MasyaAllah

I have this thing that I like to relate an event with a certain song to describe a mood or a feeling. For this semester, I am teaching four different groups. I will sometimes have My Chemical Romance's Teenagers or Kurt Kobain's Smells Like Teen Spirit song played in my head. And when I am in a hopeful mood, my mind will change to Twista's Hope track.

Every time I walk down the stairs for class, after reciting some prayers, my heart will start pounding thinking if my students can cope with the day's class. I have a mental target in my head, at least the whole class must understand 70% of the day's lesson.

No, I do not have a proper lesson plan i.e ice breaking, introduction, first 10 minutes and so forth. That's because I do not have an education diploma. I just jumped into this field after completing my post grad. Not that it is bad, I get to experiment what kind of methods to use to teach these kids and different groups have different level of understanding and different people in each group has a different pace. It very much varies according to strata and cluster (ok dah keluar statistics terms la pulak)

Last Friday's meeting in Shah Alam (sigh) was okay I guess. I pointed out about having the appropriate pace in teaching. I was surprised that some lecturers finish their syllabus after week 7! Ape ni ? Gila ka?

So as usual, I did tutorials for degree class and taught a new chapter for Foundation. Measures of Dispersion. See, I managed to resolve the problem about having to wait for them to copy the notes from the white board. I gave them photocopied notes intead and left some places blank and discuss in class. Spoon feeding ? Well, I have to say, to a certain extend, yes. But you have to be in my shoes to comprehend my situation and my justifications on why I did that. I am chasing time. We all are. But I am not crazy enough to finish ALL my syllabus at week 7. That is just simply demented and I would say, melepaskan batuk tepi tangga.

Since I am under the Academic Quality Assurance committee, I have learned a lot about things like continuous quality improvement, life long learning, how to improve the quality of teaching, the quality of academics, problem based learning, bla bla (boring stuff you might say) but I find it to be a wonderful experience.

And also, Since I am under the Academic Quality Assurance committee, the Dean has asked me to present a Seminar on this. Scared? Yes. Its a tough task and I am scared that I might dissimenate the wrong information. But it's an amanah that I have to fullfill. I hope the faculty would take this as a continuous quality improvement thingy, and not think of me (who has merely 1 year and a half experience) berlagak bagus nak citer pasal mengajar. [yup, sadly some people has this mentality "alah, ko macam bagus nak cakap2 nasihat2 orang, tengok diri sendiri la.."] I think if everybody has that thinking, humans who serve as khalifah on this world can never advise people. because we are only humans who make mistake. And it is our duty to remind each other. If I forget, please remind me.. and I will do the same. I believe that is how we make this world somehow, a better place.. However, sadly, there are people who are so negative and somewhat egoistic and can NEVER take advice from people. They tend to think they are right when sometimes they are very wrong. They make assumptions about other people, they blame everyone else but themselves for everything. These type of people, I would say, are very bitter and they will never see the cup as half full. What a pity..

Yes, why suddenly lashing out all these point? I guess experience has taught me a lot. Yup, I dare not say I am pious but I appreciate if people remind me things that I might forget because sometimes I do.. And I believe it works both ways.. Unfortunately, people misconstrued the message..

After class, I met up with some students and this made my day:

Me : How are you guys coping up with class?
Student : Alhamdulillah okay teacher. The way you teach is.. Masya Allah.. everyone is talking about it.
Me : (MasyaAllah katanya? Teruk sangat ke aku ngajar?) Why? Is there anything wrong with the way I teach? What did they say?
Student : No no.. we understand. They say you teach very good. We understand. We enjoy your class.. Is Alhamdulillah.. Statistics is okay..
Me : Really? Alhamdulillah.. Well, please come and see me more often if you don't understand so that I can help you.
Student : InsyaAllah teacher.

MasyaAllah. And that is why, I never give up teaching.

*Note : I came to know that MasyaAllah can also be used to describe good things.