Hello I have a few minutes today since my lessons tomorrow are all planned, so thought I’d write a little here!

Before I continue, I just want to apologize for the lack of updates, and even if I do update it’s all about teaching. It’s just that: 1. teaching consumes my entire life now and 2. it doesn’t seem too appropriate for a teacher to be posting too many camwhore pictures etc (plus, surprise surprise I’m not that vain anymore!). So…sorry that I’m no longer the same silly and stupid sweatlee.com

Anyway, I have a few pictures that I took over the weeks so I’m going to write about a day in my life as a teacher!

I wake up in the morning around 6.30 am and get ready for school (like a student hahah).

When I get to school (which is only a 2-minute walk away), I pack the materials for my classes immediately. My schedule is really packed everyday, I usually have back-to-back classes and if I’m lucky, 40 mins-1 hour between classes to photostat materials etc.

This is one of my form 1 classes! I’m actually not allowed to post pictures of my students since they’re under 18 (it’s apparently a law in Malaysia) so here’s one of their backs haha. I’m pretty sad that I can’t post their pictures because I’m planning to write some of their stories here with pictures for effect but guess I’ll blur their faces or something..

I hate making them copy questions from board cause it’s a waste of class time and I think it’s a lot more efficient if I could give them photocopied questions to answer. BUT we have to pay to photocopy and I’ve already spent more than RM100 so far for my 6 classes so.. Now I get why teachers make us copy the questions.

Actually, now that I’m a teacher, I totally get why teachers teach the way they do in Malaysia.

You have NO idea the stuff that we have to do. More than 50% of our time has to be devoted to a lot of other unnecessary administrative work and it’s so tiring to maintain our energy in all our classes. Sometimes I just want to be a teacher who asks students to copy notes and sits while they copy cause I have no energy at all! Thank god so far I’ve managed to remain super active but can you imagine how it’s like for a teacher who has been teaching for years? I don’t blame them for being worn out.

In the picture above, the seating arrangement is a little weird because I got so fed up of the kids complaining that they can’t see the board (it’s true, the board is terrible) so I dragged their tables to the front. The front kids were actually like 15cm from the board. Now they can’t complain anymore!

Ok continue. So I teach till around 2.40 pm and will finally get to sit. Sometimes I’ll eat my bun for breakfast/lunch but if I didn’t buy any then I’ll have to wait a little longer.

On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, there’ll be cocurriculum so we’ll have to stay in school till 4.30-5pm.

This was taken during our Merentas Desa activity last week. ALL the kids have to run 8km for that two days. I felt so bad for them cause they were already so tired from school and some of them didn’t even have time for lunch yet!

But it IS nice to run around the paddy fields

I’d choose to run here over congested city roads anytime!

After running, they had to sit under the BLAZING HOT SUN to listen to some speech. Super kesian!!! I sat with them to know how it feels and seriously it was not fun at all. I think teachers should sit under the sun with the kids to know how they actually feel everytime during assembly.

This was taken yesterday during the house practice. We have a very nice big field

Anyway! Around 5pm, I’ll go back to the staff room to pack my things. By then, I’d have been wayyy too tired for anything else and just want to shower and nap.

Then I would punch out and collect my mail. Got a postcard from Melissa! I have no idea which Melissa this is. Melissa Kong is that you???

I feel so loved!

When I get back home around 5.30ish, I’ll shower right away and die for a while on my bed. Lunch is out of the question, I just need some sleep.

Then I’ll wake up and cook dinner! We don’t have a fridge (cause we’re poor teachers) so I’ll eat whatever we have in the kitchen. Here’s an awesome meal of rice with omelet. Looks simple but it’s really good ok!

Sometimes I’m too tired to cook so I’ll eat outside. There’s a chinese restaurant, a mamak and a tom yam shop nearby.

Then I get back and mark my papers/homework and plan lessons for the next day. Planning takes a huge amount of time and if I don’t plan my lessons ahead, my classes will definitely not go well.

I go to bed around 12.30am every night because I cannot function without at least 6 hours of sleep!

On weekends, I’ll key in students’ homework marks etc in the tracker. We have to track each and every student’s progress, which is very hard if you have around 150 students :S I basically don’t have weekends at all..

That’s basically my life for the past one month that I’ve been a teacher!

Oh I also took plenty of photos last week cause for CNY, my dad and sister came back home! This is the first time in many years that we’re all together so it’s a momentous occassion!

Waiting for my sister and mother to finish their makeup at the photo studio. We were there to take our family photo! Can you see my brother and Peter (sis’ bf) sleeping at the back wtf

Yay family photo! Bad quality cause I sneakily took this picture from the computer.

