“When you see litter, what do you really see?”

The question above encapsulates one of the takeaways I had from going for Spectrum every week. I've committed myself to Spectrum for the past academic year, and I'm very thankful to be able to be a part of this. While we've been trying to teach the kids or guide the kids, I myself have learnt a great deal from Spectrum.

I wouldn't say I've always done things with a lot of thought, and realized that sometimes I switch myself off and hardly think much beyond what I see. But from Spectrum, I learnt that whatever happens on the outside, whatever we see, may just be a manifestation of a deeper, and maybe bigger, issue.

"When you see litter, what do you really see?" I came across this question somewhere, and it's some food for thought. When we see litter, we don't just see a dirty environment. If there was litter at a void deck some may say, "the cleaners didn't do a good enough job". But in the bigger picture, that may be showing a lack of responsibility of the people living in the block to not bother to throw litter in the right places. And if we did entertain the thought of the cleaners not doing their job well, on a deeper level that may be a hint of people taking cleanliness for granted, reflecting our dependency on cleaning staff to keep our environment neat. There are many possibilities - the previous examples are but just two.

How this relates to Spectrum isn't very direct, but I have learnt to view things not just by what they seem to be, but consider why they appear to be that way. At Spectrum there's one active and slightly impatient child who just can't seem to sit still - every time we try to do work with him, he'd be distracted and off wanting to do something else in the next few minutes. It was difficult to win his patience and focus, and I had initially thought that he was just a mischievous kid who had problems focusing his attention. It turned out that that kid had much difficulty reading, and he was probably in Primary Three or so already. I had simply assumed that someone that age would probably be comfortably and confidently literate. I take way too many things for granted. The opportunity to receive good education, the joys of being able to read and write, and so many other things. And back to the point - I realized, after learning from other people who had taken the boy before, that the boy wasn't naughty - he probably was ashamed to show us that he couldn't read. And so I am learning not to jump to conclusions just based on what I see, but understand further and dig deeper to find out the real issues, and tackle them instead.

I have also learnt about patience and care. I would say that in the past, dealing with kids, for me, didn't take up a lot of effort. It would also be usually enjoyable - you can joke with them, make them laugh, have fun with them, etc. That wouldn't be difficult. But man that isn't the case when they don't listen to you or they don't like you, and Spectrum provided experiences like these aplenty. At times like these, the easy way out is to give up and try to engage another kid instead, kids who will listen to you obediently. But that's not what we're here for - we're here to engage the most difficult and challenging kids and help them help themselves. So I learnt a bit more on what it means to offer unconditional love and care. I learnt this from the pioneer batch of Spectrum volunteers as well - Carol, Peng, Daryl, Celine and the rest who demonstrated unconditional love, and I'm thankful to be able to learn from them. There is still much to learn and grasp about these values, but I learnt a little more about loving and caring anyway even if people don't seem to reciprocate it. That required patience.

Also, it is easy to joke with kids, please them, and make them laugh. But what if that isn't what's best for them? I have learnt to do things with more intention, instead of taking the easy way out of seeking to bring smiles to kids all the time. Besides having fun, I learnt to be a bit more of a disciplinarian when needed. Point it out to the kids every single time they do something inappropriate. This includes all the inappropriate words they utter. Don't let any chances pass and show them that you walk your talk, you mean things when you say them and you lead by example. One thing that I had to patiently learn and develop into a habit was to always tell the kids to throw things in the dustbin instead of on the ground. To me it really isn't easy to repeatedly remind the kids to do that without turning into a nag in their eyes. But that had to be done anyway, and I learnt not to let any small instance pass. And when a kid finally, finally throws litter into the bin like it's second nature (and it's rare that this happens), every bit of effort and investment becomes so worthwhile.

This also reminds me of another example, of how the rest allow the kids to borrow their handphones because it shows that they give the kids their trust. When I first went down for Spectrum I was a little surprised at how we freely allowed the kids to play with our phones and use them to log into their own Facebook accounts or drain their batteries through watching videos. But it was only after a while that I realized and learnt that this was intentional, and done with the hope that, by giving the kids their trust, the kids would also develop trust for us in return. And I think it worked, because I see kids keeping to their word and returning the phones to the respective kor kors and jie jies whenever their time was up. Not quite on the dot sometimes, but phones would always eventually be returned to their respective owners.

The Spectrum team also got me to think more about why we're there and why we go down every week. Besides the intention of helping them with their work, what else and what, really, should we be working towards? It was only after quite a while into the semester that one of our team members raised this question and shared his thoughts on how we should be helping them help themselves and to do that we should be taking more effort to understand them and their families better. When I first went for Spectrum I had a very simple aim of wanting to give what I could offer to a community, and commit to it. The mid-sem reflection was a good reminder that ultimately, we aren't there to solely help them, but to help them help themselves and build independence. We aren't there for them to depend on us.

There have been memorable times at Spectrum, and precious moments with the kids. Hmm I probably did not exhaust all that I've learnt, but I'll be stopping here for now. I'm just glad to have had this chance to give, and learn from this experience.