Rockstar In Da LEAP (Life Education Activity Program) Van

Dis da van (or really, trailer)

Rockstar’s class’ turn in the Life Education Activity Program (LEAP) Van last week, it says on the site their mission is to “help prevent substance abuse, particularly drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, by providing positive health-based education programmes for young people.” You even get a picture of Andy Lau up there as their health ambassador. Rockstar’s friends are more interested in meeting “The Giraffe”. I wasn’t there for the whole thing so I’m just guessing:

DIS giraffe…

As a very, very general statement from idle chit chat around friends, ex colleagues, neighbors and people on the dog walking trail, the perception of any existence of substance abuse among ESF kids is less than at more expensive international schools. Another mum once told me she’d even seen kids smoking in their school uniform right outside one of the international schools. (And I said very general statement. Like the very general perception ESFs don’t give enough homework or push kids enough (Hah but it’s one of the many reasons Rockstar goes here.  He’ doesn’t do well with “kill and drill do-it-or-else” and we have enough homework, thank you very much. I once found an anonymous blog post from a parent at another international school who said they were considering “Homework Strike”. That was when I learnt the term…))

It hadn’t even occurred to me yet that substance abuse could be a thing til someone in our area told us he hit the roof when his 16 year old came home drunk and you really have to audit their friends because it can happen really, really fast. Like, one day they’ve never heard of the stuff and then next thing you know they’re hooked. (I assume cigarettes or alcohol. Still a bit hard for me to wrap my head around easy availability of drugs because of growing up in Malaysia and Singapore with the death sentence for drug trafficking.)

Ok anyway better start young educating them. Like, in Year 1 young. And so, the message: smoking bad. And then… another message.

Rockstar waving a wand

This a grainy picture of the dark inside of the air conditioned LEAP Van with purple felt walls, where the bubbly LEAP volunteer is going through anti-pollution and health messages – what you need to stay healthy, what smoking does to your body….

Now, one of the (many) things different from my own memories of schooling and what Rockstar’s is like now is that everyone’s hands go up. (Back in my day no one wants to say anything haha. And friends also tell me this hasn’t changed with some schools today.) Except it’s a little crowded van and the kids are so excited the LEAP lady starts keeping to repeatedly calling the more erm, actively waving hands. This does not go unnoticed by school staff present.

Rockstar is one of those kids who sits quietly with his hand up but doesn’t shout out any answers (they were asked not to, but if you are a kid and this lady is really not noticing you otherwise… and you get to stick up posters all over the van! How cool is that?) After awhile school staff would intervene to make sure more of the other kids also got picked, and then Rockstar was one of those who got to wave the wand that makes the body parts light up.

I mention because it’s something I get asked fairly often by other mums of relatively soft spoken, non-rowdy kids – it’s one of the things they get worried about particularly with larger class sizes (so there’s an answer – they are professional about not missing even the quieter ones, don’t worry :)).

And stickers – always cool (he didn’t get the Kennedy star one that day, all the kids get some of those as encouragement, there are a few other special ones too, when they present good work to other teachers and school staff.. Rockstar haphazardly peels these things off his clothes and sticks all these on a designated wall – I encourage it because he fairly regularly goes through what he did to earn each sticker…)

As for Rockstar – he would later come home and say he’d been trying to tell the LEAP lady that the car emissions were carbon dioxide from the burning of petrol (had environment week sometime back – would also love an excuse to say methane is cow fart, because it’s not every day you can bring farts into schoolwork, you understand) but well, getting to wave a wand is pretty cool too.