Salam SK Bangsar!

The Students of SK Bangsar, all excited to meet their mentors!

123rd March 2019
Today's the day we finally get to meet our adik (mentee)! As we went further into SK Bangsar's school grounds, we were greeted with sounds of cheerful conversations and laughter from the students. They were all lined up and waiting for us to accept them to our group.

Our group's amazing children, with Athirah being at the front line :)

I finally get to meet my adik, Nur Athirah Humaira. She is a polite and shy kid. But once you get to know her better, she can prove to be quite the character. When she is with her close friends, she is very cheerful and energetic. Another thing is that she can be a very diligent and hardworking person once she sets her mind with a goal.

Just like the rest of the kids, Athirah seemed eager to get to know us better, so after we provided them with breakfast, we immediately formed a circle and had our ice-breaking session. We played games such as Mr. White, bola beracun, cookies on forehead and other exciting activities. We had a blast playing them and seeing the happy looks on the kids' faces, we were certain that they enjoyed it too.

Our first gathering, where we did our ice-breaking activities.

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", but all play and no work makes Jack useless, and we know for a fact that our kids are far from that, so we had to put their minds into action. After we were done with the games, we all went to the school's computer lab and booted up the laptops so that we can start our first ever iLearnAce session. Our first session went on smoothly, except for a few problems such as the internet connection acting up as well as the lack of mentors. But we managed to pull through by having some of the mentors teach more than one kid. The first session was very energy-consuming but effective, as there was a lot of stuff introduced to the students for the first time. Fortunately, we received positive feedback from the students regarding the education platform, especially when they were introduced with the avatar customization feature. Some of the students even asked us what other features can they experience with iLearnAce. 

The questions in iLearnAce can be challenging at times,
but us mentors had our children's back (almost literally).

Break time = Eating time + Photo time

Once we've clocked two hours of iLearnAce exploration, we brought the students down to the canteen for lunch. Despite the long hours of learning session we just had, the kids were very eager to head back to the computer lab to resume their session. Surprisingly, the students even asked for permission to head back to the lab right after they finished their meal. The amount of energy that these kids display are surreal at times! After we finished our meals and performed our prayers, we finally went back to the lab.

Our second session mostly focused on teaching the children the school subjects. Every children showed different proficiency in the core subjects. Athirah, for instance, is exceptionally good at Bahasa Malaysia and Mathematics, but her English and Science needs a little bit of touching up.

Nothing helps with teaching more than the good ol' pen and paper.

I enjoyed my first day as a trainer. Having to teach children is a skill in itself that I think I should polish further on. The joy expressed by the children numbed me from feeling tired and weary, but once I got back to my room I slept like a log throughout the day. I promised Athirah that I would help her with the two subjects that she struggled with on the next day, where we would continue with our learning session. Now we both have something to look forward to for tomorrow :)