BrainSTORM ANYTHING @ INTELIGENSE

There are two ways of succeeding at any topic. The first way is to have some one teach it to you fully. That comes from your regular school and tuition. The other is to have someone help you learn how to learn it! By brainstorming the topic with you. So you don't just memorize it but you really understand it and why it is important to you. These areas and topics could be anything - academic or extra-curricular. They could be:

1) Proactive things such as a passion or an interest that you want to nurture but don't have anyone to informally talk to you about it.

2) Normal but non-routine things such as figuring what you want to study/work on, as you get older. And how to maximize what you can achieve (and l/earn!)

3) Deficit areas such as problems with a specific study topic. Or trouble structuring your thoughts so can start writing a report/essay/post.

I am sure you would have faced some of these at one point or the other. Many of these requirements could be non-curriculum things. Your schools, poly or tuition centres are not really geared at these piecemeal individual requirements and your parents simply may not be able to help. This where we want to come in.

We just try to help you think for yourself. To create a plan for such thinking. Normally over a few, maybe one-three 1-hour sessions of brainstorming together. To bootstrap (help start) you up to a point where you know what to do clearly.

Parents/Guardians: I know it is kind of difficult to see how this works. But in summary, for each student we will normally offer one to three short sessions as a plan at one time. So it is will be a short term interaction on specific individual issues or topics that the student wants to work on.

The focus is not on teaching. We want the student to learn to think out problems by herself /himself so they can repeat it again and again. To other problems, other topics, other challenges. To facilitate that, we are a listening ear, a guiding hand and an intelligent brainstormer, rolled into one!

See examples in the next session.

Your problem: "I cannot understand electromagnetism. Actually I don't like physics itself. But I hear it is important. Can you help me understand the subject nicely?!"
What can we do: "We will try spark a general interest in the subject by going through the fundamentals and structuring the thought process and linking it to related areas by researching together."

Your need: "I love playing chess. No one is interested at home. I just want to talk to someone about the game for an hour and how I can get better at it with someone who will listen. A friendly mentor"

What can we do: "We can discuss the game of chess, read up books or resources together, figure a plan of action. Who knows what comes of it?!"

Your need: "I need to write this report. I just don't know how to start. I have too many thoughts! ... or too little thoughts!"

What can we do: "We will try and talk the topic out with you, create a mind map with you, structure the subtopics into headings and see how it all makes sense. The next time the student will try structure out the thinking herself/himself."

Your dilemma: "I am a little confused about my future. Should I get into something like sales or marketing.. or do something more technical for a career. I like electronics... or I like art. How should I plan my education path ?"

What can we do: "Spend a hour or two trying to convert your general ideas on to a spreadsheet with all the pros and cons and effort and costs and avenues of learning and earning so they you can see the different futures available to you more clearly."

As you can see, many of the situations above cannot be really solved by tuitions. So that is not what we are offering.

Well, it may start out looking like a tuition! But we hope by the end, you walk away with a sense of achievement. Not just having learn the topic you came for, but feeling like you can tutor yourself. Whenever you need.

That feeling that lasts. Well beyond your contact with us !!

Cost: Free. Yes it is free since it is being done out of interest to fill a gap in students who just cannot find this kind of support. However, if you find the sessions useful there a few things you can do in return...

1) Help other children if you want. If another student comes to us with a similar area of interest that you learnt on, we can contact you. If you feel you have learnt something or achieved anything with our help, see if you would help this new student together with us. For instance if another child comes with an interest in Chess or Sketching and we had helped you in the past, give a half hour of help to that person together with us, We want to build communities of common interests and foster the spirit of volunteering by paying it forward. But only if you want to.

2) Despite these classes being free, if you would really like to pay something, please feel free give as much as you want. Most will go towards cost of time/opportunity to keep this effort going. Once again, absolutely no compulsion at all - genuinely. Everything is by default free here.

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Time Slot: This one-to-one. But there is only one person doing this for now. Me! So time slots are difficult to come by. I am an IT consultant and very busy! But drop me a note through the contact form below and I will get back to you if or not I can help. Most likely, sessions would be on weekends or late evenings or even public holidays. Everything is on zoom for now. But we can consider in-person on discussion with the parent.

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What you need to commit: For the first session, I insist that one parent at least be on the first session with the student. For follow up sessions, the parent need not be there but would be good for you to work with the student to see if she/he wants to continue and come prepared if they do want to continue with us.