I love my siblings! <3

Went back to Teluk Intan for Chinese New Year!!!!!!! So happy to be back and so happy to be getting my first angpau in 5 years!

Pete and my grandma downing shots together hahahhaa. My grandma is super hardcore ok!

With my cousin

Ok now I want to show you a picture, but you must promise to still love me after this.

Promise?

Promise??

Promise??????

So because we were so bored while visiting relatives (somemore some of them got no cookies in their houses how can!!!!), we had a “See who’s the ugliest competition”

Guess who won?

Me! wtf

Sigh such striking beauty

Chapped lips, big teeth, what more can you possibly want in a girl?

Anyway, *abrupt* we went to Singapore after that!

Yays!

Walked until I wanted to die.

By the way, I lost some weight recently. Conclusion: be a teacher if you wanna lose weight! I’ve been trying to lose weight for an eternity but never did so I’m quite happy! But I’ve also been sick and have not been eating well, plus teachers have to move a lot.

Ok the end have to sleep now. I just want to take this opportunity to congratulate myself for successfully finishing my first month of school T________T *tears of joy

Things are definitely getting more difficult now. Kids are misbehaving more often now that they’re used to me, and my energy level has been quite low but everyday I see something that inspires me to be a better teacher.

Rakis, an orang asli kid from my most challenging class, came to me today and said “Cikgu, saya faham SEMUAAAA yang cikgu ajar dalam kelas!!!” (teacher, I understood everything you taught in class!) with a huge grin. He was so proud of himself for being able to answer the questions, and looking at his proud smile made me cry a little inside.

This small boy has failed all his subjects before this and has probably not understood much in class before. He cannot read and write, and yet he is so hardworking in my class. All the kids around him are so disruptive, but he has always paid full attention to me when I teach. I’m just so inspired by him.

When I was exiting the class, I saw him walk to another boy and said “Amirul, cikgu ajar senang nak faham kan? Saya faham SEMUAAAA hari ini!” (Amirul, it’s easy to understand what teacher taught right? I understood everythinggg!) with his huge cheeky grin.

I just wanted to hug him there and then and tell him I will do everything I can to make sure he will succeed. Rakis, you don’t know this, but you inspire me in so many ways to not give up and to be a better teacher.

–

p.s: very impressed with myself for writing this super long post hahah

i’m still alive (barely). i work 17 hours a day. i need more hours, please give me some?

that is all.

Remember my internship article I wrote for Prudential’s R U Ready page? I wrote another one for them and this time it’s about living life on a budget! As most of you would know, I’m a super thrifty person and used to get awards for being the stingiest person alive

Read my article HERE if you want to know how I save money! Do like the article and the page too! I’m happy they chose me to write on this topic so I can spread my dogma on my kiam-siapness wtf

Do check out the entrepreneurs workshop that Prudential is organizing too if you’ve always wanted to know how to start your own business It’s on February 18th in PJ Live Arts Jaya One! More info here.

A short update:

I’ve been having acute abdominal pain for the past two weeks since I moved to my new school. At first I didn’t think much of it since it could be due to the stress of settling in a new place, teaching or maybe the water etc. Saw 4 doctors and they told me it could be gastric/wind so I took lots of gastric medicine. The pain got much worse and some nights, I can’t move at all without cringing in pain. Miraculously, the pain would subside a little in the morning so I’d still teach (thank god).

But on Thursday night, the pain got so bad I can’t even do anything. Can’t breathe, can’t talk, can’t move. On Friday, I drove home (painful drive) and went straight to the hospital since there’s no proper hospital near my school. Saw a gastroenterologist at first cause I thought it had to do with gastric, then he referred me to a gynae cause it could be pelvic infection and finally I was referred to a surgeon cause it could be appendicitis.

The thing is, I’ve had the pain for too long for it to be appendicitis, so no one knows exactly what is wrong. So my surgeon gave me antibiotics and if I don’t get cured completely by Monday, I’ll have to have a surgery done to remove my appendix.

Surgery?? Now?? I am so upset cause I cannot afford to miss any teaching days or my kids would get soooo left behind. My mom was with me but she was more worried about me missing Chinese New Year wtf.

My parents are convinced there’s some black magic stuff and that I’ve been charmed (jampi-ed wtf) and got angry at me for choosing to go to a rural area. My mom called all her aunty friends to collect stories of people getting sick through black magic to scare me wtf. Also, the pain only started when I moved there but why would anyone want to harm a teacher?? They want me to transfer out now but no way I’m doing that. I’m sure it’s either just appendicitis or a case of very bad bacterial infection.

