Learning for Life Programme

Introduction

Community Youth Leadership: Every Student a Leader

Our school’s Community Youth Leadership vision is to nurture all students to be Confident Persons and Active Contributors. A confident person is an effective communicator with strong interpersonal skills and a positive outlook on life while an Active Contributor is a leader who possesses empathy and creates a positive impact on the community.

Overview

To achieve this, the school conceptualised a three-tiered approach to cater to the developmental needs of all students with differing abilities and potential. In Tier 1, all students will receive basic leadership training on the selected leadership competencies and practices of leadership. In Tier 2, identified student leaders will receive decentralized leadership training for leadership groups that are structured and targeted. In Tier 3, the heads of the leadership groups and co-curricular activities (CCA) heads will form the core leadership group. They will receive advanced leadership training to further develop their leadership potential.

Leadership training is supported by experiential opportunities with a service orientation, allowing students to apply learning to authentic experiences, develop leadership skills, attitudes and character as they lead in serving the community. Learning is deepened by debrief and student reflections.

Programme Description

The key platform to provide all students with opportunities to lead in serving the community is through Values-in-Action (VIA) experiences.

Secondary 1 students will plan and implement a class based VIA project which reaches out to within the school. For example, students will form groups within each class to look into three actions: Adoption of a bright spot within school, appreciation for the school cleaners and make friends across races and get to know their cultures and customs.

Secondary 2 students will be working as a class to plan and implement a class based VIA project which reaches out to within the community. In Project Sphere, students work with their classmates to craft games and activities so as to engage the elderly in the community.

Secondary 3 students undertake a student-initiated CCA based VIA project to cater to school or community needs. For instance, one of the VIA projects planned involved a few sports CCAs working together to organize a Community Sports Day for the Elderly. Such VIA experiences allow students to make a positive difference to others. And PAYM also affirms our CCAs efforts through Project Accolade where we achieved 2 Silvers, 2 Bronze and 2 Merit Awards in 2018.