When I first found out that I would be working at the Literacy Pirates (LP) over the summer, I thought: “Sure, I can barely remember the last book I read of my own accord - but I think I can get along with children and help them build some confidence in their reading and writing skills! And well, I’ve done some education-related stuff in the past. So I can play to my strengths and see if education is the right path for me!”  

Little did I know, things would not be as simple as they seem. 

After getting up to speed with a few of the assignments I would be working on throughout the project at the beginning, I was mainly responsible for assisting the session leader by supervising and guiding students in their reading and writing, as well as running errands for an upcoming event at the Rio cinema to celebrate the students’ achievements over the past year. 

The first two weeks were challenging for me. I did get along with the children as well as I thought I would have, but the thing I struggled with most was workplace communication and promptly replying to Teams messages - so much so that one morning I went to the wrong office (and had to take another bus back to the right one)! After such embarrassments, I subsequently had a very tense relationship with my line manager, and I didn’t feel very comfortable with them. To add fuel to the fire, I felt overwhelmed and disheartened at the myriad of admin tasks assigned to me for the first two weeks. After all, the novelty of verifying the same-looking Excel sheets, copy-and-pasting newsletters, and running various errands wears off faster than you’d think. 

Reflecting on my experience two weeks in, I felt lost and disappointed in myself. Was I really going to let this continue for the next 4 weeks? Did it not feel ironic that my “Leadership in Action” was reduced to passively doing what I was told? How was I ever going to make an impact? If I was to get something valuable out of this experience, something had to change. 

After consulting friends and family for advice, it occurred to me that the answer was in front of me all along. My “Leadership in Action” (LiA) experience wasn’t a prescribed set of activities that were listed on a job description, like I thought it was; rather, it was entirely what I decided to make of it. If this Leadership project was what I made of it, then it is ultimately up to me to steel my resolve, speak up for myself, and take ownership of my own LiA experience. This challenge, in fact, turned into the greatest opportunity I could have asked for.

It is with this change of heart that I took on the rest of the projects I was assigned to, which ended up being the highlights of my time at LP. Wanting to get out of my comfort zone, I first decided to step in for somebody who was going to act as a mummy at the Rio Cinema event - something I would never would have thought of doing (ever). Wanting to improve on my communication skills, I reached out to my manager, opened up with how I was feeling, and discussed the kind of work I wanted to be doing. In addition, I proposed to set up an additional project for myself: developing and recommending an SEO strategy for the communications manager to help the website rank higher on Google. To my relief, all of these thoughts and ideas were received positively. 

Towards the end of my LiA, I authored an exciting research report on the state of charity gaming fundraising and identified growth opportunities for LP in the hopes that LP would be able to diversify its fundraising sources through charity streamers. I was most happy that I took the initiative to correspond with the fundraising manager of Become Charity for advice to better inform my findings. Last but not least, I trained a custom version of ChatGPT (which I didn’t know was possible until that point) to help the team streamline their arduous work of proofreading their students’ stories at the end of each term. 

With all of these fruitful experiences and many more, I could not be more thankful for how the rest of my experience turned out. I trust that all these things I have done, particularly the research report and custom GPT, would help LP open new opportunities for growth and make their lives just a little easier in the future respectively, allowing them to better focus on their vision. 

When I think of all the invaluable life lessons I learned and unique experiences I had, I find it impossible to distill those six weeks into a simple “whether education is for me”. Having experienced the difficulty of getting out of my shell but also the benefits of proactivity and open communication, I definitely feel that I’ve walked away with a slice of the impact Literacy Pirates has on its students - the warmth of a safe, infectiously positive space to make mistakes, build self-confidence, and grow - which I will definitely take with me wherever I go as a future leader.