School Matters

The last few days I was on pain-killers and had put me in conditions not suitable for working. Forgetting my past experience of taking these pain-killers, I took up Tramadol and found myself difficult to do real work. Pain killers are known to have their side-effects. In this case, it gets me drowsy - imagine that I was trying to drive and do work in this condition. So I took up leave today to take a rest and in part to settle my bills.

There are a couple of things that occupy my mind at present. One of it is about schools. I think a month has passed, since my two kids have changed their boarding schools. The elder one seems to be coping fine (apart from an instance that his locker was broken into and lost a few things) though he was hoping to get to a top school in Seremban - he had applied for that school but was given a different one and now we are making a request for reconsideration. The younger one however seems to have more difficulty in adapting (more so last weekend where he found somebody mess up his room and his locker dented - signs of possible break-in attempt?). To put both of them in good spirits, our weekend is actually occupied with travel and in part has caused us some physical and mental exhaustion. We don't mind this as long as they are happy (as well as learning to be independent) and go along well with their studies.

Another school matter was the community program that the Institute is running. We have been working with high school students from the Orang Asli community in Selangor. Last Saturday, we made a trip to a school to see how they are faring with the program so far. Each of us academics were given a group to interact with - much on fact-finding of their difficulties. I had "Kumpulan Dua" consisting of six students namely

• Haizizi
• Selvi
• Ardi
• Hakim Azwan
• Rosdi
• Andreas

We talk about study problems. Most find maths difficult particularly additional mathematics (my son too) - perhaps the institute can address this problem in part. Of course, time management is a problem (just like everyone including myself). I told them (advising myself too) that discipline is a must and what better to have this than by having a high desire to excel. But too rigid does not help particularly when each individual have their own learning style and personality. Kids today for example may have shorter attention span and breaking study periods into shorter durations may help - this is partly based on neuroscientific research. One that I had forgotten to mention explicitly to the kids (but I mention it in my own class of quantum mechanics) is to get emoionally involved with the topics, study with feelings. Emotions tend to entrench information deeper in our mind. I did however put this slightly differently to the kids on the topic of memorising facts for the subject of history by dramatising the events. Similarly for geography, visuals would help. I hope all of these advices wil help them.

At the end of the half-day program, the Director made some ending speech. Surprisingly he spoke about putting the different groups into competition, seeing which group will get the best results. We did talk about this in passing during our meeting but I did not know that it would be taken seriously. So how about it guys from Kumpulan Dua, ready to take this challenge? Drop me a comment or two or email me privately; we will try to do this together.