Before the trip, Amy Wang, a Year 11 art student, had prepared a thoughtful lesson on “You and Me”: from painting three types of flowers to designing greeting cards, she hoped her pupils could use the “language of flowers” to share friendship.
But the classroom had other ideas.
“I’d barely arrived when I was told I’d be teaching the very first lesson. The children were still half-asleep, no one joined my icebreaker, and my step-by-step art plan was falling apart… My mind froze as I tried to figure out how to keep the class going. That’s when I realised how tough it really is to stand in front of a classroom!”
Thrown off balance, Amy had to improvise. She noticed the children secretly enjoyed watching their classmates get called on, so she used random questions to break the silence. Soon, the room shifted from quiet stares to laughter.
“Later I discovered they weren’t unenthusiastic—they just felt shy during lessons. After class they all came over to chat, and their warmth gave me the biggest boost of confidence.”
The surprise didn’t stop there. While Amy was out taking photos for her own assignment, curious pupils gathered around her camera. One boy from Year 5 or 6 quickly picked up tips on framing and exposure, and his shots came out even better than hers. When he said, “I want to be a photographer too, but I don’t have a camera,” Amy told him, “One day you’ll grow up and travel far with your own camera.” Watching his eyes light up, she realised teaching isn’t just about giving—it’s about planting small seeds of inspiration.
The nerves before leaving, the carsickness, the bumpy country roads—everything melted away when Amy saw the children’s bright smiles. Looking back, she says it was that lesson that went “off script,” the nervous improvisation, and that boy’s dream of becoming a photographer that taught her something lasting: you don’t have to be “good enough” before you try—sometimes taking the first step is what makes you stronger, and lights the way for others too.
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