Jointly reported by:
Victoria Hwang Jr1S(6)
Goh Li Lian Sr1ScB
Sophia Ng Szu Fei Sr2ScB
Lai Siang Ching Sr2ComC
On the 22nd of May 2021, Kuen Cheng High School organized a sharing session with Pei Yuan High School to discuss about changes that have occurred amid the rising cases of Covid-19. Many teachers and students from both schools have attended the three-hour-long meeting via ZOOM video platform.
Perak Kampar Pei Yuan High School (normally referred as Pei Yuan High School), is an Independent Chinese Secondary School founded on October 11, 1912. It was established in Kampar, Perak, formerly known as Fujian Academy. The school was initially established at Kampar Hokkien Guild Hall and later moved to the current locality. After changing its name to Pei Yuan School in 1915 until 1962, it was then renamed Pei Yuan Independent High School from Pei Yuan Middle School due to the implementation of the new education policy in Malaysia
Education in the New Era: Industry Revolution 4.0
For the start, our Principal, Dr Chua Lee Lee gave a warm welcome and looked forward to having a fruitful meeting. Madam Chua started by sharing the importance of quality education in the modern era. Education has changed drastically over the time, she said. In contrary to achieving good grades in the past, students must be well equipped with, basically the 4Cs, capabilities include Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Creativity and Communication in order to meet with challenges of the fast-moving society. “Old fashioned education is no longer suitable for students in the 21st Century, non-cognitive skills are crucial as well,” non-cognitive skills or soft skills refer to one’s conscientiousness, perseverance, and teamwork. Such qualities must be ready for a future success in the getting more demanding job markets, reiterated Madam Chua.
Moving on, the Principal emphasized on the importance of self-directed learning. Kuen Cheng High School has organized many different activities to instill interest among students in such as the Kuen Cheng “I CAN” Project and “Ewant” free courses provided online, from Taiwan. Madam Chua hoped that by having the liberty in self-directed learning, students can plan their learning schedule at their own pace and thus making learning fun and enjoyable.
Furthermore, Madam Chua mentioned well-known figures like Professor Richard Davidson and Helen Keller. She said, Professor Richard Davidson had started his research on the four main challenges faced in a modern society, which include loneliness, meaningless life, worries, and the distraction. More so on distraction, as students sway their attention to social media platforms easily. This led to the conclusion, meditating is necessary. Students have to learn how to calm themselves and focus back on their tasks once they realize they are distracted. This as mentioned by our Principal, proves that when students display self-discipline, they are able to concentrate and have a better chance in achieving high quality academic results.
Lastly, Madam Chua stressed on the School’s philosophy and teaching quality. She was happy that our teachers have tried to focus on developing the students’ character instead of only teaching passively. And, all departments are working together in instilling moral values in students in order to cultivate a good school culture. With that, she closed her session for today.
Co-curricular Activities and the New Challenge
Next, Madam Hee Siaw Fuey, Head of the Co-curricular Department, briefed on the various challenges faced by the co-curricular activities’ administrators throughout the Movement Control Order in 2020. The main challenges came in the form of co-curricular activities’ marks distribution, complaints from parents, co-curricular activities’ fees, implementation of online lessons, etc. To sustain the steady flow of co-curricular activities, many measures were significantly taken, such as coming up with analysis tables of activity fees, adjusting the marks distribution system, as well as examining the mode of co-curricular activities concerning other schools. The Co-curricular Department’s standpoints amidst all the obstacles were these: 1) Suspension of classes without the interruption of students’ learning process 2) Providing a different experience in co-curricular activities 3) Providing more opportunities for students to actively participate in a wide variety of activities.
Madam Hee also touched on the various attempts of her department in organizing an abundance of activities for students throughout the pandemic, namely, the “Stay-at-Home” Carnival in 2020 May and June which incorporated a huge programme of multitudinous activities and aimed to bolster the students’ ability in self-directed learning. Another attempt of theirs was in adapting to the new, mixed mode of co-curricular activities which consisted of online and physical classes. Such a mixed-mode of learning encouraged students, particularly the student committee, to analyze situations critically and solve problems without excessive dependence on teachers, thereby coming up with many new methods of learning for members of the same co-curricular activities. Such a feat was a great milestone for Kuen Cheng High School students, as it essentially promoted innovation and perseverance.
