Students today are facing constant changes in the academic and social environment. Add to that pressure to catch up with trends and knowledge updates, it is no wonder that students are finding hard to cope with life. Some of the challenges they may face today include the following:

• Not Having Enough Time To Study
• Finding It Difficult To Manage Friendships
• Do Not Understand What Is Taught In School
• Family Does Not Understand Me
• Getting Ostracized By Others
• Do Not Know How To Manage Stress

As such, there becomes an increasing needs for students to learn new strategies and create new paradigms to deal with various situations they might face in future. According to the latest brain based research, experts believe that students today face more stress from the environment than the academic one. Stress may not be necessarily bad but when their stress becomes distress, it can lead to several implications on their emotional mind. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence believes that 20% of a person’s success depends on IQ which means that EQ plays an integral part in a person’s future.

This includes the following components:

• Awareness Of Self
• Social Awareness
• Ability To Manage One’s Emotions And Show Empathy & Compassion To Self And Others
• Handle Failure & Adversities Positively
• Ability To Maintain Relationships With Others
• Control One’s Impulse And Make Wise Decisions

Mindset, Attitude and Behavioural Change

We understand that just by providing the skills to learn it does not necessarily mean that the student will succeed. Often, students have self-limiting beliefs and mindsets that prevent them from using their full potential. This is often due to external factors such as their environments, and internal factors such as the belief that “I am not worthy”. These factors lead to a lack of zeal and vision for their studies, and poor work habits that cause laziness and procrastination.

The main focus of the workshop is to change their limiting beliefs and create empowering mindsets. We will instil motivation and the desire to learn in the students by using power packed, high-energy experiential games, interactive learning activities and various lectures. Students will be transformed by arming them with knowledge and self-confidence. We believe that to get through to students, you must learn by heart rather than learn by hard.

Students will also learn about how to become more aware about themselves, their strengths, weaknesses and how they respond to uncertainty and adversity. Based on the principles of various profiling instruments like DISC and MBTI, students will understand what makes them click and what turns them off. They will gain personal understanding, leading to self discipline & motivation to stay focused on their goals while handling setbacks and failures with optimism and how to channel their emotions in an effective and powerful way so that they can move with the tide rather than against it.

“They don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care.”

Family Communication and Relationships

As reported in the Straits Times, the common denominator among most scholars is the supportive role played by their parents during their studies. Our experience has shown us that the lack of emotional support from home often contributes to a student’s reluctance to perform well in school. Therefore, we have integrated a special session for the parents to join in on the activities on the last day of our programme.

Parents will get to participate in their child’s camp experience, as well as learn how to encourage, support and nurture their child for future success. Teenage years are difficult ones and conflicts often arise out of disagreements between child and parent. If not resolved, this would result in rebelliousness and anti-social behaviour such as truancy etc. It is common for a student to do badly in school just to spite his teacher and parents. In the programme, we focus on family relationships and share with students how they can better get along with their parents.

We also discover an increasing trend of students having to face social stress from their peers. Jealousy, people politics and distorted communication are becoming more prevalent among children and teenagers. Many are unable to read their own emotions and of others, which may lead to miscommunication and an exchange of negative emotions, leading to poor results and less than desirable conduct. This program will also focus on handling friendships, communication with others and how to read one’s emotions. Students will find this segment useful as they become empowered to make positive changes to their lives on their own.