Community Service

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 1

On the 27th of August 2013, we had our first ever lecture class for our rather unique and interesting module ‘Community Service”. Prior to this lecture, I’ve always asked myself why are we even required to conduct such module as a core subject to our course? It did not took long to finally found the answer for this as we attended our first ever Community Service class.

We were introduced to our module lecturer, Mr. Chandra. He is an extremely passionate man that tries to convince and motivate us that this module is as important as the rest of the other core module that we undertake. After a brief lecture from him, I realize that this module is not only as important but rather more vital than the rest of the other core subjects. The reason behind this is that, this subject awakened me that us students in the academic world had been so caught up in our academic studies that we had often neglected the importance of the development of our social aspect.

What happens when we are too caught up with our studies and ignored the social development? We slowly and unconsciously, became very realistic in our daily lives and in almost everything we do. That brings me to the focal point in this rather meaningful day, which is a YouTube video being shown by our module lecturer, Mr. Chandra. It is a music video entitled “Another Day in Paradise” by Phil Colins.

The lyrics of the video are what really caught my attention. The lyrics exhibited the cruelty of what society had become at times. Unfortunately, I can see the truth behind this video being exhibited in the reality world that we lived in. Just ask this question to ourselves that how often do we think twice in lending a helping hand to the people in need and ended up not doing it thinking about the negative consequences if we do so?

For instance, how often do we think about the cost and the travelling time when we plan to go to an old folks home or an animal shelter to help out? How often do we think about the consequences of adopting a homeless dog to our home? Or maybe the hassle of lending a helping hand, say, to fully guide a lost tourist to reach his desired destination?

This is why, I really do feel that this module will be a wonderful journey to undertake and am really looking forward to the weeks ahead on how we can improve ourselves to give back to the society more.

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 2

It is week 2 and we were briefed by our lecturer, Mr. Chandra about the upcoming activity that we will conduct as part of our ‘community service’ that we will be doing. We were introduced to an activity called PACE. In PACE, my uni mates and I were assigned to lend a helping hand in a selected school to help weaker students on their studies. My group was selected to go help out in Methodist Boy School located in Sentul. Personally, I was very excited to go back to a boy school, as it is a place where I spent my whole primary and secondary school on. I was also eager to find out how other boy schools would stacked up against my previous boys’ school situated in my hometown.

Moving on, I was then told that the students selected are young lower-secondary school students at the age of only just 13. In my opinion, it was a great decision to select weak students at this age group to help out upon as I believe that at the age of 13, it is the ‘make-it or break-it’ point in a students’ education progress. As we know, a good foundation is always important in everything we do and thus, I felt that it would be an exciting challenge for us to help them in building this strong foundation. If these students are weak and continue to be weak, it will be real unfortunate for these kids and for their future if they do not get attention from the older ones. Hence, this meaningful task is a real motivational factor for me to carry on the PACE activity and am really looking forward to visiting the boys’ school next week.

Also, to boost up our confidence level on how much we could help these kids, the lecturer invited a group of great students from Help University, whereby they are conducting a project called the RE:ED project. They are a bunch of students that does voluntary work every weekend to help out weak students in a school. How much time and hassle they are willing to go through just so that these kids are guided and being helped on in their studies amazed me. The speech given was breathtaking as I instantly feel the need to help these weak students to go through the tough time and improve them even the slightest bit counts, in their studies. Will be updating with you all soon when we visit the respective school next week!

THE RE:ED PROJECT

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 3

Two weeks had passed since we were first introduced to this module and finally, we are now up and running to carry out our community service task, the PACE activity. We finally get to visit Methodist Boys School that we are all eagerly waiting for. The moment I step foot on to the school, I can feel nothing but great energy surrounding me seeing the school students running around and playing cheerfully, it almost brings tears to my eyes on how much I missed school (oh well, maybe I exaggerated a little but seriously, I missed school a lot).

I was a little bit disappointed to be informed that my assigned mentee was not around that day. Therefore, I shared mentee with one of my friend and his name is Rahu. He was unfortunately quite a weak student and we have trouble communicating with him, as he is not very proficient in both English and the Malay language. However, we did not give up on him knowing that every effort that we tried to put in will eventually result him to improve his mathematics. So we tried to go slow and patiently on him, and what I learnt from this is that weak students are not hopeless and by putting it time and patience on them, he will understand what is being taught at the end of day. This is also what I liked about the idea of having a one-on-one teaching session with the student as the mentor can pay full attention on the students and making sure that they improve in what they are weak on.

Soon after, we have our ice-breaking session with the students. We played a couple of games and get to know each other better. The kids were having lots of fun but at the same time, we students are having an awesome time too as I felt younger playing with these people.

Also, another experience that I gained from the day is the feeling of being a mentor. Being the youngest sibling of my family, I do not have much of a chance to guide and mentor the younger ones in my life. Hence, it felt really great to finally have this opportunity of teaching them and guiding them and I cannot wait for the next PACE activity already, and hopefully I get to finally meet my assigned mentee.

