More dedicated coaches required!

For the past two years, a few Old Frees have been conducting leadership workshops for Penang Free School students. To date, three workshops - comprising two intensive weekends each - have been successfully carried out.

As we enter our third year, we are feeling more confident and hopeful about sustaining the effort. We have ironed out most of the kinks and are ready to look for more dedicated coaches (not trainers per se) to join us to give back to our Alma Mater.

The workshops are for those from Form 4 to Form 6. No fee is collected and all costs are borne by generous donations from Old Frees. All the coaches are Old Frees too, giving their effort and time to the Present Frees.

The selected student leaders are coached on key concepts and skills like SMART goals and conducting formal meetings, time and resource management, critical thinking and the “grit” needed to be a leader.

Highly interactive with hands-on discoveries, games, videos and historical linkages to great Old Frees, the workshops are designed to enhance learning and the retention of experience.

If you feel that you possess the following, we would love to hear from you:

1. Passion. Passion and dedication to contribute to our Alma Mater in a direct way.
2. Desire to educate. Desire to provide all-round development to the PFS students so that they are better prepared for later life.
3. Focus on development. Ability to suspend all judgments of the students’ abilities or limitations, and focus on coaching them to develop their potential at their own pace.
4. “Empathetic” but not “directive” coaching. Capacity to hold back from instructing or demanding a pre-conceived solution or outlook; instead to coach the students to develop their ability to think, discuss and decide on their own or with their cohorts.
5. Free School spirit. Willingness to freely help students irrespective of race, religion, economic background or academic performance.
6. Time and effort. Ability to dedicate about four (4) weekends and additional time for coaches’ briefing and preparations per year.

There is no financial reward (but we will pay out-of-pocket expenses). However, you will feel a huge satisfaction: you will touch - and perhaps positively change - the lives of some of the next-generation Frees directly.

Please let us know if you would like to join us, or if you would like to be a financial donor. Write to Loh Lean Kang or Lim Siang Jin at pfsleads9@gmail.com.

For more information on the workshops, click through on these stories:

• The future leaders of Penang Free School (2017)
• The student leaders in our midst (2017)
• PFS student leadership workshop, sessions 1 and 2 (2018)
• PFS student leadership workshop, sessions 3 and 4 (2018) 
• The turn of the sixth formers (2018)