One afternoon, Mdm Jasmine Lim received a surprising text from a colleague. Four students were spotted assisting an elderly person in a wheelchair. The boys had seen him struggling to cross the road just outside the school, and rushed forward to lend a hand.  

Could they be the same handful of boys she used to keep a close eye on? “When I asked them later why they did that, they just said the uncle needed help,” Mdm Lim, better known to her students as Mrs Jasmine David, says with a smile.  

For the Head of Department (Character & Citizenship Education and Partnerships) at St Hilda’s Primary School, this was a clear sign that her efforts to shift the school’s CCE have truly landed.  

Giving back to her alma mater 

Contributing to St Hilda’s legacy is exceptionally meaningful for Mrs David, who was a student there from primary through to secondary school. Those growing-up years were also when she first learned about giving back to the community.  

Teachers would use assembly time to share news stories about what Singaporeans were doing to help those around them. “I always felt inspired, thinking, I can do it too,” Mrs David recalls with fondness.  

The golden moment for this came when she was posted to St Hilda’s. 

Today, besides teaching Physical Education and Social Studies, she oversees the schoolwide CCE experience for the students.  

She sought to amplify what St Hilda’s was already good at – giving back to the community – by proposing a strategic shift to its CCE experiences and integrating the two.   

For instance, a Primary 4 Social Studies chapter on Singapore’s early immigrants preceded a Values in Action (VIA) project titled “Uncles at Work”. 

Teachers guided students to reflect on the nation’s migrant roots, towards a greater empathy for our modern-day migrant workforce. Students then took part in a donation drive held in collaboration with the Migrant Workers’ Centre. They wrote thank-you cards and packed goodie bags which the peer support leaders personally delivered to migrant workers. The VIA project is one of St Hilda’s key CCE experiences and is now in its third year running.  

In another initiative, Mrs David introduced VIA projects as part of the CCA experience, where students contributed their talents and interests to community activities. For instance, performing groups would entertain the elderly residents at nursing homes and the art club would make crafts for beneficiaries. 

Overseas trips were also redesigned to enhance their ideas of what community contributions can look like; in Hong Kong, students saw how food wastage was being alleviated via a food rescue and donation organisation. 

Summing up, Mrs David says she wants students to have “not just purpose but impactful purpose”.  

Contributing to a cultural shift 

By making CCE a more coherent and experiential part of the school curriculum, Mrs David didn’t just deliver more effective learning opportunities. Students have also been inspired to run their own projects.  

A simple book donation drive led by a pair of siblings three years ago has grown into a larger collaboration with Pathlight School, with St Hilda’s Peer Support Leaders contributing to a reading programme there.  

Another group created a “kindness board” for their classmates to post motivational notes. The idea has since gone viral across the school with such boards in every room.  

Seeing board after board of notes as she walks past the classrooms, it was clear, “the children appreciate the idea”, Mrs David says. 

These little gestures will amount to something more formative when these students grow up – just like how Mrs David felt the impact of her school years on the person she is today. 

“If students can remember the values that were taught, and the feeling of gratitude when they wrote that thank-you card to our cleaners, our society will be better off,” she says, adding, 

“CCE is not just a subject for the books, it gets them through life.”