The third attempt was in organizing the School Spring Festival Cultural Week in order to usher in the 2021 Chinese Lunar New Year. This included the participation of various clubs and societies of our School such as the Chinese Calligraphy Club, Art Club, Cartoons Club, and Multimedia Society in creating 32 different designs of e-greeting cards which were then emailed to all the teachers and students for their respective uses. Next came the Spring Festival Gala, which was a relatively humongous accomplishment of the Co-curricular Department. It consisted of the participation of students from different clubs and societies in organizing over 40 programmes, finally garnering a staggering amount of 7816 views across social media platforms. Next on their list, the Co-curricular Department has a long list of activities ready in the soon-to-be on-going Online School Carnival spanning from the 6th to 12th of June 2021.
Alas, Madam Hee Siaw Fuey explained about the principle held strongly by the school’s Co-curricular Department: Impossible made possible! In order to further emphasise her point, she used a quote from Tal Ben-Shahar: Things do not necessarily happen for the best, but I can choose to make the best of things that happen.
Novice Teachers’ Growth and Improvement in Education
Up next, Dr Wong Cheng Yoke addressed the improvements of the novice teachers. She explained that during this pandemic educating the novice teachers was a challenge that was difficult to overcome due to the class schedules changes. Thankfully, they managed to arrange a meeting every Tuesday in between classes. During the meeting, experienced teachers would provide some useful advice for this group of new teachers. This is due to some novice teachers having difficulties adapting to a new environment. Whenever novice teachers run into a problem or wish to seek some advice, they will put forward their questions to some experienced teachers in the group chat for advice.
Novice teachers are required to observe lessons. They can either choose to observe a lesson taught by one of the experienced teachers, or they can have a shot at teaching. Madam Wong mentioned that there are many ways to educate novice teachers, one of which is to provide them with a Google sheet and allow them to create their own teaching plan. Later on, the experienced teachers will examine the Google sheet and give them advice according to their mistakes and areas that require improvement.
Furthermore, helping each other during the novice teacher’s training days also play an important part of growth and improvement in education. Whenever an experienced teacher believes that the novice teacher has great potential, they will request them to share their experience with the other teachers. Due to the fact that novice teachers of this generation are more experienced and educated on the modern technology, they have been offered to aid the experienced teachers on how to use online classrooms efficiently.
To end her part on a positive note, Madam Wong hopes that novice teachers can be successful in their jobs to further educate the students of this generation. She believes that anything can be made possible by effective teaching.
Ways of Recommending Books and Library Activities
Moving on, Ms Ong Lay Fong, the Head of the Library, shared the ways of recommending books and Library activities. To promote all 28,464 books in the library requires special effort; the books will be separated into a few categories such as recommending New Book, Theme of the Month and Must-read Books. For the first category, New Book, the library will include all trilingual books, periodical or some teacher’s training series on the shelf. There will also be a Must-read Book for every language. Besides that, the library will also make a poster with some illustrations on it and update it on Facebook 3-5 days a week so that students can see it from the Kuen Cheng Library Page.
Furthermore, the Theme of the Month will change according to the festivals and monthly themes no matter if they are new books or not. Therefore, students can learn more about the theme from the book. In addition, there are books which are highly recommended and shown on the display stand in the library. It is because there are quite many students who have some difficulties with choosing books. So, Books on Display not only helps students to choose a better book but also serves as decoration for the Library.
The School Library created KCHS Library Page on Facebook during the beginning of the pandemic outbreak. There are two ways of recommendation; one is through the text and the other by video. To promote the “I read I share” reading atmosphere, the library is glad to have the students take part in this activity. For the text recommendation, we have activity like student quotations, student posted a quote together with the picture on it twice a week. Besides that, students who wish to share some books or articles that they hope the library will order by doing a video recording. This video recommendation can encourage more students to read books.
In addition, interdisciplinary collaboration which can help students to borrow books from the library by doing homework like reading reports or watching a video that is related with the textbooks and the books in the library. There will also be academics in every class that promote the school’s library reading activities like call for book recommendations and managing class’s reading corner. Lastly, the library also holds lots of activities online as well as offline so that students and teachers can visit the Library more often and love reading books.
In conclusion, it was a wonderful live conferencing experience between Kuen Cheng High School and Pei Yuan High School. Both schools had a great discussion and took a group photo for the special virtual event.
