Friday, July 08, 2011

EHC '11 Day 3

First of all, Happy 46th Birthday, Mom!

Woke up quit early today as I’m so excited to get on with the programme. Can’t wait to meet the kids, too!

As planned yesterday, we all gathered at the Operation Room around 7.30 in the morning. Some of the committees went above to the mini hall, preparing for the launching of the programme which is scheduled at 9.00 a.m. 

Around  8 a.m., we all gathered at the the mini hall, hanging out while waiting for launching. I took some pictures using my MacBook webcam just to kill some time. We all love cameras, don’t we? 

During the launching, one of the main board of the school I think were invited as the school’s principal had to leave for Kota Kinabalu to attend seminars. Bro. Aziz also give us his speech, telling us in brief about the programme, its objectives while Bro. Usman Suardi a.k.a Cecep also came out gave his speech as the President of MISI Club. After that, we had video show taken from the Public Relation Office, regarding our university; the students and the campuses, and video montages of MISI Club’s previous programmes. After that, to officiate the programme, we prepared the gong to be knocked as it symbolise the beginning of our journey here in SMK. (A) Sandakan. 

Around 10 a.m., as we’re done, we had another mini photo shoot session but this time the pictures were taken from quite a unique angle. Shouting ‘Terbaik’ while putting up our hands in the air was kind of lifting up our sprits. Then, we’re given 10 minutes to change into sport attires and went to the school’s main hall to clean and prepare the whole area for our programme later. 

We’re done cleaning and arranging the chairs and everything around 11 and we quickly went to the Dining Hall to have our lunch. 

The last time I had my lunch in a school’s Dining Hall was 6 years ago. The moment the food went into my mouth, all the memories when I was with my friends back in high school rose up to the surface of my mind. Yep! Food definitely have the power to stimulates our brain. 

We all went back to our room and make final preparation before the programme starts later. I had mix feelings of excited, nervous, happy and grateful. I literally jumped before I went out of the room! Just kidding. I did actually. lol

Anyway, after the Friday prayer, around 2.00 p.m., all the committees and the facilitators were already in the school’s main hall and while the committees were doing their tasks at the registration table, arranging the students inside the hall, stage preparation and etc., we; the facilitators were standing in front of the entrance, ready to greet the students. 

Students who were coming from their hostels can be seen in 4 colours of uniforms. The greens are the students on school representative board, the blues are the librarian, the purple are the Pembimbing Rakan Sebaya and the normal secondary school’s uniform. This kind of remind me of my alma mater’s uniforms. All together we have 6 types including our respective uniform societies, the reds with blazers are the prefects, the blues are for the librarian, the yellows are the Pembimbing Rakan Sebaya, the greens with vests are the Form Six students, and  the normal secondary’s school uniform. As the Assistant Head Prefect once myself, I have to wear my reds uniforms together with my blazers like most of the time while it’s an option for other prefects in my school. But on rare occasions, I wear the normal uniform as it only says one thing. I’m not in the mood to get into anything. Kidding! (It’s true though). 

While looking at the school kids, I could see all kinds of characters. There are the ‘control macho’ ones, the shy ones, the sweet ones, but of course all of them are still kids. I remember when I was in their age, with hormones sky-rocketed like crazy, I did a lot of crazy things with my friends, hanging out at the school i.e. clubs activities, enjoying school festivals and so much more. 

When all the kids had arrived, we started the programme with the briefings and everything else needed to be informed to the kids. Then, all the facilitators were called out on the stage to introduce ourselves. When we’re done, we were required to go off stage with the kids waiting for us to be taken somewhere around the hall and sit together with them for the first time. 

*MODULE 1 and MODULE 2*

Around 3.00 p.m., we all gathered in our respective groups and as for me, I decided just to stay in the hall. First thing first, was the ice-breaking session. I have 6 boys and 8 girls. 3 of them are taking SPM this year while the rest are PMR candidates. Being a facilitator to secondary school students isn’t something that I never did before. When I was in Form 4 and 5, I did lots of orientation programmes, workshops for PRSs junior members, and of course handling the trainings for new prefects. 

For the first 10 minutes, most of the kids in my group were in silent mode as I was speaking in fully English. I tried to lower down the usage of vocabulary and after I explained things slowly, clearly, and repeatedly, most of them understand what I was trying to say. But the good thing is, they were still paying attentions. It’s a good sign I guess. I really hope we could break this wall of awkwardness as soon as possible and all of us can gain something out of this whole programme. 

