I’ll never forget. Even as I’m typing this, I’ll always look back and thank my lucky stars that I did whatever I did that day, that not a single action was out of place which would ultimately lead me exactly where I needed to be.

It all started with an optional networking event organised by Singapore Management University (SMU)’s Social Impact Catalyst, a student club focusing on social entrepreneurship and innovation. I had signed up for the networking event weeks before, but I specifically remember being rather busy at that point of time, so I was highly tempted to forgo the event altogether. It was my close friend whom I had signed up with who persuaded me to go with her and I relented, so I (somewhat begrudgingly) met her at school and we made our way to the venue together.

I vividly remember being separated from my friend and sitting with a small, pre-assigned group of students. Various industry leaders rotated among groups to sit in with us, share a bit about what they did and answer the various, pressing questions we had.

Out of all the amazing sharings by the industry leaders about the incredible work they did, the one which stood out the most to me was by Saturday Kids, represented by Shreya. I was in the midst of looking for an internship at that time, and I remember being so captivated by Saturday Kids that immediately after the event concluded, I approached Shreya and expressed my interest in interning here.

She was more than happy to offer me her name card, so I followed up with her the next day via email and the rest was history!

Why Saturday Kids?

What hooked me on Saturday Kids was hearing about Code in the Community, Saturday Kids’ free coding programme for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. Their mission statement was simple, yet exceedingly powerful — “Inspiring kids to use tech to create a better future for themselves and for others.”

“The cause resonated deeply with me – I loved the fact that they recognised the importance and benefits of digital literacy, and they wanted to bring this gift to children who otherwise would not have access to it. I loved how socio-economic differences would no longer be a factor in children having a chance to learn how to code, and that they could grow their soft skills like intellectual curiosity, creativity, perseverance and confidence, through realising that they had the power and ability to build and create amazing things.”

Additionally, as someone running a candle business that supports the Deaf community, I have (very big but lofty) dreams of one day transforming my business into a social enterprise, and I thought that there was no better way of learning the ropes and the makings of a social enterprise than to join one.

And thus, my journey began!

Day Zero

There were several concerns piling up in my mind and daunting me, especially in the days leading up to my first day:

1. This was essentially a coding school for kids, and I had no coding background whatsoever.
2. The fact that as I’m currently studying Business Management with a major in Human Resources, it made sense for me to apply for the role as a HR intern, yet, as there was no official HR department, my desired role did not exist. Instead, I was offered the role of a Marketing and Special Projects (whatever that meant at that time) intern, and I readily accepted as I was just so excited to intern at this amazing coding company slash social enterprise.
3. My first proper internship! What should I wear and how should I dress in a way which shows I’m stylish, yet professional and capable? (Looking back, this is highly laughable as I can count on both hands the number of times I’ve visited the office over the span of four months.)

A day in my life

I would have loved to share that my daily activities revolved around visiting the various classrooms, helping to prepare and set up for the annual open house, physically interacting with children or running around completing miscellaneous tasks like previous interns had experienced.

Unfortunately, that was not the case for me. COVID-19 ruined any possibility of these things taking place, so I worked from home a good 90% of the time.

But I can’t complain much. I cherished the extra hour of sleep on the time I would’ve spent travelling especially when times were busy. I enjoyed meeting colleagues in smaller groups when I did actually go to the office, and particularly liked being able to know them on a more personal level which a larger group setting would likely not have provided. Finally, even when the entire team was working remotely, I appreciated the conscious effort and activities planned which colleagues took to reach out to each other to stay connected and feel a little less isolated amidst the pandemic.

A typical day in the life of an intern during the pandemic comprised of me waking up at 9am to prepare for my weekly marketing meetings at 9.30am, having occasional check-ins with my mentor Yeehui, laying out my tasks for the day, and deciding how and when I would accomplish them.

It sounds boring, I know, that my routine was basically to wake up, attend meetings, do my work, sleep and repeat. But what helped tremendously was the fact that I could find purpose , joy and great satisfaction in my work.

