Sunday, April 10, 2016

Balik Kampong 2

It was an overdue thing but on Friday, Pyan and I set out to Raub to deliver our English workshop.After dropping Pyan at Seri Raub Hotel which Shimah booked him, I went over to Long's and slept over.Mek was at Kak De's.I planned to dine out with Suri..only to find out she had moved to Karak and now staying with her mom.My school gfs tak drive or live outside town so an early night for me! Too tired to drive to Kak De's.Some kids just died kat kolam ikan near her home.

We started around 8 am at Shimah's school.Raub has changed so much.Drivers are so reckless. One actually left his car running (pintu terbuka) as he went across the road to buy his breakfast.I mcm tak percaya! Never saw this while I grew up in my wonderful town. :) UiTM baru buka so there's this huge Old Town kopitiam where we went to have a drink (me and my gfs frm school days).Sharida was still in KL frm Miri on another reunion.I had to drive back on Saturday cos' Pyan nak jumpa golfren dia.Since he was driving, what can I say.Would hv loved to stay till Sunday.

The workshop went well alhamdulillah.There were 47 kids aged 12 who were very shy. Shimah mixed the groups...good classes mixed with lower ones.She wanted me to speak on how local gal did good. So showed them some of my travel pics.Then we showed them an animated vid clip and got them to write a short paragraph on why they liked/disliked the clip.As we went around helping the kids write and correct their sentences, we found out that they were smart.Some wrote we liked the clip because it was lively, colourful, yada yada but we disliked it because the reggae shark took ganja.Fantastic! So I spoke on why ganja or drugs were haram, yada yada. Within that hour, we managed to explain one on one basic grammar rules.I figured a teacher could not handle a big class alone.She or he needs assistance.Then only a personal attention could be given.Peer teaching is not new in some countries.

After the break, I got Pyan (who is award-winning actor and owns his own theatre house albeit small scale) to give some tips on acting..voice projection, movements on stage etc which he saw fit.Then we broke them into 7 groups and there were two groups within a group.They all had to act out and the best group would represent and compete at the final level.It's a trick to make the kids speak English without being shy actually.It worked! We might have a few going to Jalan Ampas. :D But out of the 7 groups, we picked top 3 (we got their English teachers headed by Datin Ho to do the judging).Aida and I helped Pyan to do the early saringan and helped them to polish their acting, pronunciation, etc.

Yup, we had fun. I do this for friends je (now Sulazli said owh, can you come to my school too? ).Ainin dah booked me for June.We did one last year (bdk yg screamed I hate Literature!)I am waiting for an invitation to speak at my mom's kampong in Semantan in which there are only 4 students! And I had offered to do free workshops at my old schools (MGS and Mahmud). Takda org panggil, takkan kita terhegeh2. I kasi free pun.

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