SS Quah's Anything Goes: Fifth student leadership workshop [1] 2019

As a continuation of our series of student leadership workshops at Penang Free School, we held the first session of the workshops for the Form Six students last month on the 27th and 28th of July. It was a full weekend of coaching and activities, so much so that the 18 participants were now eagerly looking forward to the second session which shall take place later in August.

The participants were a diverse crowd. Two or three from Upper Six but the rest, except one, were from Lower Six. The odd one out, we discovered later, was a Form Four boy who chose to join this workshop rather than to wait for the sixth workshop next year. Suriya was a bit shy at first, joining the others who were two or three years older than him, but we could see that all inhibitions had been discarded by the end of the second day.

Inhibitions? Yes, inhibitions. The participants really warmed up to the coaches as the weekend began winding down. Somewhere on the second day, we sprang the marshmallow challenge on them and then later, screened parts of a video on the history of Penang Free School. We had been preparing this video for the greater part of a year and it is just about ready. Apart from my fellow coaches, the participants of the workshop were the first to view it.

Following the screening, we took them on a tour around the school hall. It's steeped enough with history, despite its relatively small size compared to the whole school premises. Of much interest to the participants were the wooden panels at the back of the hall. Then, we subjected the boys and girls to a quiz based on what they just learnt in the video and the hall tour. The quiz was the final activity that made them clamouring for more. And I can add that the coaches are all looking forward to meet them again this month.

The first day of the weekend session was held at the Archives Block as the school hall was preoccupied by some other events. But we moved back to the Hall on the second day. We were assisted by the student coaches.

An explanatory note: The video that we screened to the participants should not be confused with the documentary film, The School that Built a Nation, produced by the Penang Free School Foundation (Yayasan Penang Free School). That documentary was a highly professional job in celebration of the Bicentenary. Ours was a low-cost job to supplement our workshops.

Day One (27 July 2019)