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 4

The following week, we participated our second PACE activity. This is when I finally get to meet my cute and awesome mentee, Adam, which had been assigned to be under my guidance during the course of the activity. It was a memorable moment when we first sat together and introduced ourselves as we were both excited about knowing each other more. At first, I thought that he was a shy person as he did not communicate with me much only to find out moments later that he is shy towards me only because I am new to him. In fact, he is one of the most active students in the classroom, constantly answering, responding (and shouting) to a teacher’s question. But still, I was very glad to have him as my mentee due to my naughty nature I had in school in the past and he was a little bit of a reflection of me!

Thus, it is not such a hard task to handle a naughty kid in my opinion as I had gone through what he is going through right now and what he needs in my point of view, is a person who gives him freedom to voice out his opinion rather than a person who controls his behavior all the time. It is no secret that in order to build relationship with a person, we must first understand their characteristics as each of us are different and this is no different to a 13 years old kid.

Anyway, we did not took long to develop our relationship as we were both pretty expressive and because I was at his stage before, I can also understand the difficulties that he is growing through. Also, one of the advantages of the PACE activity in my opinion is that it assigned students (the mentors) to teach the other students. In general, this would eventually result in a better understanding between us as compared to a normal school teacher as we are still fresh from the struggles faced by students and thus, we can aid them better in overcoming their problems. For instance, I remembered that there is this one time when the teacher was a little furious when my mentee constantly giving her the wrong answer in the lines and angles chapter. This is because she already expects that students should know how to identify an angle but instead, the problem is that my mentee had problem reading the protractor itself as there are two sides of it. It is a common problem faced by me in the past and I have thought him how to overcome him and instantly, he is making good progress ever since.

A sense of great satisfaction when you eventually helped a person to overcome his problem! It was a great day!

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 5

It is the 8th of October 2013 and we are already into the fourth week of the PACE activity. It was a special day as it is now my turn to conduct an in-class activity with another partner alongside and our task it to give the students an activity that is interrelated with what they had studied. Prior to the event, I wanted to make this activity as interesting and as beneficial to the students. For me, motivating the students and introduce them to a fun way of learning is my objective.

My partner and I started to brainstorm some ideas by thinking to ourselves what in-class activity that would interest us the most during our secondary school life in the past. We then came out with the idea of conducting a quiz and giving gifts to the winners. It may sound a bit of a cliché, but we are in the opinion that competition is what will keep these boys on their toes while opening up their mind in answering questions in the most efficient way. This is because my aim is to not only train these students to answer smartly in exam, but also to train them to answer quickly and effectively and use their time as efficient as possible when performing a task.

Also, we wanted to create team building among them as teamwork is the key to success in mostly everything while at the same time, giving an opportunity to build relationships among them as we are quite sad to see that the students tend to group themselves up by their ethnicity. We then need to come out with our questions for the quiz and we were put into a little bit of a dilemma on setting the difficulty standard of the quiz. Setting a difficulty level that is too easy or too hard will not be operational to our aim.

Thankfully, our quiz went well on that day. It was a great sight seeing these kids working together as a team as they answers the quiz questions in quick succession. One thing that really caught my eye and had gladly proved me wrong is that despite, they often group themselves according to their race, they have no problem in communicating and working together in completing their task. This is also the reason why I have always supported the national school system of ‘Sekolah Kebangsaan’ rather than parents who put their kids into Chinese and Indian schools as they are being trained from young to not classify themselves among races and just be ‘Malaysians’ instead. Definitely proud to see the unity of our future generations.

Long live Malaysians!

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 6

Another day of participating the PACE programme and I am enjoying myself as a mentor. Today, I have been assigned to take over another mentee as he is a newcomer to the class. His name is Murshyd and he seems to be pretty good in his mathematics already. To be honest, I really do question myself sometimes why certain students were required to attend this extra class. But still, I was glad to be his mentor and my aim will still remain the same, which is to help him as much as I could and made an impact in his life.

However, there is a little bit of a challenge faced by me as my first mentee, Adam, seems to have a little conflict with Murshyd as from the actions, it is quite clear that Adam did not really like him. I tried to find out why and it turns out, they are not in very good terms even before I meet them and also, I can sense that he is actually unhappy because he had to share his mentor with another person. I did not blame him though, in fact, I can truly understand him because Adam’s personality is pretty similar to me in the past (as mentioned previously), and what we want in life, is people’s attention around us. That is also the reason why he likes making noise in the class, its just his character and one should not fault him.

Hence, to overcome this, I tell to myself that I will need put in more effort mentoring them and treat them equally so that I do not neglect any one of them. My new mentee on the other hand, seems to be a quiet person that although smart, still needs a lot of assistance in his work. Easier said than done, it was pretty challenging at first to delegate my time and concentration on both mentees. Whenever I teach Murshyd and when he gives me a wrong answer, Adam would interfere making him feel uncomfortable and every time I am concentrating on teaching Adam, Murshyd would just keep quiet staring at his book although he did not know how to do, fearing that he would interrupt us. I hate this and what I want is to delegate my time properly for both but no matter what, we tend to neglect one or another.