The first game was choosing something to represent themselves. For the girls it was quite challenging for them to remember the boys’ choices as all of them chose sports except Darman, who chose computer. As for the girls, they chose bugs, high heels, flowers, etc. more on what they love actually. Yep! One girl actually loves bugs. 

Next assignment was more on expressing everyone’s thoughts and they were required to write them in two pieces of A5 papers. The topics were Hopes, Dreams, Fears and Nightmares. I gave them around 10 minutes to write them and collected them for later use. 

One boy seemed having difficulty to express his thoughts on the topics given during our previous game but I could see he’s kind of good in his writing assignments.

When I got back to my room later at night, I read all of the papers and all I did was laughing and rolling on the ground. Well, not entirely though. Some were very serious but most of them are just funny. Like REAL funny. Especially on the Fear part. 

Anyway, we proceed to the third part of this session, where the kids need to come up with something for their group name, the group motto, and the group flag. We were given a piece of A2 paper, and 2 markers to complete the task. Well, you guys know I’m doing architecture, right? So, I kind of brought some of my weapons with me. 5 highlighter pens. That definitely lighted up the flag a bit. 

We’re done for the first session around a quarter passed 4 and all of us went to Dining Hall and sat down together for a cup of tea. Since, we just met for the first time, I haven’t seen any facilitator sat down with the kids while enjoying their tea time though it was highly recommended by our D&I Head of Bureau, Bro. Syau.

After the tea time, all of us went back to our rooms and rested for a bit, waiting for the time to have dinner. Since we’re adjusting the whole programme with the kids’ time schedule thus breakfast, lunch, tea time, and dinner in the Dining are all done together with the kids. I kind of felt a little of ‘going back to the future’ there. 

That night, around 8 p.m., after we’re done with Magrib and Isya’ prayers, all of went back to the Main Hall to continue with the second session that included the 3rd module. But just to warm up the kids, we played the modified ‘paper, rock, scissors’ game. Why I called it modified? Because the losers will have to be the winner’s followers and since we’re playing in mass number, it turned out to be so much fun. 

For the third module, it was more like a continuation of the first session of Self Enhancement with D&I in the musolla where the kids got to express their thoughts in debates. The topic was choosing the right 4 out of 9 candidates to be taken aboard to the small boat. It’s like in ‘2012’ movie but this one was in smaller crowds. The candidates are a doctor, lawyer, police officer, historian, architect, linguist, soldier and last but not a teacher. One of the boy came up with a good reason on why we do need a historian in continuation of the next generation. 

Almost 30 minutes before we ended our session, Bro. Fadzil came to our group to give us some newspapers, straws, glue, and tapes, for us to come up with some sort of arcs that can be used to represent the group. After so little discussion among themselves, they agreed to make a heart. They divided and rolled some of the newspapers into balls and glued them onto a pre-cut heart-shaped piece of a newspaper. After the balls stuck quite nicely on it, they glued another pre-cut piece of a newspaper so it’ll look more neat. 

The explanation was the balls are representing them, the members of the group. The 2 pieces of newspapers that are holding the balls together are among things that they believe in and have hopes in, holding them together as one. Simple and symbolic, I say. 

Around 10.30 p.m., all students are gathered in the hall and all the designs are placed in the middle of it. I think I’m going to give you guys the freedom to judge the creations by the kids by yourselves, okay?

I think some of the kids were already sleepy (and maybe some were boring) so Bro. Fadzil and some of the facilitators and committees gave them something to lightened up the kids (and us, too!). They did a modified version of one of the routine done by the awesome stompers in ‘Stomp the Yard’ movie. (This totally makes me want to re-watch that movie again!) They even did an encore! (and I managed to record them using my iPhone... =D

After the briefing and some reminders to the students, all the kids went back to their respective dormitories while us, literally dragged our feet towards the Operation Room for the daily reports. 

One of the big issues is the flow of the programme. When the schedules changed, means the slots need to be changed, hence the flow of the programme is interrupted and thus the desired effects of the modules are not as high as we expect them to be. All I want is for the kids to gain something out of the sessions we had with them. More times hence more opportunities we can get to be closed enough to them so we can help them in ways that they want us to help them. At the same time, we integrate their needs with our goals of coming here. 

Dr. Dolhadi joined us and said few things to improve on how to overcome the issues we’re facing and since he’s going to handle 4 hours sessions with the students tomorrow, I hope we can get some time to prepare everything that we’re lacking. 

After we’re done with the discussions and some sharing moments by our Programme Manager, Bro. Aziz on SMAS students’ usual habits and other stuffs going on in this school, we headed back to our rooms and got ourselves enough rest as tomorrow’s schedule will start at 3.30 in the morning. 
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