It’s been a couple of months since I’ve started volunteering at the Family Service Centre. And I think I’m finally starting to find my way around.

I’m working with a program aimed at teaching English and social skills to primary school age kids living in one room and rented flats. These are things that I pretty much took for granted as a kid: the ability to use phonics to piece syllables together to make words, understanding grammar, looking people in the eye when speaking, reading, speaking audibly. Come to think of it, these are things I pretty much take for granted in my friends’ kids.

These are smart kids – not kids with IQ issues by any means. Except – I’m pretty sure no one reads to them at night (at least not in English), no one sits with them at the dining table going through homework and explaining why the plural of mouse isn’t mouses, or why we say “an apple” and not “a apple” and that “learn” isn’t spelled “lern”.

Sometimes several siblings come to the centre together. “Why don’t the older siblings teach the younger siblings and make them do their homework?” said a friend of mine whose parents stressed education and faith above all. And who herself was the perfect oldest sister – kind, patient, sensible – if over-idealistic.

Why don’t they? Well, there’s a 10-year-old who comes to the centre with her 2-year-old brother literally clinging to her skirt all the time. She feeds him, minds him, caters to his every whim. Their 7-year-old sister, who will be going to Pr 1 next year, speaks almost no English. They speak Tamil at home. In between making sure the sibs are behaving, doing housework, and getting the time to do her own homework, I’m not sure giving tuition to the younger kids is a high priority. I know it was never mine.

I’ve been helping out with the kids in the K through P3 English enrichment classes. There’s a great group of girls from Ngee Ann Poly who help out there too.

So this week I switched and started helping with the P4s and P5s for the first time. We played Scrabble and Hangman. As the words appeared on the tiles, we talked about the meaning of the words – like “fig,” “fate,” “pate”. The boys got an interesting reaction when one of the girls placed her tiles on the board to spell c-o-c-k. One of the boys started sniggering.

“It means chicken,” I said.
“I’m bored,” he said. “Can I play Monopoly?”

I tried to get them to make up stories from photographs - couldn’t get them to sit still long enough to do that. Instead, they wanted Hangman. OK fine – still a word game, still English.

“Teacher – next week can play Mono-pole-y?”

Fine – this week spelling, next week – real estate.