Anyway, aside from that I’ve been doing ok. I have so many stories to share! I spoke to this form 5 boy at length the other day and his story is quite eye-opening so I’ll write about that later.

I also kinda broke down for the first time last Friday after my very tough class with my more challenging kids. I taught them a song but only half the class would sing along, the other half was too shy/didn’t want to try. I sang the song to them over and over again, encouraged them, got them to pronounce the syllables etc but nothing worked.

I was also in pain so I can’t project my voice too much, then two boys started punching each other. The other boys immediately rushed to the crime scene, wanting to be part of the action too. I finally got them all settled down, sang the song, and talked to the boys about their conflict.

When I left that class, I felt my tears welled up. I felt like I just wasted these kids’ time because nothing probably went in their tiny cute heads. I had assumed that they could at least sing a song with me, I didn’t plan too much in advance and didn’t take into consideration their lower level compared to other classes. It was entirely my fault that the lesson went haywire.

And the worst part was, I only had 2 minutes to compose myself while I walk to my next class. 2 minutes to change from this distraught teacher to my usual cheery joyful teacher mode.

Life is just beginning to get a lot tougher for Cikgu Suet. But, all izz well.

Hello!

I realized I haven’t blogged in weeks, but things have been crazyyyy! I wish I could get someone to blog for me because there’s so much I want to say but don’t have the energy, time and internet to do so.

So, I’m officially a teacher now! Students call me Cikgu Suet Li cause I think Cikgu Liew/Ms. Liew is too formal. I just drove the 2.5 hours home from a long day of teaching, so I literally  cannot feel my legs now but I want to update about my first week as a teacher in a rural school!

On the way to my school!

Yay, almost there! but another 40 mins more -___-

Cows crossing whenever they want, super scary!

The other day, I saw a goat lying in the middle of the road like he owns it. LIKE A BOSS!

My school! and view from my balcony. I live IN school!

I moved in last week and things were quite tough at first because we hadn’t got our electricity until two days ago. Use candle only T__T But! I surviveddddd. We also had to clean our inhabited house, we cleaned the cobwebs and dead insects and scrubbed the entire house! I’m very proud of myself that I survived cause I’m actually quite a princess. I don’t clean and I need aircon all the time, but now I’m such a kampung girl! *pats self on back

Angeline, the other TFM fellow, cleaning

Srs bsns

EUGHHHH. BUT it’s super clean now ^_^

Meeting my kids for the first time. So excitinggg

Anyway, about teaching! It’s been………challenging. Very challenging. I mean I know it’s going to be tough with these kids, but it’s beyond imaginable. First of all, I’m having problems with the boys catcalling and making kissing noises at me wtf. It sounds stupid but it’s a very real problem! Whenever I walk at the corridors, the boys will start, sometimes they even call out I Love Youuu.  I’m a teacher and this is really disrespectful! If it persists, I’ll have to talk to other teachers and get them to talk to the boys. They wouldn’t like it if people do that to their mothers/sisters too. Plus, I’m new, so maybe they’ll stop when they come to respect me later.

As for my classes, I found out that I have sooo much work to do with them. I was given the “back” classes for Form 1, and their diagnostic came up to be 0%. Some of them are illiterate, it means I have 7 years of catch up to do before I can end this year for them to be on par with the proper form 1 level. FEEL SO ANGRY that teachers let these kids waste 6 years of their lives! 6 years of going to school and coming back with absolutely nothing, learning absolutely nothing.

I guess that’s the biggest motivating factor for me. These kids don’t deserve to go back with another year of nothingness. They deserve to learn, they deserve progress and success. There’s absolutely no way I’m giving up until they show 7 years of progress in one year. It’s going to be hella tough though, but I’m glad my anger at the inequity is fueling my passion.

I also have one “best” class in Form 2. To be honest, I’d say they’re the best class only because they are well behaved kids. They don’t run around when I teach, talk or punch other people. Academic achievement wise, they’re averaging at a B-/C. Definitely NOT good enough.

Eventhough they’re well behaved, the other naughtier classes were definitely more engaged and active in class. The “good” class has a blank face whenever I talk to them, and would say yes in unison to ANY question; it’s as if they have been programmed to be that way from years of formal dictator-like schooling. It’s really sad and I’m planning to change that culture

My school is literally a drive-thru fruit farm! We have fruit trees all over and we can just pick the rambutan, durian, langsat etc anytime

It’s not official until you have your teacher name tag!