Because I had indicated very high interest for any HR-related task, I remember the type of work I received being very diverse or chapalang, as I like to put it. Even though my stated role was a Marketing and Special Projects intern, I feel like I managed to dabble in a bit of everything, which was a huge plus as I got to experience the best of not just both, but ALL worlds. I was able to try out different tasks which spread across the various fields such as marketing, operations, research, communications, customer service and HR.

“In the working world, there’s hardly any opportunity to able to try out so many roles and see what suits one best, so I really appreciated being given the chance to help out in whichever department I was interested in so I could discover for myself what I liked and disliked about each field, and see what suited my character best.”

At Saturday Kids, you’re never confined or restricted to just one role or job, so you can prepare to try tons of new things and grow your skillsets.”

Barely two weeks into my internship, I remember finding myself helping Ryan who managed Customer Service to call up a list of parents and inform them about our decision to shift the upcoming June holiday camps online following the government’s sudden change in COVID-19 restrictions for enrichment classes. I remember being so terrified to dial each number – what if they got angry and yelled at me??? Fortunately, my worries were unfounded as the parents whom I spoke to were understanding and cooperative. An added plus was that having parents ask me other questions related to curriculum and such, I was forced to find the answers which simultaneously allowed me to learn a lot more about Saturday Kids. Forget employee handbooks, handling customer service is the most effective crash course on any company!

Some highlights:

Looking back, there are so, so, so many fond memories which I amassed over the course of my internship. I could ramble on for another paragraph about how much I love Saturday Kids’ company culture which is nurturing, collaborative, rewarding and fun, and indeed perfect for anyone looking to acquire many new hard and soft skills, and sharpen their existing skills. Unfortunately, I’m running out of words here, so you can enjoy reading about my favourite moments in bullet points.

• Meeting Yeehui, my lovely mentor for the first time and getting to know her better over lunch where she treated me to a bagel at Two Men Bagel house!
• Having a mini photoshoot in office with Amelia as I helped to model for the company’s new shirts.

  That was my first time meeting Amelia in person, and I got to make such a cool, new friend that day.

• Collaborating with Imagilabs, where I worked with international partners from Sweden, Japan and the US to produce some amazing and inspiring Tiktok videos! (Links to come – finally, my hours spent scrolling through Tiktok at night put to good use.)
• Leading my first Happy Hour where I planned Skribbl.io as our team-bonding activity and I received really positive feedback from my colleagues that they had a lot of fun!
• Having calls with my fellow intern Carmen that lasted over three hours because we were tasked to find out everything there is to know about Zoom functions, which later proved to be extremely valuable information for our special project. Don’t get me wrong, the calls were tedious and anything but fun, but Carmen and I bonded over the pain and I’m forever thankful for that.
• Heading down to the office with four others – Amelia, Carmen, Josh and Yeehui – on a Saturday to carry out our special project Ayo!, a virtual edu-tech festival which spanned eight hours. The five of us in office became true Saturday Kids that day, and I fondly remember us having heart-felt conversations as we worked to piece together a jigsaw puzzle during our lunch break.
• The one week that the team got to rest following Ayo! because they felt that we all deserved it. Bliss. Honestly, it really reflects how highly the company values its employees and the work everyone puts in, and that they recognise and appreciate everyone’s efforts, even the “lowly” interns. :”)
• The online farewell party for three teammates where we put together a video montage of their photo highlights and co-workers sending them their well wishes.

  We also had snacks and drinks delivered to our doorsteps (thank you John!)  so that everyone could celebrate their contributions to the company, and then move on to accomplishing even greater things.

• Finally, the sharing sessions during every Friday’s Happy Hour where we got to learn something interesting, be it a story or a skill from a random co-worker each week. I wasn’t there when Ryan conducted a dance class for everyone virtually, but I’m glad that I was there to hear about Shreya’s passion for Indian dance, and Clarice’s resin art business, just to name a few.

