PSHE Life Skills

As part of our weekly PSHE (Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education) lessons, Form 4 Mandela students attended a short session on ironing and bed making on 15th May 2019. The session turned out to be very useful indeed.

During the first half of the session, we took turns learning how to iron our hoodies, under the guidance of Mr Paul Simpson (Head of Concord’s Domestics Department). The last time I ironed was before I came to Concord. Since I arrived, I had never felt the need to iron because we don’t wear uniforms here. Thus, I found the task quite challenging. But I quickly got the hang of it, and my hoodie was ironed neatly in no time. Job done.

The next half of the session was spent learning how to make our beds. Karen, one of the domestic staffs at Concord, taught us how to transform our messy bed. Much like that from a scene in “The Impossible”, to one like Astrid’s bed in the “Crazy Rich Asians” mansion. So why are we learning this? To our dismay, she told us point-blank that starting from Sixth Form, we ‘won’t be pampered’ by our housekeepers anymore, and we’re required to make our own beds. Accepting our fate and wanting to learn new life skills, we started off by changing the bed sheet. Karen taught us to use the cross at the centre of the sheet as a reference, and place it gently on the bed. Then, we tucked the corners of the sheet under the four corners of the bed. Karen’s top tip, lucky for us, was that since no one sees the side of the bed facing the wall, it was perfectly alright just tucking it loosely. Moving on to the pillow sheets, it was basically like fitting a pillow into a rubbish bag – easy peasy. Then onto the duvet cover, which was easier said than done. We held the two corners of the bed sheet from the inside, used it to get hold of the two ends of the duvet, flipped it round and shook it until it covered the entire duvet. That sounded easy, but it normally takes me 3 tries to get it right… I know, it’s been so long, and I’d better learn.

The session ended with a fun race. We divided ourselves into groups of 4, and took turns to transform the beds. My group, consisting of my friends Jennifer, Pennt, Wing Hin and I, took 57 seconds to make the bed. I was actually very impressed by our time, considering the fact that none of us really knew what we were doing initially!

All in all, it was a great experience, and to my surprise, I had lots of fun. This session has definitely reminded me of our wonderful housekeepers at Taylor’s: Katie, Amanda and Margo, who have been keeping our bedrooms spick and span. Thank you!

Chloe – F4