My poor kids had to carry their tables and chairs from the 3rd floor of a building to the 3rd floor of another building. They were so tired by the time they got to class!

Sometimes it’s Cik Sweat Li, sometimes Suet Le, sometimes Sweet Le -____________- Call myself Li la sigh

Meet Mr Chicken! He’s my timer for all my activities and I get the students to say “Hi Mr Chicken” and “thank you Mr Chicken” and they love it! Soooo cuteeeee

There are definitely plenty of challenges ahead but I’d say my first week of teaching went pretty well It’s just a lot of hard work so prayers/positivism/words of encouragement are welcome!

Will blog again when I have time. Thanks for reading, everyone. Sorry for the lack of updates!

Sorry for the complete lack of updates, the past few weeks have been overwhelmingly crazy! Institute is coming to an end and I’m feeling all kinds of feelings now Anyway this is going to be quite a long post on what I’ve been up to to make up for my lack of updates!

Let’s backtrack all the way to where I stopped. Three weeks ago, Kem Skorlah ended very ceremoniously. It was a very exciting but draining week because we were putting in everything we had to make sure the kids got the best out of coming to holiday school, and we slept an average of 3-4 hours every single night. We all had a big goal, 30% improvement in English and Math, and the kids all knew and truly worked hard for it as well.

In Institute, we learned a great deal about investment. Our students have to be invested first before they can achieve success, and we have various strategies on how to make sure the kids know they can, want and will achieve. I think that’s really what’s missing in our schools. Teachers tell us to do well so we can get a good job yadda yadda, but there’s absolutely nothing beyond that. For kids who have families who care about education, you’re all set. But what about the many others who are not as lucky? They get left behind. Nobody tells them that they too can do it, so that’s why investing these kids is so important before we can even begin to change their life trajectories.

A secret trick to get them invested – give them food! Hahaha well not really lah, but making learning fun is definitely a good investment strategy.

Or you could get Deborah Henry to give them certificates! Haha.

To encourage them to speak more, I had an inter-class debate the other day. I gave the kids less than 24 hours to prepare and bear in mind that these are kids who NEVER ever speak English. They took the debate very seriously and all went back to prepare for it. Coincidentally, the media came over that day so they took lots and lots of pictures! The kids were so thrilled and excited to be in the limelight!

After the debate, we had a sharing session and my kids told me that they were really upset because they didn’t think they did well. I was just SO happy that they tried and were so into it despite not knowing how to speak at all, and I practically forced them to speak in front of a huge crowd with reporters and journalists and people from the ministry! Even I would pee in my pants.

We lost and they were disappointed but I was still so very very proud of them *tear. Thank god on that very same day I had to break the news to them, Deborah Henry was observing my class so I got her to give the certificates out. They were starstruck that they got to shake hands with our former Miss Malaysia and forgot all about their loss hehehe

I made a poster on the importance of punctuation! Found the idea online

The big day!!! We gave them a diagnostic on the first day and a final test on the last day to see how much they had improved. Remember, our goal was 30% improvement each.

We didn’t sleep the day before the last day of class cause we were up writing personal letters to all our kids. We want them to know that they can succeed after Kem Skorlah if they remain confident and if they continue believing in themselves.

Revealing the results! 31% increase for Math and 21% for English!!!!!!! We were all extremely proud of them, although they were clearly disappointed that they didn’t get the 30% increase for English. I told them that the 30% is our big ambitious goal and we purposely wanted them to aim high so even if they fall, they wouldn’t fall too far behind.

21% improvement in just 4 weeks, imagine what they can do if they had a year!

I was ecstatic for them! I had 3 kids who got more than 40% improvement, they went from a 40% to 80% in 4 weeks!!! From barely passing to an A!

When I broke the news to them individually, Fadzlan, my cheeky student who got the highest improvement in class was on the brink of tears. He couldn’t believe that he had improved, much less improve that much!!! When I told him that I wanted to call his mother to tell her that I’m extremely proud of his achievement, he couldn’t believe his ears. Seeing the look of pure unadulterated joy on his face made me want to cry so bad as well. He was so happy because he never thought he could do it at first, but when I asked him how he think he did, he was so confident that he did improve because he worked hard for it himself.

This is why I chose to teach, because kids like Fadzlan should be given the opportunity to experience such intense happiness from his own hard work.

We had a class full of crying kids that day. All of them had improved and they couldn’t believe it at all! “Cikgu, saya tak pernah improve langsung! Happy teramat amat lah! Tak pernah rasa saya boleh dapat penaikkan markah!”