Thus, this brings me to try out something different. I tried to build the relationship between my two mentees instead so that we could all work together without so much hassle. In my opinion, if they are good friends, Murshyd will not be afraid to call me when he’s in need and Adam will not seek so much attention when I am concentrating on the another. I gave them a few tasks and I asked them to work on it together. They started to communicate and although, they did not talk much at first, it was an ice breaking between the two. This then gives me a new aim in this programme, which is to fix the relationship of my mentees. I knew in the beginning of the programme that I want to make a change in their lives not only in studies, but also help them grow up in the socializing aspect. As for my case, my desire is for them to learn that making friends, forgiving and sharing will only give positive impact in one’s life. Indeed, after completing the task, they seems to be more communicative with one another and I hope that this relationship will only improve in the coming weeks.

By the way, kudos to my mentees for listening to me all the time!

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 7

22nd of October 2013.

An emotional day for most of us who is involved in the PACE programme so far. In fact, I dare say that this is one of the days that I would remember for the rest of my life. Yes, that’s how big of an impact these kids had given me. Although is just a short session each week in the course of 7 weeks, it wasn’t easy bidding goodbye to these students especially towards my own mentees. I was upset that I have to leave my mentees having just starting to develop a good relationship with them.

But still, it was a great farewell day that we had with these students. We started off as usual with the class session taught by the school teacher and after that, my college mates and I decided to throw a small farewell party for them. Some of my friends brought cakes, gifts and chocolates for them as a token of appreciation having given us a chance to be mentored by us. The kids really enjoyed themselves but at the same time, there is a negative mood among us knowing that we were about to be separated after today. I felt really sorry to leave them as some really had depended on the mentors a lot to improve themselves. This is why at the end of the class, I spoke to some of the students who look depressed and try to cheer them up and motivate them to keep up their good work in order to make us proud.

As for my mentees? I had seen Adam transformed from a person who is relatively weak in mathematics who is not very good in counting that do not know the basics of workings (bentuk lazim) and the inability to use the protractor properly to a person who had improved in his mathematics drastically by the end of the session. Murshyd on the other had, is a mentee that I was only able to meet for two sessions and was disappointed that I did not help him much. I really wish that I had made an impact in his life though. Anyway, remember the relationship between my two mentees that I wanted to fix? Believe it or not, I have done it. I realize this during the second session that I spent with them and during the session, while we are sitting together, Adam actually offered his chocolates to him (well, chocolates are not something cheap to them) and was thrilled to see what transpires. From a stage where one dislike another to a stage where they are now building relationship among themselves, it gave me goose bumps at that very moment seriously. It was so rewarding and I started to think to myself, if a 13 year old kid can forgive and forget so easily and putting it effort to build a relationship, why can’t we adults do the same? Indeed, by helping the kids, the kids actually taught me a lesson in life too. I always had problems managing conflicts in friendships, perhaps this taught me to view things from a different perspective, forgiving and forgetting the past and live life positively.

Overall, I love these students as they had been a real great companion for us throughout the PACE activity and wished that this programme could had been extended for a little longer as I feel that we would have done so much more. Although just a short period, I hoped that we had done our job and impacted their life positively and had improved them in their studies. I here, wish all of the students from MBS good luck in your final exams!

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 8

Now that we are all through with the PACE activity, it is time where we go back to our usual tutorial and lecture class session. It surely is sad, as we are so used to travelling to Sentul in our vans to the MBS school, to conduct our PACE activity session. We started to miss our mentee too. However, there is still light that is to be shared in this module. During our tutorial and lecture session, the tutor and lecturer discuss with us on how we feel about this whole PACE programme.

A lot of us are in the opinion that it was way too short and it is impossible to make an impact to the kids. Some believe that the students do this just for the sake of passing the module. I for one is in the opinion that it was way too short and I started to question myself if I had any impact to my mentee. However, the tutor thinks otherwise, as she reminded us that what these kids needed are just a little motivation and push in their lives and every little thing that we does can give a big impact to them without us realizing it.

Perhaps what she said was true after all, as her words suddenly made me reflect back to the moment whereby I inform my mentee that the following week would be my last time here and his expression changed instantly (a look of disappointment and depress). This illustrates that he actually does care of my existence after all as he started to question me why I have to leave? And will there be other students coming to teach in the future? It was then when I reflected back that I realized that, although it was just a short period of time that I had spent time with him, I had actually made a difference in his life. This encourages me to do more and go further on voluntary work in the future, knowing that every little effort given by us whether is small or big, it would still made a difference in one’s life. Hence, I have learnt that we should not hesitate in helping someone in the future regardless of whether we are sure that if a certain small act could help the one in need, because we will never know whether a small little help might just go on a long way in another person’s life.

I would like end this post with a real inspiring poem in relative to community service,

We All Need Someone to Be There

By Judy Kilgore

Planting the seed,

To help the need

Being a friend,

Prayers and hope to send

Not walking away,

But trying to stay

Not turning away,

No matter what day

Being there,