Category: Learning Centers

After four months of teaching this year, the teachers in the Goducate literacy centers in Sabah gathered for a day specially organized for them. Teachers’ Day was held at a function room at the town’s Sports Complex. 60 teachers, including the assistant teachers and the livelihood trainers, attended. In the morning we had our meeting, our team-building exercise, the evaluation of the Comprehensive Exam Results, and the distribution of mid-year bonuses (based on students’ exam performance), and our monthly birthday celebration. In the afternoon, we relaxed in the swimming pool, and some of the assistant (teen) teachers played their newly mastered game, the frisbee.

The teachers had mixed feelings about their pupils’ exam results (352 out of 544 passed) but almost all of them were very satisfied with the evaluation, which was properly administered by the team of examiners. The evaluation indicates how the pupils mastered and applied the lessons they had learnt, and it helps us assess the effectiveness of our curriculum and how it ought to be modified for the rest of the school year.  Overall, the teachers were very proud of themselves, and they committed again to do their best next time.

That event was unusual in that it was also a family day since the teachers brought their own children along, in that it was an exposure trip for some who had not been to the sports complex or into a swimming pool, coming as they do from primitive villages. While we were having our session in the morning, the children were taught balloon art.

All the teachers enjoyed the short time they had casting off their roles as teachers to playing around like pupils. This beneficial and recharging activity for our teachers should give them the energy to drive extra miles in the world of teaching and learning.

Goducate has been training Filipinas who are undocumented aliens in Sabah to teach literacy and numeracy to the children in their own community. There are now 22 Goducate literacy centers catering to over 1000 students.

In another town on the other side of Sabah a Malaysian couple, concerned about how street kids usually end up as child laborers, troublemakers, or victims of child abuse, had also set up a center to teach literacy to the children of undocumented aliens. The husband had grown up in a village where he had learnt some farming, and he believes that a school that teaches practical organic agriculture to out-of-school youth could help transform their condition from one of hopelessness to one of usefulness. Hence they were also starting a little farm.

They turned to Goducate for help with their farm project, and thus it was that I found myself there for 5 days to train them in some agricultural techniques—namely, vermicomposting and vermitea brewing, hydroponics and aquaponics, organic container gardening, and organic moringa production. The first 2 days were spent teaching with powerpoint presentations and discussions, and the next 2 days were spent with hands-on work at the farm. The last day was spent on mapping the area for optimum land use and a field visit to a nearby vermiculture project.

The big dream of this center is that the farming project will end up as a center for organic farming initiative that can contribute significantly to the food security of Sabah. For now, it is a means of turning out-of-school youth into useful and productive citizens instead of troublemakers.

Goducate believes in encouraging the students at the literacy centers to read. However, it has not been easy to set up a library, or somewhere to store books securely. For one thing the centers are scattered over a wide area. For another, many centers are the living rooms of the locals into which the students squeeze for their lessons, while others are very basic structures consisting just of a roof and low walls. So for a long time the books the students had access to were what the teachers could carry around with them.

This year we have managed to rent from the landowner of the first Goducate literacy center in Sabah the use of an adjacent garage, which we have split into two parts. One part houses the books for the students, the teaching resources (flash cards, text books), and reference material (dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps, various charts). The other part is the audiovisual section, which houses a television set, a DVD player, a laptop, board games, puzzles, and toys.

This main library is open through the week every morning and from 2-4 in the afternoons for those who live near enough to visit it. For 12 of the centers that are located too far away, a mobile library system has been set up. Every month a new set of 50 books is sent to each of these centers. The main library is also open, for a small fee, to those who are not students at the Goducate literacy centers. We hope that this library, which we refer to as “Uncle Tom’s Learning Center” after the benefactor who provided much of the resources for this place, will be a model for similar set-ups in other villages where Goducate operates. Meanwhile we will probably be setting up a similar facility next month for a plantation owner who would like one for his workers to use at night.

Two of our teachers have been instrumental in the setting up and running of this library. One is in charge of the library section, and the other in charge of the audiovisual section. They have got all the teachers and many of the parents involved and have set up a card system for borrowing material.