Valuable takeaways

1. The importance of networking. I understood this for myself even before I began my internship, and I really can’t fathom how different my life would have been had I not attended the networking event and mustered the courage to shamelessly approach Shreya about internship opportunities. Networking can do wonders for your career and personal relationships, and it is WORTH every ounce of fear it takes to pull yourself together to make the first move to approach someone and strike up a conversation with them.
2. Ask and you shall receive. Be it clarifications for the work you’re going to do, feedback on your tasks or performance, or even for help, ask and you shall receive. It’s a simple enough course of action, yet many don’t actually practice it, and I was guilty of it too. Initially when I was first given some projects to work on, I asked few to no questions about I was supposed to do. I did the tasks according to my own interpretation thinking I could get away with my creativity, but my lack of experience shone through as I ended up having to redo my tasks because they simply didn’t follow certain guidelines or frameworks. Asking questions can be intimidating because you’re afraid of seeming incompetent or hinting that you weren’t paying attention, but it will do wonders because it saves so much time on doing tasks the right way when there’s no miscommunication.
3. Tough times don’t last, tough people with an amazing support system do. There’s no point in sugarcoating the fact that there will often be times at Saturday Kids when work is more than hectic and tasks are piling sky-high. When I look back on those times, I don’t exactly remember each painstaking moment of suffering over a given assignment, drawling over what my next step would be. Instead, I remember texting my intern friends and asking them for advice or help, and even having random calls with them throughout the day just to do our work together and keep each others’ morales boosted.

   Sure, I could have finished my work on my own, but the restlessness and fatigue that we sometimes all shared served to foster camaraderie among us, and I am so thankful that I had friends to lean on for support every step of the way (special shoutout to my intern friends, you guys know who you are!).

4. If you’re looking for an internship here, be ready to grow. Like it or not, Saturday Kids is going to stretch you, and then stretch you even more, so take the time to breathe and appreciate the process. You’re going to learn so many new skills, see your work come to fruition, and also be part of such an amazing social cause. Trust me, you’re going come out of this internship feeling super accomplished and proud of how much you’ve grown. I know I have.

Somewhat new beginnings

All good things have to come to an end …. right? Except not quite.

Even though I didn’t manage to pick up coding during my time interning here, I have decided to come back as a volunteer for Code in the Community. I’m excited to pick up Scratch and Python, but even more so to pass on my newfound skills and knowledge to children who otherwise would not have had a chance at obtaining digital literacy. I can’t wait to meet children with so much ability, creativity and potential waiting to be shown to the world. There’s so many amazing possibilities in-store for them, and I can’t wait to return in October to directly be a part of this movement!

Finally, John mentioned during one particular Happy Hour that Saturday Kids is like family — no one ever really leaves even though they may graduate from it.

And for that, I’m ever thankful that I got to be a part of the alumni club.

The post Interning at a coding school for kids with zero coding background, and a role irrelevant to my major. appeared first on Saturday Kids | Coding, Digital Literacy for Kids & Parents.

When we first interviewed Joshua (introduced by way of former gap year intern Sandra) back in February, we knew that he was a hungry, self-motivated learner. But what we didn’t expect was the curveballs that COVID-19 would throw at us, and what he would take upon himself to learn in the process. Here, he shares what it’s like to intern during a global crisis, and his takeaways from from working and learning in a time like this.

Unexpected lessons from interning during a global crisis

My first priority in university was completing a meaningful internship. As an aspiring entrepreneur, I was excited about the opportunity to dive into actual campaigns and understanding how marketeers’ minds work. And so, as a young and curious university student, eager for a taste of the real world, I took my first step with Saturday Kids.

Since I began my internship in March, it’s been eye-opening – not least because recent escalations have placed an interesting twist on work at Saturday Kids.

“Our consumers’ needs and preferences are evolving almost completely, and so is the business landscape.”

