Saturday, November 09, 2013

Do the Right Thing At The Right Time

A few days ago, my car pool mate said she was unable to send Ace home and so, I asked if Max was free to pick Ace up instead during his lunch break. Max suggested instead that I just go along with him and we can have lunch together before we come back home.

So we arrived in school and I went to Ace's class to pick him up. When I picked him up, he immediately told me that he got into trouble today.

"My friends were using the ipad to search for the place where they stay in in their home country using google maps. I don't know why I decided to join them and so I got into trouble..." he told me.

But it was quite strange to me that his teacher would get angry at them using google maps to search for their hometown address... so I tried to ask him a few more questions to find out what really happened.

Finally found out the whole story. Seems that the children were divided into groups in the class and each group were given a few ipads and they had to share amongst themselves. They were supposed to use the ipads to research for information about EXPO 2020 (which is a huge thing in Dubai now.. we are all counting down to the announcement here in Dubai)...

A few of the boys decided to use GOOGLE MAPS function in the ipad to search for their addresses in their hometowns and Ace admitted that because it looked like fun, he joined in as well. But after a while, they moved away and went elsewhere and at this point, Ace was happily searching for his address in Singapore when the teacher came and asked him what he was doing. He told the truth and kenna a scolding...

Mr bao toh giah then told the teacher that he wasnt the only one doing that.. cos X, Y and Z also did it. So the teacher scolded all of them. And X said he did not do it... and someone came to Ace's defence and said, "If you did not do it, why will Ace say you did it... I saw you do it too..."

And in the end, Ace, X, Y and Z were all punished by staying back during their play time to write apology letters. They had to write two letters each.. one to the teacher.. and one to the other team mates because their teacher told them that as they wasted their time playing with the ipad instead of doing research, their teammates ended up doing more work.

"I finished my apology letter the fastest!" Ace told me.. as if finishing up fast will make up for the mistake... I laughed and told him.. "That is because you had lots of practice.. this is like your fourth apology letter this term in school!"

On a more serious note, I asked him what he learnt from this incident.

"I learnt that if I did this, my teacher might not trust me in future. And once trust is lost, it is not easy to earn back.." (I think his teacher told him that..)

"What else?" I asked him..

"Emm... I learn that you have to do the right thing at the right time..." he said.

I asked him if he understood why this is the wrong thing and the wrong time.. He seemed to understand a little but wasnt able to articulate it well.. so I explained to him that since he was given a task, so the right thing to do at this time is to give his all and complete the task. Even though he was not playing any games, but using the ipad to do something else is like "playing" with the ipad. And so, it was not the right thing to do and also not the right time to do it.

I asked him if he learnt his lesson and he said he did..

And since he already punished. I left it at that.

Apparently though... he hasn't learnt his lesson.

Cos just two days later... I gave him some math homework to do. His dad told him he had to finish by a certain timing. He didn't. Instead he just walked around.... dilly dally.. complain it is very difficult and 3 hours after the stipulated timing, he still hasnt completed his homework!

So he kenna left right and centre from his dad lor...

Sigh.... when will he learn to do THE RIGHT THING AT THE RIGHT TIME????

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