Reflection on my orientation planning experience in secondary school

Hello!

I was the Vice-Head prefect of my secondary school's (GESS) Prefectorial Board and I was appointed as the Vice-Camp Chief for the secondary one orientation committee! Initially, I was really excited about embarking on a new milestone in my leadership journey.

However, many challenges started to arise along the way, and in this post I will be sharing more about the nature of the challenges I encountered and how I overcame them, as well as the insights i gleaned from this experience.

For context, I had been in the organising committee for 2 years as a committee member before my appointment as Vice-Camp Chief. My main role was to create the programme flow, lead meetings alongside my two other heads, and give feedback on the facilitations for activities of my committee members.

The weight of expectations began to fall on my shoulders due to my level of experience and I constantly worried about not being able to upkeep the high standard of the secondary one orientation. The previous batches of heads had done an excellent job and I was fortunate enough to witness their success.

A key difference in my committee for that year, however, was that a lot of the members did not have much experience hosting an event like this before. Additionally, unlike prior batches of Chiefs, I was the only experienced chief in the group and this led to new ideas discussed (which hadn't been implemented in the past) and this prompted the teachers in charge to doubt the flow of the event as it was different from past experiences.

Eventually, this led to communication issues between the committee and the teachers, and between the seniors who came back as well. Disagreements were fairly common due to conflicting perspectives on how we should approach our tasks. Debriefs at the end of meetings mostly ended in tears and sharing about the struggles we encountered. Overall, it was a gloomy period of time and we struggled to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Towards the end of the planning process for the event I knew that the end goal was to make the secondary ones feel welcomed and have a smooth transition from primary to secondary school. I also realised that I had to have faith in my committee members and myself to be able to pull this off. I gave the team pep talks, motivation and advice wherever they needed it. Most importantly, I told them that there could be more than one way of doing things – we did not need to go by the book in everything we do and go out of the comfort zone to discover what the best way to approach things was.

The event went really smoothly and despite everything that was going on, we managed to create a fun and lively atmosphere for the secondary one students. I have taken away many valuable lessons from the event, some of which being:
1) seek to understand, then to be understood: hear what the other party has to say before jumping to your conclusions. Keep an open mind.

2) every opinion is valid: sometimes, we have to realise that everyone has their reasons for holding a certain perspective. This eases communication barriers among people and enhances communication.

3) communicate!!!: no one magically knows what you're thinking or how you're planning to go about doing something. Help everyone in the group by properly explaining and walking through processes slowly and carefully. It is important to communicate your feelings as well, that simple action can go a long way!