There’s no shortage of news discussing the implications of an economic downturn. And though I’ve learned about what that means in school, experiencing it at the workplace is a whole other ballgame. Along with the uncertainty of how things will unfold, the curious side of me is excited to see how companies will navigate this situation.

Being an intern at such a time as this teaches me so much more about business; there’s always something new to learn everyday, or a new angle of looking at things.

While these times are challenging for everyone, this evolving climate presents an opportunity for learning and insights, like these:

1. Growing to be more self-reliant and dependable
   

   As someone who’s most productive working in offices or cafes, working from home was something I had to learn to adapt to. Distractions are plenty at home, but what kept me grounded was the will to learn and improve as much as I can so that I can give back and offer valuable contributions to the team.

2. Managing independence and communication
   

   Working apart from my colleagues was a little intimidating in the beginning. Having your peers around in the office gives you a sense of security – you can always conveniently check with them for direction and gather feedback promptly.

   

   While online communication tools like Slack still allow that, this new (for me) working dynamic encourages me to be extra independent and resourceful with work.

3. Getting comfortable with ambiguity
   

   At a startup like Saturday Kids, there’s not much hand-holding, and often, a part of me feels unsure of how to begin going about my work when given a new task. Yet, a larger part of me feels it is this setting that will build me up to better contribute to the workplace and the world in the future. Great personal development only comes outside of your comfort zone after all.

To anyone who interning at this time or about to embark on their first internship, here’s my advice:

Take this time as an opportunity to build yourself up. There is so much you can takeaway from virtual meetings or casual discussions with your colleagues. 

Most companies are switching things up in some aspect or another to adapt to the situation so there’s always something new to learn every day. 

Moreover, remember that every hurdle you face on your internship is an opportunity to not only become better and stronger at your craft, but to cultivate your outlook in life too. It more than just completing tasks, it’s about building character.

. . .

Joshua Simon is currently a digital marketing intern at Saturday Kids, a student at the University of Birmingham, a fitness junkie and aspiring entrepreneur!

Do you have feedback on this post or insights from your own experience to share? We’d love to hear from you.

The post Unexpected lessons from interning during a global crisis appeared first on Saturday Kids | Coding, Digital Literacy for Kids & Parents.

There are 2 things about me you should know.

Firstly, being a kinesthetic learner and a maker by heart, I have always believed in hands-on learning and was never a big fan of an education system that forces you to memorize.

Secondly, I love kids! 

So when I was scrolling through job listings on my university’s portal, it wasn’t hard to decide what to do for my summer break the moment I landed on the Saturday Kids website. The idea of hands-on coding and building stuff with kids really called out to me, as it would give me an opportunity to teach kids the way I believed teaching should be done.

My main role at Saturday Kids was as a rocket launcher – developing curricula and assisting classes.

To do this, I regularly put myself in the shoes of a child to experience the curriculum we built. This could be challenging given the newness of the type of learning we were trying to pilot. For example, working on the project-based drop-in curriculum for Explorer Pass, I helped to design self-directed courses that were highly intuitive; this made me more empathetic and understanding of kids abilities.

The first night before I assisted my first class, I repeatedly went through the lesson material, trying to figure out all the ways I might screw up during a lesson. What if a kid cried? How if parents asked me tough questions? But once the lesson actually began, the kids were so cute, I threw away all my worries and started enjoying myself.

Teaching is a tiring process, but at the end of the day, when kids presented their projects, knowing that they created what they did as a result of what we taught them was the most rewarding feeling in the world.

Happy faces after wrapping a holiday camp!

I’ve come to believe that teaching is one of the most important jobs in the world because of our proximity to kids, and the privilege to provide guidance as a role model. What we do during those hours of class is really important – as an educator, what we teach is an incredibly powerful tool to equip students with the knowledge, skills and wisdom they need for life.

