Winky Wang joined the YCI Member programme at ITS in March 2021. Like most new members, she already had a clear passion – SDG4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. But how exactly to address this? The mentoring process allowed her to direct her research in a number of areas and saw her initial ideas around supporting local school students generally in some DSE subjects develop into a specific idea to support young Non-Cantonese Speakers with a beginners Cantonese course teaching everyday language so that they can begin to feel more at home in their city, especially if they are in local schools where much of the classroom and all of the playground is conducted in Cantonese.
Winky wants to go into education management or curriculum development and could see the value of seeing what the whole process looks like from recognizing a learning need in the community, to developing a course, to making specific lesson plans, to engaging with parents and then to teaching the classes. This “shop-floor” experience will stand her in good stead for the future.
Over the last two weeks a first major milestone was reached in teaching the first pilot programme. She will now reflect on the lessons learned and we will turn to how her course can be offered more widely and how her learning can be used by other young educators in their own communities.
If anyone has an interest in communicating and sharing with Winky, please contact us at ITS.
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.