Background of the initiative

Founded in 1956, Liu Po Shan Memorial College is dedicated to developing students into well-rounded youth with the motto “Achievement and Benevolence”. Nurturing students with a caring character and a positive attitude is always at the heart of our education. It has been one of the major concerns in our school’s 3-year plan to enhance students’ positive thinking since 2017. Resilience, a major quality of positive thinking, was essential in 2020 when the COVID-19 epidemic struck our city.

In 2020, like most members of society, our students felt distressed as the news of the epidemic unfolded. In-class lessons stopped, and the epidemic kept their teachers and friends at a distance once they are close. The imminent need to help our students stay strong and resilient in those difficult times fell upon us, so that we had to adopt a new mindset to deal with the novel situation. To face the ‘new norm’ under COVID-19, we held on to our core school values, caring for students and teachers.

What we have done

Inspired by the programme of Service Leadership 3Cs for Entrepreneurial Teacher Leaders, we anchored our implementation plan to nurture students’ resilience to the 3Cs qualities for teachers as Edupreneurs and students. Table 1 shows the framework for nurturing students’ resilience through developing 3Cs qualities for teachers and students.

We believe that whatever values are precious to our students are also special to our teachers. The well-grounded framework guides us to infuse the value of resilience into our development programme for students and implementation for teachers. The approach to implementing the programme becomes part of our programme to foster an environment for nurturing resilience for the whole school.

We implemented several programmes during the 2020/21 school year as shown in Table 2 to respond to students’ needs. We adopted a blended approach by combining online activities and face-to-face activities whenever the situation allowed. For students, the programmes helped them nurture individual resilience and built up support networks so that they could triumph over adversity. These programmes helped teachers put aside their cares and chores in the classroom and join their students to enjoy relaxing moments.

Nurturing students’ precious qualities is a never-ending mission in education. Resilience is one of the core qualities that our students have to possess. The spirit of Edupreneurs reminds us that with the caring attitude of both teachers and students, we can get through the stormy weather to see a bright future.