Interning at Saturday Kids has been nothing short of an amazing journey, and I don’t think I could have made a better choice for my first internship. Special thanks to Shawn for taking care of all of us, to my fellow interns who I were amazingly in sync with, and last but not least – to my mentor Huda, who was always there to lend me a helping hand!

Summer interns and the rocket launchers from Saturday Kids.

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At Saturday Kids we’re always on the lookout for interns and rocket launchers to be a part of our weird and wonderful team. If you’re excited about tech, passionate about education and love working with kids, let’s connect here!

The post Launching rockets fresh outta school – Stephen Alvin on his summer interning at Saturday Kids appeared first on Saturday Kids | Coding, Digital Literacy for Kids & Parents.

In May of 2016, I celebrated the completion of 3 gruelling but eventful years of studying Mass Communication in Ngee Ann Polytechnic. Graduation highs lasted for a good 5 minutes before I was struck by the realisation that I had no idea where to go moving forward.

All I could think of was – crap, now what?

“Send help”

Filled with a truckload of uncertainty, self-doubt and the fear of jumping into an undergraduate course I’d probably regret 3 days later, I decided to take a gap year to gain some valuable working experience. At least that’s what I told my parents so they’d stop asking me what I wanted to do in life.

Jumping Into The Unknown

And thus began the job hunt to put my diploma and time to good use. Armed with a love for writing, designing and a desperate need to get my life together, I filtered furiously through job listings looking for a place I could channel my passion into.

Several ‘blue ticked’ job applications later, I stumbled upon a listing on Glints for Saturday Kids. I proceeded to check out their website and creep through their social media pages to get a sense of the company and I remember liking what I saw.

The whole concept of empowering kids with the skills to create in a world that was becoming increasingly digital was something that resonated with me deeply. That and the fact that I love kids spurred me to take a leap of faith and apply for a position despite not being able to code to save my life.

I sent in my CV on a Saturday afternoon, not expecting anyone to give this non-programmer the time of day but barely 3 hours later, a guy named John replied and asked me to come down for a chat. I spent the next few hours thinking: what on earth did I just get myself into and the rest was history.

Learning To Scale A Mountain With My Bare Hands

My first few weeks as a marketing and operations intern involved ordering 200 party hats, designing posters, assisting in a class full of preschoolers and familiarizing myself with platforms and programming languages that were completely foreign to me.

Let’s just say, the learning curve was almost vertical and life felt a little something like this:

It also didn’t help that there were literally only 2-3 people in the office on most days and none of them were around my age. Man was it a tough time.

Look At All The Stuff I Learnt!

As my internship progressed, I got to dip my toes in helping to plan and execute marketing campaigns for Holiday Camps and events, take charge of the weekly newsletter and document Eureka moments of kids through the lens of a Canon 70D.

I also had to help prep the materials for classes. Printing endless piles of worksheets and certificates of completion became a regular affair and I unofficially became the most acquainted with the office printer out of the entire team. #internachievementunlocked.

One of my proudest achievements would be learning how to use VLOOKUP in Excel to extract info from the Mother of all Excel sheets that was our customer database.

It certainly took me awhile to get a hang of what I was doing but thankfully, I did. From not knowing how to code for nuts, I even managed to teach a class of 8 how to code their own game on an iPad!

In my remaining months at Saturday Kids, I would go on to design my first batch of stickers, revamp the copy and visuals on the site, visit Google’s HQ and run a customer service workshop for the rest of the team. At one point I’m pretty sure I spent an entire day just playing different Scratch games created by our very own students for marketing purposes. It was awesome.

Being Comfortable With The Uncomfortable

Throughout my time as an intern, I felt as though I was constantly catapulted out of my comfort zone.

For instance, everyone on the team took turns to do customer service so that we could all get some perspective on what parents were looking for in our classes. It was a great opportunity to interact directly with the people whose kids we’d be empowering, but for someone who was painfully awkward and undeniably introverted, this was probably the most difficult thing.

“What do I do if they rage at me? What if I can’t answer their questions? Also, what do I do with my hands?”

