Trapped!

So go ahead, laugh at me.

I have succumbed to the traps of the rat race.

I signed the boy up for chinese supplementary classes (no, it is not Berries) something i truly regret. (I may even withdraw him after this term! ha!).

I do not know how other parents do it but i suffered from alot of guilt, regret, remorse after i paid the fee! I feel so sorry for the boy like as if i was really, robbing him of his childhood!

Why did i do it then?

1) Sonshine's mandarin teacher at school has no time/chance to truly assess and understand sonshine's learning ability. Each time i see her, she will rant about how big the class is and it is impossible for her to go from student to student and individually teach them. This, i fault her not. And this, is the reason why i dislike the regular education system. The teacher-student ratio is too wide. Kids like my son, who is so quiet, will get neglected & overlooked. This was evident when she incorrectly told me during the teacher-parent meet that sonshine does not understand mandarin.

2) I was looking through his term 1 work and while i can somewhat keep up with the curriculum for now but i know i would not be able to keep up in the long run. I could hold off the extra class now since at this moment, he really has no problem with mandarin. But, i feel that if i send him of later, we would be playing catch up. So, i took on the typical Singaporean sydnrome and decided to take a step ahead.

Which school is it? I am not telling! But i can tell you why i chose this school

1) Low teacher-student ratio. The maximum students they accept in the class is 8. That, i like! It allows the teacher to cater her attention to each students.

2) Their Kindergarden curriculum incorporates oral skills and building sentence structure. Honestly, i didn't do alot of research, i don't know what other centers are teaching. But i compared to another school (its next door neighbour), i felt that the other school was too slow, it focuses more on word recognition. So, i thought this school's curriculum was the 'better' one since it includes activities like question and answer, learning to form proper sentences in mandarin.

The first lesson went well. For one, sonshine happily skipped to school. He was really looking forward to it! Secondly, unlike his school teacher, the center teacher was able to tell me his strengths and weaknesses accurately despite only seeing him for the first time. She was surprised by sonshine's ability to read all of the passage shown in class that day. She was even more surprised that he could read a rhyme that she only read once or twice but didn't require the kids to remember the words (i think its because he already knows all the words). But I was most pleased when she told me his pronunciation was accurate because i thought otherwise LOL! I was also pleased that he was able to understand and answer the two simple questions assigned that day.

After the first lesson, i am thinking of withdrawing him already! But we will have to see, there must be some value add otherwise there is really no need to send him for extra class to learn things he already knows and i am already whining about sacrificing my Saturday mornings!