It was such an emotional day, seeing their happiness and tears, bidding farewell to them, giving last minute parting advice. We told them that they had gone through enough negativity in their lives. Many people had told them that they cannot do it, that they cannot succeed, but today they really proved everyone wrong. They proved to the rest that if they worked hard and believed in themselves, they CAN achieve, and there’s no such thing as being born smart.

My first group of students, what a sweet memory.

Yay!

Ok I’m done talking about Kem Skorlah but there’s still so much stuff to talk about! Now you can see why I’ve been so busy. The only free time I have these days is spent either sleeping, eating or shitting. Sometimes cannot shit also T__T

This is from Inner Child Night! We spent an entire night playing and relieving all our childhood memories doing face painting, playing Twister, singing and dancing to Backstreet Boys, blowing bubbles!

Playing Pepsi Cola!

Childhood snacks! We even dressed up super kiddishly in our pajamas and were clutching our soft toys all night.

We work extremely hard and play hard as well whenever we could.

We celebrated Christmas yesterday! It was mainly dedicated to our TFM trainers from the states and the UK because they have to spend Xmas away from home this year. I super love my TFM family

Institute is coming to an end in 3 days, and everyone has been feeling extra melancholic these days because we’ve really bonded and have treated each other like family after 2 whole months of seeing and being with each other 24/7. We’ve seen each other’s smiles, tears, blood (yes) and sweat, we’ve held each other’s hands in challenging times, we’ve pushed each other and supported one another emotionally, and we’ve learned about everyone’s quirks and interests.

We came alone to change the world, and we’re leaving with an incredible network of 49 other similarly idealistic teachers.

I didn’t blog about this cause I was emotionally drained, but I broke down the day before the last day of Kem Skorlah. I didn’t think that I’ve been doing a great job, I thought I didn’t prepare my kids well enough, I thought I had completely wasted their time blabla but I had amazing people to support me and to hold my hand when I cried. I couldn’t have done this without them so thinking about being separated after this really saddens me

But I know I can do it because I really want all my kids next year to experience the same joy Fadzlan and my kids at Kem Skorlah experienced.

Gotta run now, thanks for reading!

Wow I haven’t blogged in two weeks! I wake up everyday having a million things to blog about but I just can’t muster enough energy to write at the end of the day. Then, the next day comes and I forget what I wanted to say the day before, and the cycle repeats

So I’ve been doing the same thing for the past three weeks, I’ve been teaching at Kem Skorlah (refer to post below). Next week is our last week there, and then we’ll have two more weeks of training before we get catapulted to our respective schools next year.

We had a meeting with our respective schools next year and I’ll be staying at the teacher’s quarters with my other fellow TFM fellow for the next two years. While it’s good to be a stone throw away from school and only paying next to nothing for housing, it’s scary to live on the school ground as well. It’s like I’ll have to be a teacher 24/7 and can only escape when I go back home once in a few months or something. Also, I know I really wanted something really different that’s why I asked for a rural school, but as it gets closer, it’s scary to know that I’ll REALLY be in a rural area.

The quarters that I’ll be living in is completely unfurnished and the electricity has been cut, and to get the electricity, we’ll have to go to Kuala Pilah which is 1.5 hours away. There’s only one bank and it’s Agro bank. There’s no KFC/McD obviously, no supermarkets (only small kedai runcits), one furniture shop to get our furnitures…and that’s it.

Ok don’t want to think about it. For the kids, for the kids!

That’s my personal mantra for the next two years. When the going gets tough, I’ll just tell myself that I’m doing this for the kids. I’ve already decided that I’m going to invest 90% of my time, energy, and emotions into doing this, and only 10% for everything else in my life. I’ve been finding it terribly hard to balance things outside teaching (personal relationships, friends, family, other interests/hobbies etc), but it’s okay because I have my 90%. I know this thinking is warped, but if I want to do a good job then this is what it takes.

Speaking of doing a good job, we’ve been getting a lot of visitors lately in our classes. From our board of trustees, to the staff members, to our corporate partners, to the media. There’s so much pressure to perform it’s crazy! Good thing is I think all of us are trying really hard and it’s definitely translating to students’ achievements. Bad news is, we’re told that while we’re on the pathway to be an effective teacher, we’re nowhere close to becoming a transformational teacher.

Transformational. Even hearing that word sends shivers down my spine. If it already takes so much to be an effective teacher, how much more does it take to be a transformational teacher? A WHOLE lot more, that’s what.

