Rrrrriiiinnnnnggggggggggg....................
Yesterday marked the first day I went back to school after graduating for more than a decade ago…not as a student definitely nor a teacher but a 40-hour parent volunteer!
Yes Nicole is entering formal education in 2009 and registration starts next July, so as KS parents we have to clock at least 40 hours of volunteer work before we can be qualified for registration under phase 2B. Luckily the school allows both parents to share the workload else I may not have enough leave to cover the minimal 40-hour duties.
I have opted for library duty as it requires the longest hours of work per session which is 3 hours, one can choose to work either 9am-12pm or 1pm-4pm. Other duties like Chinese remedial class, story telling session, helping kids during recess time etc usually only entail working for 0.5 to 1 hour which I reckon I would have to take a lot of leave to cover more sessions to reach the 40-hour target.
My star was shining bright when I went to register hubby and myself as volunteers some months back that I met a regular volunteer (read ‘not the 40-hour parent volunteer’) who told me that the library is very short-handed especially on Wednesday. I immediately enlisted his help to ‘sweet talk’ the admin personnel to allow me to work full day (as they usually only allow 1 session of 3-hour each time) for most Wednesdays!
I reported for ‘work’ bright and early at 9am; I thought the library duty is going to be easy and even brought a book to kill time but how wrong was I! Ten minutes into my duty, the Teacher-in-charge of the library came in and told the only librarian and me that the school suspected 10 cases of HFMD so all kids are to be barred from coming into the library, all cushions, stuff toys and books in the library have to be disinfected. So the 2 of us printed signages to be placed on the glass doors informing the closure of library for the day and helped to bring out all the stuff and lay them all over for the cleaners to do their job. Poor librarian, another regular volunteer (who came later) and me, as we were ‘locked’ in the library inhaling the ‘sprayed chemical’ (which is actually not dangerous to human) for the next 2 hours! Let’s put it this way, we should be as clean (if not cleaner) as those people working in a clean room for that few hours.
On every Wednesdays, all the teachers would gather for a meeting and the Primary 1 pupils would assemble in the hall and be taken care of by the regular volunteers. However because of the HFMD cases that day, all the Primary 1 pupils are separated and a lot more volunteers were roped in last minute to help take care of the kids. Since I was around, the school ‘offered’ my help to the regular volunteers too.
So instead of having an hour of leisure lunch, I polished off my meal within half an hour. I was very tickled to get a decent lunch for S$2.40! $0.50 for fried rice, another $0.90 for 3 side dishes of mocked cha siew, sautéed potato leaves and a braised tau pok; and lastly $1 for a bottle of green tea!
Taking care of 30 kids for 1 hour was no joke! I was instructed to get them to draw National Day themed pictures, the kids were enthusiastic on hearing what they were going to do for that hour. But hey, kids drew at different speed so some finished earlier and started to disturb their classmates so I have to plan some games to keep the kids occupied and keep an eye on those who have yet finished. At the end of the hour, was I glad to see their form teacher as I almost lost my voice and sanity!
I dragged myself to the library to complete my remaining 2 hours of work keying book records into the system and filing them on the shelves. At the stroke of four, my duty for the day officially ended, yippee!
I clocked 6.5 hours for my first day as a parent volunteer, not too bad yeah.
The school facade
The library
My cheap cheap lunch!
Some of the kids that I took charged
The LUNA colour pencils that I once used too!