PACE Program Week 1

I was joining PACE program on last Tuesday, 30^th of September. This program last for five weeks which we are going to SMK (L) Methodist Sentul for three times and the students go for Taylor’s University lakeside campus. This program is to for us to giving help for those who weak in their studies.  They are Form 2 students and we are trying to maximize their potential by raising their academic performance in English, BM and Mathematics to meet minimum competency requirement of a “C”. 

Last week was my first time going to SMK (L) Methodist Sentul and it was my first time to meet all the mentees. Before going to the school, some of the scenes about my secondary school life flash into my brain, it must be the most happy time when we spent with friends. When I reached the school, I just wonder that is a “boys’ school”. The second thing that I realize was there are most Indian and Malay in the class. 

My mentee called Kian Weng, he is a really shy and quiet boy. He seldom talk with me unless I talk to him or ask him some questions. There are only two Chinese in their class and may be because of this then he become shy since he can’t speak English and Malay very well since most of his classmates use this two languages to communicate.  One of my group mates who is Janet has join me in mentoring Kian Weng. 

Teacher was teaching English preposition last week. When she was giving exercises for them, I found that Kian Weng can do most of the questions by himself but he still shy to ask us when he did not understand. I told him do not hesitate to ask me because we won’t “bite” him. I found that Kian Weng weak in vocabularies therefore can’t answer the questions. So we use the language that he understand the most which is Chinese to explain with him. Besides that, he is also not confidence in pronouncing English. Therefore we encourage him and ask him to give it a try.

After the lesson, there are a game sessions prepared by our classmates. The students have to find out the papers which have the number of stationeries that stick around the classroom and calculate by using the equation given. The students are so enjoy the game and I think that it is a good idea to get close with them.

What I have found in this week activity is most of them really need our help in their studies since teacher at school could not put  so much attention among all the students. Therefore, I really hope the time we spend on them really useful.