These were the type of questions that plagued my first few customer service experiences but surprisingly, talking to parents turned out to be one of my favourite parts of the job.

As it turns out, not knowing how to code actually worked to my advantage. It was the best way for me to put myself in the shoes of parents and address their concerns and woes. Most of the parents who called in didn’t know much about programming either but knew it was important, and boy could I relate. With my nonexistent background in coding, I could better explain the different programming languages and courses we offered in a way that these parents could understand and it worked!

Talking them through the courses we had, meeting them in person when they dropped their kids off for class and seeing firsthand what their kids could create made everything so worthwhile. It reminded me of the big picture that we were helping kids learn how to learn all over again through sheer curiosity and technology. On days where I had creative dry spells or spent Friday nights cutting cardboard till the cows came home, these reminders definitely came in handy.  

I was also really blessed to have colleagues, whom I now proudly call my homies (hi John, Shawn & Urvi), who took the time to mentor and guide me through what I had to do. Being surrounded by people who were driven by the same mission and actively contributed to it within their own unique capacity was incredibly inspiring. In a day and age where typical desk jobs sucked the life out of you, I genuinely looked forward to work (on most days).

Greatest Takeaways

As fulfilling and fun as my internship at Saturday Kids was on some days, there were also times where I felt so overwhelmed by the workload I wanted to just crawl in a hole and hide. Times where I felt so exhausted and defeated by everything and anything. But nothing worth achieving in life ever comes easy and looking back I’m glad I persevered, albeit with a fair share of blood, sweat and tears.

It’s pretty crazy how much I’ve learnt and done in the span of 6 short months. Besides expanding my knowledge and vocabulary of coding, marketing and operations, there are 3 lessons I’ve learnt here that’ll probably stick with me for life:

1) Passion is and always will be the result of action, not the cause of it

For the longest time after graduating, I tried to figure out what I was passionate about and how I could fit that into a job title. But discovering what you’re passionate about is a full-on trial-and-error process. You don’t find your passion thinking about what you’re passionate about, you find it trying out a bunch of different things till you stumble on something you’d work on tirelessly.

2) No one ever grows much staying within their comfort zone

There will be times in life where you just gotta #YOLO your way through head first. Exhibit A: applying for a position at a coding school with zero coding skills. See? That turned out pretty well.

Limiting yourself to only what you’re good at and what you can do will stop you from growing into someone you never even dreamed of being. So just go for it! Take risks. Try it out and see what happens.  

3) Never stop learning

For the most part of my time in school, I really hated studying. I hated the vicious cycle of cramming 2,381 facts in my brain and regurgitating it out during exams only to forget everything after I left the exam hall. I just didn’t see the point in learning anything.

But luckily, I realised that was a horrible way to live. When you stop learning, you’ll soon neglect what you already know. When you stop wanting to learn, you stop being curious and everything in life becomes dull and monotonous. You may not be able to change the system alone, but you can definitely change the way you think.

Do yourself a favour: listen to Einstein. He sounds like he knew what he was doing. All in all – Never EVER stop learning.

Why I Decided To Return

Although I decided to go back to school and further my education, I was so damn reluctant to leave. So when I had to apply for a compulsory university internship, it was a no-brainer decision. I was beyond ready to pick up where I left off.

Saturday Kids really set the bar for the way all internships should be – challenging but nonetheless immensely fulfilling. Working here will always be my happy place and I’m stoked to be back again doing my second round of internship.

I guess Saturday Kids do turn out more curious, inventive and resourceful after all.

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This story is part of our ongoing series of conversations with awesome people we’ve crossed paths with at Saturday Kids – including parents, students, friends, colleagues and our super interns.

Have a story to share? We’ll love to hear from you, drop us a line at [email protected]!

The post The Highs, Lows & Everything In Between Of Interning At Saturday Kids appeared first on Saturday Kids | Coding, Digital Literacy for Kids & Parents.