An effective teacher makes sure her students are on track to finish that academic year, that they’re not left behind academically. A transformational teacher goes beyond that and makes sure her students have completely different life trajectories after being taught by her. She instills in them that they, without her, would be able to believe that they can succeed and will work to succeed even without her help. A transformational teacher expects her students to achieve as much as what she would expect her own children to achieve, she would not accept failures and will have high expectations for her students.

Bear in mind that our students are on average 4-5 years BEHIND their academic year, so we have to catch up with being an effective teacher first before we could go anywhere close to being transformational.

So I’ve been teaching for 3 weeks now and already I’m swamped with so many challenges. I think talking about the challenges itself will take a few posts and I’ll get more into it later. All I can say is, academically, the disparity between our students at Kem Skorlah (and they’re not even in the worst schools, which we’ll be going to next year) and with the urban middle-income students in Klang Valley is HUGE. I saw the detrimental effects of PPMSI on the ground and it’s not pretty at all. It did so much damage to these kids whose basic English literacy skill is almost nonexistent. They fall further and further behind, and from not knowing how to do Math and Science already as it is, now they can’t even understand the questions!

Don’t get me wrong, I agree with having Math and Science in English, but definitely not when around 60-70% of the nation’s population is not even well-versed in English yet. Improve their English first then think about such a huge policy change! It’s not what benefits the Klang Valley middle-income people. I learned Math and Science in Malay and yet I could do well in college after that, and yet I’m positive I can compete with anyone else globally. Why? Because of my level of English. So how do you expect people who don’t know basic English to keep up? I can talk about PPMSI for eternity and don’t get me started on MBMMBI (do we really need such a long acronym?).

Anyway it’s been a long rambly post and I have to get back to my lesson plans. I’m compiling my own “kids say the darnest things” logbook so I can remember all the funny things they say, hopefully I’ll post that soon!

Have a great weekend ahead, and thanks for reading despite me not blogging that often anymore!

Looking at my schedule for the next few months and years, looks like I’ll only have time to blog once a week now. But! Today’s post is realllllly exciting (for me at least) because it’s a summary of my extremely exciting and challenging week!

This is from last week:

Me with Jacintha and Oga. We were waiting to take pictures with Deborah Henry who was there with Joyce Tagal, Edmund Bon and Zain HD for a session on inspiring youth leaders, but everyone was trying to take pictures with her so we gave up and just took one of ourselves hahah.

This was on Sheau Wen’s birthday! Muzzie was singing Happy Birthday to her, it was so sweet!

I love everyone who’s here with me, all 49 other Fellows and 10+ staff members. We’re like one HUGE happy family and are always there for each other!

A session with Brett, the founder of Teach First UK! He flew in from London just to see us!

Jasmine, Victoria, Connie, Priscilla and Nina!

The day before the D Day, everyone was busy working on our posters for our classes!

Worked the entire day but it was so fun cause we could hear everyone going “eh pass me scissors!” “who got silver marker pen??” “wahhh your poster so nice!” and the team spirit was just so strong!

Karthik and I with our posters. The one he’s holding is of our motto in class “I want, I can and I will!” (we get them to say this quite often and believe it or not but they’ve actually begun to internalize it!) and our BIG goal for the class after 4 weeks: 30% increase in achievement! I’ll explain the fire poster later.

Golden tickets for students who participate in class! They got so excited when they saw us giving this out and participation rate increased dramatically, and this was even before they knew what these were for!! Hahahha

The tickets are for a raffle at the end of the week

The amazing training team is beyond amazing. On Monday, our first day of school, they stuck quotes on our doors.

They also gave us free hugs and made a huge banner that said “GOOD LUCK transformational teachers!” and when we came back they held up one that said “Welcome Back, Teachers!”

On Tuesday, they gave us chocolates with more inspirational quotes. On Wednesday, we got individualized cards that say “Happy Wednesday! You’re halfway through your first week!”, on Thursday, more encouraging notes on doors and on Friday, a huge cheer for all of us.

I don’t think any of us would have made it through our first week without their support and love!

We have 6 vans that bring us to our two respective schools every morning and our journey to the schools takes 45 minutes each way.

We usually start the journey at 7am, teach till 12pm, get back and rest, continue training till 7pm and work on our lesson plans till 1 am. Repeat everyday. I’m exhausted!!!!

Before the kids got in!

Our amazing kids!!!!! We had a really fun ice-breaking game where they had to pass an orange around under 30 seconds. They were all sitting really far away at first and they had to figure out how to make the goal.

They got to 20 seconds, and we made it even shorter, and shorter.

To only 2 seconds!

