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Slaying "Helplessness"
2017-06-26

She was no match

“Come on, Yasmine!  Here’s your school bag.  Stop crying.  I will come back later to pick you up.”

 

Tiny little Yasmine is in first grade.  Every day, her mother brings her to the HOPE worldwide Centre for Kids so Yasmine can attend the homework tutorial sessions.

Slowly, reluctantly, and with tears in her eyes, Yasmine drags her heavy school bag into the classroom.

 

The image of a tiny little girl dragging a school bag almost as big (and as heavy) as her conveys a sense of burden and helplessness.  Hopefully one day, when she outgrows her school bag, she will also outgrow that sense.

The birth and growth of a monster

Yasmine hasn’t had an easy adjustment to Primary One, where the happy days of kindergarten gave way to homework, dictations and exams.


She got a 42 out of 100 on the first English dictation test this spring.  She then managed to get a 63 the next time, only to slip back down to 36 at the next test.

 

The Monster of Helplessness cast a shadow over her tiny little body.

Then one day...

On May 24, the last day of the homework tutorial session for the school year at the Centre for Kids, Yasmine seemed unusually happy.  She came trotting in, holding her English dictation book.


Trying hard to suppress her excitement, Yasmine wanted us to guess what she got on her latest English dictation test.


“Seventy?”


“No.”


“Eighty?”


“Nope.”


“Eighty-five?”


“Wrong answer!”


We really didn’t mean to underestimate her performance.  But based on her previous scores, it took a lot of faith to guess anything above fifty.


“I got ninety-seven!” She said, almost shouting!

How did she do it?

“I learned how to review my words!”  Yasmine said confidently.


She told us that the secondary students who had been volunteering during this past school year patiently taught her how to sound out the words and to get the pronunciation right.  As a result, she found it much easier to learn and remember the spelling of each word.


What a moment!  Together, Yasmine and the volunteer triumphed over the big, bad, ugly monster that had been living in her heart, the monster that had been telling her “You can’t do it.  It’s just too hard.”


Thank you, volunteers!  Thank you, all of you who have been supporting our centre.  It sure feels good to slay a monster!

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