ABOUT US

At The Olive Tree Learning Hub, we aim to provide an enriching learning experience even while intensively preparing students for exams. Borrowing from critical thinking frameworks used in the Gifted Education Programme and various Integrated Programmes, we equip students with skills and knowledge to enable them to excel academically. Our curriculum specialists can differentiate lessons to meet the learning needs of our students in the course of their study. We also offer customised lessons that adhere to the curriculum of students from selected schools such as Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary) and Hwa Chong Institution. Please contact us at 9119-2159 to find out more.

 

Our story begins with a poem. The poem is ‘You Begin’ by Margaret Atwood, Canada’s most prolific poet of our generation.

For copyright reasons, we cannot reproduce the poem here. The poem can be found at this link: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16789



This poem – which was shared with me by a brilliant young teacher (beside whom I had the good fortune to sit, and from whom I learned much and continue to learn) early in my teaching career – captures the ideas that we want to teach, and the questions we want our students to ponder over.

In this poem, a mother tells her child about the process in which a person comes to understand language and its connections to the world, how embedded in language are a myriad of concepts, and how there are so many concepts, so many ways to understand the world that there are not enough words to encapsulate what we can understand, and explain what we cannot. The mother explains that through seeking to understand knowledge, ideas and the world at large, the child will come to understand himself.

This poem came shape our teaching philosophy, a philosophy we have carried with us when we established The Olive Tree Learning Hub.

We aim to develop in our students critical and creative thinking skills based on sound, conceptual understanding, and grounded in skills and knowledge that the children can use to connect to the world at large. We believe that our students should not only gain through our tutorials the answers to the questions they ask, but learn what questions to ask, that they might be able to how to find their own answers long after they have graduated from our tutorials.