musing about spiders and redsports
I thought this year's pitching session was a lot better.
The other time I attended a CS3216 pitching session, I was still a student in the course, trying to emerge from all the work. Facebook, on the other hand, was emerging in Singapore. Except for an exceptional few, most of the pitchers have no idea what "social networking" is. They exude the impression that they want to jump onto this platform simply because, well , it's supposedly new and hot. Sadly, it shows, among some of them, that they have no idea how it serves their company or organisations, and if it resonates with their mission and objectives or not.
So contrary to Prof Ben's (alias Boss / overlord/ sire / slave driver, depending on my mood) post, I thought this year's pitchers are a lot clearer about the ship and how they want to jump onto it.
But that's not the main reason why I'm writing this post. It is to address the following issue.
Judging from the discussions, some began to wonder why I spoke for Redsports. For the record, I'm not given any benefits hor. Neither do I know who is Leslie and Dawn, until Prof Ben mentioned them. To be frank, I didn't do it to contextualise it for the foreign students (as speculated here) But to understand why I wanted to put a human side to Leslie's figures, you've gotta understand the whole back story first (lor sor story alert!)
In AY07/08 Sem 1, I relief taught the whole semester in the day, and had lessons in NUS later in the day. During which, I have already been attached to this batch of sec 3s (whom I've affectionately referred to as "my kids"), as I taught them for a few months the year before.
Anyway, quite a few of them are sportsmen / sportswomen. Academically wise, they weren't very confident and weren't doing too well, but they had a lot of potential.
One thing that struck me during my term was how often, after a match, they would circulate redsports article about the match they've played. If they were shot in action (as in camera shot lah!), that picture would become their profile picture everywhere - MSN, Friendster (when it was still alive) etc. If their names appeared in some best player poll, they would spam it around, gathering support.
Being close to them, I naturally become a nexus of such things. Once I log onto MSN, I would receive messages like this: "Cher, see my profile pic. Nice or not?" "Cher, we won leh!" "Cher, support me on this poll leh." Usually, they don't talk much about their games, unless they are mentioned in school announcements. But with redsports, their pride multiplied, and so do their self-esteem.
Soon I begin tracing their matches on my own on redsports. It took my kids by surprise when I tell them "Eh not bad ah, I heard you scored X points in your match against ABC Secondary". It makes them feel good, that someone notices what they're good at. It makes them feel good that someone care. It makes them feel good that I see them not just as students in the classroom, but as a human. It helped to improve my relationship with my kids.
That was why when I took CS3216 when it was first offered in 2008, I couldn't contain my surprise to hear from the founder of Redsports pitching. When it was Q&A time, I did what I should do - I thanked Leslie in front of the class. I thanked Leslie for what he has done for my kids, for the pride he has given them, for the self-esteem he has helped built, for the confidence he has helped raised, while I almost choked in my own emotions.
I couldn't be more grateful.
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What Leslie presented might have been just numbers to you. "X number of people came to our site every day". "Y number of people were referred from Facebook". But what didn't show, was the power it has on our youths - many whose confidence, excitement in sports, and self-esteemed has been multiplied because of this site. That is the difference which is not recorded, which I thought everyone should know.
Which was why I shared what I shared yesterday. Not because I'm grateful to what Redsports has done, but the belief in the difference it made, and many more it could do with Facebook.
It seems like many in the class have been bowed over by Leslie's passion, judging from the different discussions that have since sprouted. Coincidentally, it aligns with what I wanted to say with the previous post about spiders.
Too many a times, we think making a difference is to change something - to change the world, to create something new, to break new grounds.
But a lot of times,difference is made with very small, unintentional actions as well. Many a times, it makes a difference, without you knowing or thinking it will.
Much like Kobayashi Issa cleaning house carefully. Much like the little actions of a principal who touched up the classrooms on her own, as if it is second nature, without asking anyone to do so. Much like many teachers I know, who made a difference not by setting out to make a difference, but made huge and deep impacts in the student with little everyday actions that they didn't think would matter to the students.
And of course, much like Leslie's desire to report about local sports news.
Labels: musings from sessions
2 Comments:
I thought this year's pitchers are a lot clearer about the ship and how they want to jump onto it.
Yes I agree that the pitches this year are better, but trust me from my judgment as a software engineer that they still don't *really* know.
What do I mean?
Suppose a group of students decide that they will work one of these fellas, it's quite likely that the students will have to do some figuring out of what exactly to do instead of being able to just follow instructions and implement something.
If you have time, attend some of the final project meetings that Kok Wee and I will be having with the students and witness how I grill the students on what they are doing. I expect the students to think through what they are doing very carefully.
Where execution is concerned, failing to plan (think) is planning to fail.
@Boss
I agree that they are still clueless, but it's a jump from totally-clueless-but-i-don't-care-who-you-are-listen-to-me-talk-about-my-company-whether-it-is-relevant-to-you-and-oh-here-is-my-full-product-line to a much more focused and directed pitch to the specific audience, like totally-clueless-but-this-is-what-I-want-to-spread-on-facebook-or-this-is-the-product-i-want-to-leverage-facebook-on.
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