I'm currently working on a series of posts to commemorate my initiatives journey during TFM fellowship. Read Introduction here.
Six months have passed since I ended my two-year fellowship with Teach For Malaysia; however, since I am staying on as a teacher in the same school, my journey with the students continues. In this post, I am going to document my various ups and downs with a group of students who are very close to my heart. I get to know them through the Chinese Mandarin Class initiative which I started in March 2017.
Logo of my Chinese Class.
I designed this when I was pitching to get resources for the class during Dragons Den in 2018.
How did it all start?
In January 2017, when my collabs and I first reported for duty at the school, the principal asked whether I can teach Mandarin on top of the assigned English classes. It was because the school never had a proper Chinese teacher since it started operating in 2011. At first, I was interested but hesitant. Any Malaysian who has taken SPM Chinese paper will tell you for sure that, the paper is not easy. Moreover, teaching the subject is really different from learning it.
So, what made me plunge into this mission? Without a doubt, it was because of my students. And they are still the reason why I am continuing the class this year. They showed up to me with their puppy eyes, asking expectantly, "Miss Tina, are you going to teach us Mandarin?"
Enough said. Shut up and take my knowledge, time, and money.
Milestones that my students and I achieved in 2017:
22 April 2017
The first order of business when I started the Chinese Class was not even about teaching in class. It was about training students, completing necessary paperwork, arranging transport, and bringing them to the District Level Chinese Carnival.
Achievement: The lower secondary poem recitation team got Consolation Prize. The team was coached by their very talented and dedicated seniors.
06 July 2017
Better and greater things have happened since then, but I still think this was one of my proudest moment. I coordinated a social outing to reward all my best performers in class!
I called their parents individually to ask for permission, fetched them, and paid for their food using my Raya bonus. That was a great time but I don't think I can do it again. Too much effort!
02 September 2017
PT3 was drawing near for these young faces. They requested to attend this
PT3 Answering Technique Workshop organized by Sin Chew Daily. The location was far but the input that we received was well-worth the travel time.
Achievement: All of them did well in their PT3 exam. Praise the Lord!
02 November 2017
This was one of the most invigorating messages that I received in 2017. One of the kids was selected to join the Sin Chew Daily Student Journalist Program. He wrote a message to thank me for helping him to proofread his admission essay. His Mandarin has improved so much since then.
Prayer request: He is sitting for SPM this year. May God bless his study!
What changed in 2018?
Moving forward to 2018, it was definitely a year when I got too ambitious and wanted to do many things to push the initiative forward. Throughout the process, at times I lost sight of why I was doing all these.
I was constantly tired; yet I could not rest well, thinking that I have not done enough for my initiative. I felt pressured to improve my students' grade, build their characters, make the class fun and informative, reduce dropout rate of Chinese Class, and even educate the students and their parents on the importance of learning Mandarin up to SPM level.
To make my anxiety worse, the students did not respond positively towards my initiative.
Looking back, I was definitely trying too hard to play messiah. I used to think of myself and my initiative as failures, but now that I am at a much better place emotionally, I want to give myself a pat on the back. Let's give credit where credit's due.
Milestones that my students and I achieved in 2018:
Excerpt from my Dragons Den 2018 proposal (1/3):
The reality remains, Chinese students drop out from Mandarin class when they do not perform well in the exam.
For my school, since Mandarin is an elective subject, many parents allow their kids to quit Chinese Class because they want their kids to get 'straight As' in exam. Or simply because their kids think Mandarin is hard and don't want to continue trying.
I know the whole "SPM Chinese subject" thing is a highly debatable topic among the Malaysian Chinese and it is a wicked problem, but my bottom-line is: the two excuses that I mentioned above are not legitimate reasons for students to stop taking Mandarin.
While knowing when to quit is a good quality that we should learn, parents and teachers are responsible to teach our children perseverance.
Excerpt from my Dragons Den 2018 proposal (2/3):
Excerpt from my Dragons Den 2018 proposal (3/3):
In my effort to reduce dropout rate and to instill purpose in learning Mandarin, I came out with this absolutely crazy proposal.
Needless to say, this proposal yielded little success. However, as I am organizing my photos and thoughts, I realized that many of the activities proposed were actually carried out, in different ways than I imagined them to be.
03 February 2018
Have you heard of the game Uta-karuta (Japanese poetry playing cards)? Well, this is the
Chinese poems version of karuta.
Poems are written on two sets of cards and the players need to match them. The fastest wins!
21 April 2018
My attempt at
21st century learning - the 'jigsaw' technique.
This is how it works: teacher arranges students in groups. Each group member is assigned a different piece of information. Group members then join with members of other groups, who are assigned the same piece of information, and share ideas about the information. Eventually, students return to their original groups to try to "piece together" a clear picture of the topic at hand.
