Penang Day 5

Tried to go to bed early-ish last night, however at some stage someone tripped a switch, so we had no electricity. This meant that the fan stopped working, and not only did that make it very hot, the mozzies had access! The room fans are super efficient, and they blow so hard that they actually help to keep the mozzies away. The fans came back on about midnight, thank goodness. Then, I awoke at 3:30am for no apparent reason (slightly worried about teaching, maybe?) I was actually doing better than someone else, who had forgotten to change their clock to local time, so was up and dressed ready to catch the bus at 3:30am! I managed to doze back off, but I’ve definitely had not much sleep for the first day of school :-(

Seri Relau (My school)

We left at 6:30am to be taken to school by the RECSAM bus. It is still dark at that time. We arrived at school at about 7am. The school is an L-shaped building, 4 stories tall. The guard at the gate directed us to the office, which we were unable to find! Apparently it doesn’t open until 7:30am anyway. With some help, we finally found it. There were a few puzzled looks, but we had been given a letter of introduction, which helped. Later that morning we found out that the school had not been notified of our placements! I must say, they took it all in their stride, and had already taken us on a tour of the whole school, and were working out a timetable for us. I think that shows amazing flexibility, to have 2 foreign students turn up on your doorstep and tell you they will be teaching for 2 weeks, and just go with it!

The guard - the children call him Uncle!

We started the morning with assembly. Although I can’t understand Malay, it was very similar to assembly at home. There was singing of the National Anthem while raising the flag, giving awards for the cleanest classes, prayer, instructions and general information. Erin and I were asked to introduce ourselves, and when we said we would be here for 2 weeks, many of the children clapped and cheered. It is so funny to be walking around and greeted with “Good Morning, Teacher!” School here starts at 7:30am, and finishes at 1:05pm for the lower grades and 1:35pm for the upper grades. They have ½ hour classes, and teachers move around between classes. In this way, it is more like our secondary schools, where teachers are specialists in subjects such as Maths, English, Science, Bahasa Malaysia, Islam, Moral Instruction and PT (PDHPE).  

Children at assembly

Boys will be boys!

They have a dedicated science lab and art room.

Science Lab

This school has non-integrated classes for special education, such as Downs Syndrome, ADHD, Autism and others with learning difficulties. There are 34 of these students, with 9 teachers, a very high teacher/student ratio. There are 470 students all up, with 55 teachers; again, a very high teacher/student ratio. Each class has approximately 30 students, similar to NSW classes. In the Kindergarten class, there is a teaching assistant, who also cooks lunch for the children, which is served in a lunch area in the class. For the older classes, there is a canteen that serves their choice of hot food. All of the food is provided by the Malaysian Government.

One difference between Malaysia and Australia is that they begin teaching about drugs very early on in school. In Australia, we start teaching about alcohol and cigarette smoke in Year 3 & 4; that gets expanded to prescription drugs and caffeine in Year 5 or 6 – no real mention of hard drugs at all.

The school takes all opportunities to educate the students in some way. There are signs hanging from the ceilings, lots of noticeboards on the wall, as well as lessons placed under the clear plastic tablecloths where the children eat.

The Headmistress very kindly purchased our lunch for us today, as it is the custom for Malay people to welcome others into their homes with food and drink.

We attended a teachers’ meeting after school, although it was all in Bahasa Malaysian, so we were unable to understand a word. It did, however, seem to follow a similar pattern, and get the same reaction from teachers, as do meetings at home.

After school we all came together at RECSAM to talk about our days. It was interesting to hear others’ experiences, and talk about what we had seen. After the debriefing, I went in the pool! RECSAM has a brand new pool, which is beautiful, and after a hot day at school, it was nice to swim. Notice I didn’t say relax? That is because we were sharing the pool with approximately 9 boys of varying ages. At first they were simply bombing, as boys do, but when I was trying to learn my colours, they suddenly became interested, and were talking to us. They were very enthusiastic about adding to my vocabulary; unfortunately my memory is not what it used to be, so I’m afraid I retained very little.

Dinner was at the RECSAM cafeteria, a type of fried rice wrapped in egg. You won’t be hearing about my breakfasts for the week, as we are making do with items purchased from Tesco, because we have to leave so early. I really like a school day that finishes at 1:30pm!