Day 1: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” - Nelson Mandel

PACE also known as ‘Programme for After Class Enrichment’, the purpose of this project is to assist a group of secondary students to improve on their studies. On the day of 1st September 2015, there were two groups with 20 students in each group went to primary school in Sentul. My group went to SMK (L) Methodist Sentul with the guidance of Miss Rabi’ah.

From what i observed, some of the students were actually very enthusiastic to participate themselves in answering the questions and finishing the tasks given by teacher. However, some of them were lack of motivation as they just wanted to complete the tasks and leave the class as soon as possible. I believed that those students did not really appreciate the after-class type of extra class as they looked so tiring and took a long time came to class. We’ve all been experiencing those extra tuition class after school for SPM, students get restless and we felt like the captains of a sinking ship.

My mentee for this community service project would be Adam Haikal, a form 3 student who is going to sit for PTS exam. I was in charge to teach him English, explaining the vocabulary that he doesn’t understand and sharing some strategies to answer questions. However, i was quite worried that i couldn’t have given my best to help him as i found that the language barrier was making it very hard for me to express what i wanted to say which same case happened in last semester. I felt bad to Adam as i couldn’t explaining well to him and he was uncomfortable with English. I guessed this was what made him so quiet as he did not ask many questions even if he had doubts. As what everyone did, i asked him to do all the questions page-by-page, and read all the long paragraph words-by-words. Luckily it worked, sort of.

I really hope that all students can benefit from this program and realise the importance of knowledge of being an indestructible asset in their life. Throughout the teaching session, I’ve found out that it is not easy to be a mentor and I’ve have realised teaching would be that hard for me. I definitely look forward for the next time being there although it was very tiring.