OTCA Feature - Grounding in humanity. Shooting for the stars. Stronger Together

As a teacher-coach, I firmly believe that besides imparting skills and game concepts, it is important to emphasises values education through deliberate teaching. Sports is an ideal platform that can offer many authentic opportunities to demonstrate, witness and practice values education. As a teacher-coach I work alongside with the external coach in training the students. Through coaching, I gain greater understanding of my players’ skill, character, and social emotional needs. This enables me to address the needs of my students and guide them to be better players both on-and-off the court.

Here is one example of resilience-building that is close to my heart. This year, unfortunately, just after the opening game of the Primary schools South Zone Basketball Competition, our best player in the Senior Boys team fractured his hand. Our Senior Boys team, including me, were saddened when we learned about the news. But this teachable moment presents itself an opportunity for our players to understand the importance of resilience, which is not to give up in the face of adversity. Through this, our players concluded that whatever happens cannot be reversed and that the only way to move forward is for everyone to contribute by improving so that they can fill the vacuum left by the loss of our finest player. I am glad that our players made attempts to make improvements throughout each stage of the tournament. 

Through competitions and games, I always remind players that winning isn't everything and that it should not come at the expense of their character. Losing serves as a form of feedback for us to look inwards and make improvement. When debriefing the players, we celebrate their efforts and sportsmanship behaviours. Any acts of poor sportsmanship behaviour are addressed and discussed. 

I firmly believe that interaction with other stakeholders provide authentic learning experiences for our students. Students can better understand how skills and values learnt in sports are transferable to other aspects of their life. We are thankful for the collaboration with Basketball Association of Singapore for conducting a clinic where S.E.A Games athletes representing Singapore came to share their basketball journey with our students. 

We are grateful for the collaboration with the Basketball Association of Singapore in organising a clinic at which our national athletes came to share their basketball experiences with our students.