28 April 2018
Our second District Level Chinese Carnival.
Achievement: The lower secondary poem recitation team got fifth place. The team was coached by 2016 TFM alum - Wei Ken!
Praise God for Wei Ken's generosity and dedication to come all the way to Pasir Gudang from KL every week to train the students.
21 July 2018
I brought some students to
TFM Conference at KL! I covered this topic in depth in my previous post about
TFM Annual Conference here.
09 August 2018
My heart craved to introduce Chinese culture to my students. The Chinese kids in Pasir Gudang are often so detached from their heritage. Not to mention they do not have any basic in Chinese poems, they don't even know the ingredients that go into making their traditional food like mooncake or dumplings.
It was really a divine plan when the Chinese teachers from KM2 and PP (nearby schools) reached out to me and invited my school to join their Chinese Cultural Camp. The participants learned how to make dumplings and 'snow skin' mooncake. They painted Chinese masks and did many beneficial, interactive group activities too.
How did the end of fellowship affect the dynamic of the initiative?
End of fellowship means little or nothing to me and my students since I am staying on as a teacher. In fact, not even the four-month delay in placement had much effect on my Chinese Class with the students, who are dedicated to strive in their Chinese subjects despite many challenges.
However, I did learn from my mistakes in 2018. I learned to let go. I stopped 'harassing' and persuading every Chinese kid to sign up and attend Mandarin Class. If you don't want to learn the language and your parents think it's okay, so be it.
By focusing my energy on those who show interest and effort in the subject, I was able to do so much more with them.
Milestones that my students and I achieved in 2019:
13 April 2019
Our third
District Level Chinese Carnival. It was also my Form 5 students' last annual Chinese Carnival. It had been a great three years having them around to encourage and sign the juniors up for competitions.
13 April 2019
On the same day right after the Chinese Carnival ended, we went for our second
social outing.
This time around, the kids arranged their own transport and paid for their own food. They even offered to pay for my food! Aww, how sweet of them!
21 April 2019
This was not my Chinese Class, instead it was the weekly 'Pembangunan Insan' slot.
The Indian teachers were lecturing the Indian students and the Malay students were having prayer, so I utilized the time to show the Chinese students an
educational Chinese reality show. The Iban students were with us too. But since most of them attended Chinese vernacular primary schools, they could understand the content too.
10 May 2019
I have to admit, even after teaching the language for two and a half years, I am still far from qualified to be a Chinese teacher. So, I invited another teacher to deliver a
SPM Answering Technique Workshop to my students.
The teacher is well-versed in her content knowledge. Pasir Gudang is so lucky to have her. My students benefited greatly from her session and they performed well in their recent mid-year examination too.
22 June 2019
Two years later, public exam is once again drawing near for these young faces.
This District Level SPM Answering Technique Workshop organized by schools in Pasir Gudang was actually for students who barely pass the subject. However, all of them requested to go to the workshop. I couldn't stop them from learning, can I? So, all of us went. :D
22 June 2019
God cares for his flocks and provides opportunities to us in ways that we can never imagine. In April, there was a large scale Taiwanese Universities Education Fair happening. But my Form 5 students missed it because they were having Sports Day in school. They had been bugging me since then to bring them to an education fair. Due to the lack of resources, I had not been able to bring them to one.
Lo and behold, on the same day when we were having the district level SPM workshop at Sunway College, there was an International Universities Education Fair happening on the second floor as well! Surely we would not miss out on this golden opportunity!
Never have I ever in my life imagined that one day, I will bring some teenagers to an education fair and coach them on talking to university admission officers. It was a surreal, yet humbling experience. I was impressed by my students' courage and their enthusiasm. Seriously, their Cantonese was horrendous, yet they spoke so confidently and they engaged the Hong Kong University representative in a long conversation. *insert the face with tears of joy emoji here*
Some not-so-pretty closing thoughts:
On the night after I sent my kids home from education fair, I cried out to my friends, lamenting that my current life is heading to a meaningless void. My blooming years had passed. Now, all I do is for the kids. They are flourishing while I look older each day. (Dramatic much, huh...)
As a young working adult, I am still learning to embrace the big concepts in life like 'giving back to the society' and 'nurturing the next generation'. These are not core values that I grew up with. Thankfully, despite the occasional, emotional outbursts, most of the time I enjoy my work as an educator.
During the tough days, I seek comfort from God, family, and friends. Besides, the writings on this blog are a special comfort to me too. These posts remind me how good God is, and how He has blessed me beyond my imagination throughout the years. Indeed, the best has yet to come.