We didn’t even tell them anything but they figured that they have to get closer…and closer..and finally put only their fingers together to “pass” the orange to everyone! We used this activity to show them that the goal may look ambitious but it’s definitely do-able with teamwork! (didn’t tell them that it also means there are shortcuts in life )

Our first day was quite bad because we had to give them their diagnostics to see their current level. They’re at about 10% for Math and 40% for English – failing both of them! They are failing Math primarily because they cannot understand the questions that are in English. The effects of PPMSI on real kids in somewhat more suburban-rural schools, which is about 70% of the schools in Malaysia!!

Lotsa work to do for us then!

This poster is part of our Classroom Management Plan. If a student misbehaves (talk when teacher is talking, not listen to instructions, defiant etc), we put them in the yellow part and give them a verbal warning. If they get to the orange part, they have to meet with us and if they get to the red part, we will call their parents.

No one got to the yellow part even, our kids were extremely well behaved! Which I really think is because of our other Classroom Management Plan:

We fully exercise our Classroom Policies: be courageous, be respectful and to have teamwork. We constantly explain this in great detail and point a lot of our objectives and activities back to this and it works!

But this is the one that worked the best! It’s a Happy-o-Meter, and when the whole class behaves really well and are really participative, we move the thermometer up one scale. When it gets to 10, we give them a reward! This week’s reward is a 2-minute dance party (which we just did today!!!) and next week’s is Game Party!

This week went so well. It was rough at first because they weren’t used to all this, but once they got invested in the classroom culture, everything went so smoothly! From 0% participation rate, they now fight to answer questions. We just had a dance party today and it was awesomeeee! They were so shy and didn’t know what to do at first when we blasted the music, but after teaching them the lightbulb and pet the dog dance wtf, everyone had so much fun! They all went back with a hugeeee smile

Oh, we also have individual behavior log for every student, and they have to get us to rate their behavior and performance at the end of the day. It works like a charm because it shows that we have our eyes on every single one of them! We always forget to rate them but they will constantly remind us at the end of the day.

I love my kids, they’re so awesome *tear

I wanted to give them a sense of ownership of their class, so I asked them to name themselves. The Justin Bieber fan club in my class came up with “Never Say Never”, which I thought would be apt for our motto hahaha. But the rest of the class decided on Intelligent Geniuses! I greet them every morning with “Hello my intelligent geniuses!” and “Bye, have a nice day today geniuses!”

The view outside the school, beautiful!

Some of the kids in our school. Here, they were singing happy birthday to one of the Teach For Malaysia staff.

This is me, dead. from lesson plan preparation. It takes about 4-5 hours to plan and get the materials ready for each lesson T___T

Proud of our hardwork!

I have more pictures and stuff to talk and show you guys but I’m so tired! I just made a huge Shout Out Board in our class and the responses were crazy! I tell them to leave us notes and write anything they want on the board, and we’ve gotten so many “I love today’s class!” and “I want to learn more!”. I also got a “Tak suka duduk belakang la cikgu” hahaha. We change their seat arrangement everyday to get them used to working with different people everyday.

It was also through this board that I found out that one of my kids was having a very bad day, and we talked about it over lunch. It’s quite a depressing topic and very personal, so I won’t talk about it.

That’s all for now, will try to update more soon! I have so many stories to tell! In fact, I have one story for every single kid in my class because they’re all so unique and interesting. Actually lemme tell one story!

There’s this one kid who’s probably the 2nd weakest in the class. On the first day, he didn’t want to participate much and was very quiet. He didn’t come the next day but he came day after that and saw the change in the classroom. Other kids were already ahead in terms of points (we give kids points for participating) and I guess he wanted to be part of it too.

We also set up a one-on-one session with him to keep him updated about the previous lessons that he missed, and since then his change in behavior was so dramatic. He became a superstar in our class. Still shy and still weak in both English and Math, but he participated regularly and became extremely invested in wanting to learn more. I’m so proud of him *tear

There’s this other boy who is clearly the naughtiest kid in class. He has this very cheeky grin and would make jokes in class. We knew we had to get on this kid’s good side because he was clearly the “leader” here. I think the sweetest words I’ve heard from him was “teacher, I will see you tomorrow!” in perfect English. It means he’s coming the next day and it means I did something right today!

He comes 1 hour early to class everyday and would sit with me to go through our previous lessons. He also likes to make sure I don’t forget my bag.

Ok, for real, that’s all for now!

Sorry for the lack of updates! I’m so tired right now I feel like vomiting T_____T We’ve been incredibly busy the past week and this is the only time I have to blog. I’m sacrificing my 1-hr break to blog instead of taking a nap, true commitment *proud

So! First of, I’m obviously alive. Ha ha ha *laughs at own lame joke.

