Well, Last Monday and Tuesday, I followed a group of thirty-forty students or so to our very own sekolah angkat (yes, KTT has a sekolah angkat), for some programme called Pecut PMR or something like that. Anyway each of us were assigned with three students to tutor for the two days we were there. We did Maths on the first day, and Science on the second day. What we did was that actually we went through a few past year papers with our students, and taught them from there. (Goodness I almost forgot that we did PMR in 2005, so finally after like three years, I saw those same papers we sat for again).These students actually paid the school ten bucks for these programme, and they were those who had failed or barely passed Science and Maths for their PMR trials. The programme was actually aimed just to help them pass, not to score an A.

My students, (waaaa I sound so teacher-like, haha) were very weak in Maths. (if only Mrs Ng could give them a few lessons:P) Because their school was overpopulated, they weren’t given enough attention from their teachers, I guess. It was very exhausting teaching Maths because we had to go right to the basics to teach them again. And its draining explaining Maths for about seven hours. But it was rewarding because my students now can do Pythagoras Theorem! And they now know what’s locus.. :) (lol, I can go on boasting about them), but I just hope they got something useful out of it.

The second day was more relaxing, where we taught Science. While they were weak in Maths, their Science was much much better. But there was the language barrier, they couldn’t phrase what they knew into proper English words. These students have so much potential and they do have bright minds, but their problem with English was what caused their grades to slip. Now I actually do understand why some champion the cause of changing the teaching of Science and Maths back into BM again. Before this I was totally against it ever going back to BM because I just thought English is so much better, and I still do, but its like now I can symphatise with them because I saw with my own eyes that English was their main problem, not Science. I mean, one of my students could actually tell me how oxygen combines with haemoglobin all that in BM, (which is very very impressive), but when she tried in English, she couldn't. (I, on the other hand had a problem with teaching in BM, lol) The two days, I spoke BM non-stop haha, it didn’t help that I never learned Science or Maths in BM either. A few of us had the problem of finding the right words while explaining. Like my students didn’t know what concentration or saturation was, and I couldn’t find the BM word for it, (which was kepekatan or tepu by the way), so I launched into an explanation of what concentration was by using the analogy of orange juice). Lol. Other times it was something like this:

Daniel: Eh, Joanna, how to say wax in BM?
Joanna: Er...lilin?
Daniel: Then what about candle?
Joanna: Lilin...
Daniel: Then how do I tell them that a candle is made from wax?
Joanna: Lilin diperbuat daripada lilin?

Haha. But teaching them was fun though...I hope they will be able to get something good for their PMR. Going back to KTT, when my friends asked me to do a question, I automatically started explaining in BM, haha. Old habits die hard. not that this habit was that old, but still..

Ok, pictures!:)

this is the school!

Ms Syaza giving some instructions to us students

studying atmosphere in the hall