
22 August to 5 September 2013, our Saints Advocates have organised various
events to engage the students in appreciating the Non-teaching staff (NTS) in
our school. With the theme “Behind the scene” and catchphrase “Catch them in
Action”, we hoped that the student population would realise the paramount
importance of the NTS’ job even if we may not see them frequently.
Project Acknowledgement task-force
I felt that Project Acknowledgement had
been a really eye opening and unforgettable experience. I felt that I’ve learned so much from this
project. Before this, I thought this project was rather small scale as it was
conducted in school, however after this experience; I’ve learned that it was a
really important project! The success of whether the NTS got acknowledged or
not, lay in our hands. So I really wanted our project to be different but yet
delivered the same message as the previous years.
I feel that our project had some pretty
strong points. Such as that we came up with our project’s theme, and what tasks
we were gonna carry out on our very first meeting, and basically the whole
outline of the project was already formed. Thus, we were able to draft a
proposal. We also had a lot of time to search for ways to encourage the student
body to interact and acknowledge the NTS.
Our Project Acknowledgement poster! :)
We also faced many difficulties during this
journey. One, we could not get many Saints to participate in the photo
competition. In the end, our fellow advocates had to help us out instead. Due
to the lack of participation, our team proposed a plan to help encourage more
Saints to take pictures. We made foam flowers for the NTS and encouraged Saints
to give the flower to a certain EAS and at the same time, we would take a
photo! This thus helped increase the number of photos we had significantly. The
NTS were also very happy with the flowers they received even though it was such
a small gift. Second, our box of
post-its went missing on the third day of collection and it contained about
half of the school’s contribution of the post-it notes. We didn’t expect the
box to disappear and had to spend a lot of time finding for the box.
Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to find it so we had to act fast and find an
alternative way. We learned that we should not leave such important materials
left unattended. We should have collected the post-it notes at the end of each
day.
We found it easier and more effective to ask Saints to write notes to the
NTS on the spot as we were able to get the notes almost immediately and need
not spend time to constantly remind them to hand in their notes. Some also
choose to ignore and this made communicating with them really hard. I’ve also
learned that we need to prepare for unforeseen circumstances. I felt we did not
really plan well enough and planned for situations in which there was little
participation. Thus this needs to be taken into account for any of my future
projects. Communication is also very important to ensure that everyone does
their assigned tasks.
We also need to learn to adapt our plans to different
situations and the most important thing is to be prepared! Have extra materials
ready and be ready for any changes along the way. We also need to have good
time management as our deadlines for some of our things were not met. And this
caused us to rush into some of it. We must always plan ahead and ensure that we
are always ready to accomplish our tasks.
Foam flowers specially made for the NTS
It was a very enriching experience and I’ve
learned to communicate with the NTS of the school and learned many skills that
I can use for my future projects.
-Rebecca Nicole David, 4th Saints Advocate