Secondly, we’ve been here for our training for two weeks now, and we’ll be going to school next week!!!!! Super super duper nervous about this because we’ll be teaching real kids now. Teach For Malaysia’s training is composed of both theoretical and practical parts of teaching, and they organized a holiday camp for a few hundred high-need kids so we could try out our crazy creative ideas on them! (but raise their academic achievement too of course, we have pretty ambitious goals)

Week 2, feels like Month 2.

Photobooth time with Kugahn and Kok Hin!

See how many crazy fellows you can fit in one picture! and spot all ze eyebags T___T

my eyebags are so bad they should be illegal hahaha

Team Pioneer- always coming in first!

This is the “how am I doing today?” board in our room. We change the colors of the paper according to our moods so they know how we feel that day.

Filling in the 6 main strategies for highly effective teachers! We follow the Teaching As Leadership model – which is an amazing framework that employs characteristics of a transformational leader into being a teacher.

How a typical session looks like

Dzam with Shannon and Giles who’re our trainers from teach for america and teach first UK. We have 6 phenomenal trainers from both TFA and TF who will be spending the whole two months with us here at Genting!

They are people who have gone through the same program in their home countries and know how it’s like working with a high-need community. Interesting how you can draw parallels between a few so seemingly different countries and learn how to adopt best practices into a more localized context.

I think our trainers are what maketh our training. I expected the training to be amazing, but everything keeps blowing my mind away again and again. They are extremely interesting and engaging, and most importantly very invested and motivated, exactly how we want to be as teachers later. I feel sooo blessed that we got to work with such great people!

If a bunch of Americans and British would put so much effort day in day out to make sure we succeed and make sure our kids achieve, I don’t see why we as Malaysians can’t do the same.

Silly picture to lighten the mood. We’re definitely getting more and more tensed as the day progresses.

We’ve been spending the last few days working on our first ever lesson plan, and it just takes so much effort and time. It’s unlike what I thought most teachers have to do and the amount of work expected to be put into each lesson is crazy. I officially spent about 6 hours planning my first 45-minute lesson.

Taking a quick power nap before we work into the night.

The thing about working with all these super high-achieving people is the fact that everyone is such a perfectionist! We push ourselves so hard and are quite harsh on ourselves, and I’m afraid we might burn out even before we start our actual school year next year.

Like I said, things are getting very tensed these days. We’ve met many people – people who are our biggest stakeholders, the ministry, the education minister, the principals and teachers, our corporate partners, the media – and everyone seems to be expecting so much that we’re all so afraid of failure.

Despite all that fear however, I think it’s what really drives us forward too. We expect the best from ourselves and our kids, and it’s not about having high absurd expectations but having really big goals that I know I can achieve. The training’s been extremely fun though, and I love working with like-minded people with similar values and passion

Anyway too much work tonight so will update more next time! Tell me what you guys want me to talk about, or if you don’t even wanna hear about my training/work at all wtf.

It’s only been 2 days, but this training seems like it’s been going on foreverrrrr (but in a good way, thank god). It’s been a very tiring 2 days with only 4-5 hours of sleep each day. I guess it’s quite normal to only get that little sleep once you start working, but it’s hard when I’ve been so accustomed to 9 hours of sleep

Things are very hectic here. We spend about 13 hours each day with each other for our formal training, and only about 1-2 hours before we sleep every night to complete work for the next day. I have completely no time to do anything else, which is good because it keeps me focused for these 2 months. I brought my kindle and my super thick Murakami book, but I’ve only read 1/2 page so far before I had to complete my work for the next day T__T

It might be too early to tell, but I don’t think I’d ever go through anything this strenuous and intense again. Our trainers (all of them from either Teach For America or Teach First UK) are all extremely committed and energetic, and despite the sessions being that incredibly long, they made them seem so fun and engaging. The people here are all beyond amazing, and each and everyone of them constantly inspires me further everyday. Everyone is so invested in the same vision and goals, it’s just nice to feel all that energy and motivation. Definitely makes me forget that I’m extremely sleep-deprived everyday.

The closer I get to starting my teaching journey, the more convinced I am that the goals Teach For Malaysia is trying to achieve will become a reality. Actually, I can’t even begin to describe how I feel at this point. I really need sleep.

A video that inspired me today:

“There is no movement without the first follower. We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.”

By the way, Teach For Malaysia‘s 2013 cohort’s application is now open! There are 50 of us this year and 75 of you next year. Apply if you want to make a difference too!