On the 17th of November 2017, the 3rd year UMS TESLians had organized an outreach educational program that took place at one of Sabah's rural areas, Salarom, Nabawan for 3 days and 2 nights. It took almost 4 hours bus ride to get there from Kota Kinabalu. Welp, its a rural place and fellow Sabahans know how 'nice' is rural roads in here. This program is basically about teaching English (specifically vocabulary and grammar) to the local kids of age 10 to 12. We did modules (practiced it for days hahahaha) and engaging exercises. For my team, we were assigned to teach vocabulary and the theme that we chose was Birthday Party. We used authentic learning environment (it was more like a fake birthday party) to teach them birthday-related words.
What I admired about these kids is their will to learn. Even though they answered almost every questions wrongly, still not even once their determination to learn wavered. These kids taught me things that I will treasured for eternal. they taught me that less is actually more. They give me life purpose and goal as a future educator. I kept on telling myself I cannot die a mediocre that I need to have something great left behind thus, one of my life goals is to be an agent of change. I always thought that to change the society you need to be big and influential, like Iron Man or Superman. But these kids taught me that you don't have to be big enough to make a change. You might not be able to change the world to be less terrible but, you can help changing someone else's world and make it a better place. Hey, a big journey begins with small steps aight? They taught me the value of being a teacher. It is sad seeing the academic achievement gap between the rurals and the urbans, poor and the rich. Hoping to mend those gap in the future. InshaAllah, to more outreach programs and changes yet to come!
