Passion for the struggling!

Passion is reignited again for something close to my heart! I want to head a school for students who have problems learning in the main stream. This school is different from Pendidikan Khas ( learning impaired) because these students will be those who are not medically certified to have learning disabilities. In other words, head and run a school where the sole reason to admit students is because they struggle to understand and grasp their lessons.

How did this vision and passion start? Of course first I personally always had personal difficulties learning and teaching Physics due to a strong dislike for Mathematics. I also have some long term issues with my right hand mobility since 1997. However I have seen God turn these disabilities and disadvantages to His advantage and He has made my Physics lessons and teaching style to be somewhat more creative and innovative because of these problems. The pic belows show the delight of Kwan and Wen Yie ( 4 cekal 2006) as they applied Physics principles and successfully got a peeled quail egg inside the narrow neck of a bottle.

Those other personal stories I will share at some time later but for now I want to talk about …. KCK.
In school we have been running this program called KCK which means Kelas Cemerlang Khas since 2008. These are students who have difficulties with the main languages Bahasa Melayu, English and or with Mathematics.

My first encounter with this program was in September 2008. As the school PK1( deputy principal) , I was responsible for academic progress and had a habit of studying the students examinations progress. There was a high failure rate for the BM paper during the Trial SPM examinations that year. From the school exam records, I identified the students who failed. All in all, there were 17 students who had failed every single BM test or exam since Form 4. So I listed out the names and classes and asked their BM teachers to identify why these students constantly failed. Many teachers said that the primary reason why students failed because they were either absent for the exam or they slept through the paper.

Since passing BM was compulsory in passing SPM, our objective was to motivate the students to pass BM. So I decided we would begin by contacting the parents and inform them of their child’s problems and to seek their support to motivate their child to work towards passing BM.

So I took out the class registers to copy the details of the names, addresses, phones numbers and occupations of their parents. As I copied out the info, I soon realized that 10 out these 17 students came from single parent homes and their mothers were the official guardians. I can’t tell you what happen but I ended up being heartbroken and weeping because I realized these students failed BM not just because of the education system but also because of society’s sickness. All the more I wanted to help these students but I wasn’t quite sure where to begin and how to do it.

I realized that beyond getting skilled and dedicated teachers to teach these students, I would need the help of their parents or guardians to ensure that they would come to school, they would try to do the BM paper instead of sleeping through it.

I brought these 17 names to the PIBG AJK during a PIBG meeting. The gracious gentlemen in the PIBG committee and some of us in the school divided the names of the parents and made a pledge to call or visit every parent listed to impress upon both parent and child the importance of working through the BM paper. I was immensely grateful – there was no way I ( or the busy teachers ) could visit all 17 parents and still teach the extra hours needed for KCK.


In school I called a meeting of these students and told them what we wanted to do to help them through the KCK. I impressed upon them that they were important to us and we loved them and wanted to help them succeed in life. I told them if I found them sleeping during the exam, I would wake them up personally and they had to promise not to beat me when I woke them up from their deep sleep. The kids smiled. I also asked them to promise to come to school to attend the special BM classes we would conduct just for them.

The PIBG visited or called the parents and informed them of KCK. We asked their parents to cooperate with the school by ensuring their child came to school during the program and during the exam especially during BM.

So KCK started that first year for 17 Form 5 students. We extracted these students from the main stream class lessons and they would go in to BM classes for about 2,3, 4, 5 periods each morning ( not the first period because most came late to school ) and not beyond recess because both the teacher and students could not survive so long with each other.

During exam times, I would patrol the classes and specifically checked for their attendance and immediately phoned their parent to inform them if their child was absent. My other job was to wake up my beloved sleeping beauties.

Imagine our joy when SPM results came out and we had for the first time in the school’s history 100% results. It was totally unexpected and a bonus encouragement for all the teachers, staff and PIBG.

Below is a chart showing the school academic results from 2004 -2008.