By Lee Jo Ee
26th of June, Friday
“Teachers are not only teachers, they are facilitators.” — Pick Ching
Last Friday, a visitation was conducted to SMK Segambut Jaya, a religious boarding school in Segambut. SMK Segambut Jaya is one of the Character and Creativity Initiative (CCI) schools, nonetheless the school faces difficulties in executing this initiative. According to Puan Shaihida, the principal of SMK Segambut, she believes that one of its contributing factors is that the teachers are too busy with their existing workloads to take on this program. Furthermore, she believes CCI is more about re-branding than it is something new.
Undoubtedly, CCI is not something new; rather it is a program to transform the school culture using innovation to boost student interest in learning. This is because it focuses on student-teacher engagement. Hence, it provides a different perspective students form about schooling – one where education is more than just exam results. It includes character development and creative ideation.
Teachers, on the other hand, who play the role as innovators are not fully equipped with the right tool to build working prototypes from their ideas. With the necessary training, teachers can learn to design and conduct classroom lessons that bring out the creative sides of students, piquing their interest in school. CCI can act as a bridge to fill these gap through their collaboration with Google by providing professional training to these teachers.
The essence of CCI lies at the heart of cross-sector collaboration; teachers, principals, government authorities and professionals come together to achieve a shared mission. In the meeting, Puan Shahida also mentioned a common problem among the teachers where they implement CCI in isolation where there are no mechanisms put in place for idea sharing. She suggested that weekly meetings or platforms like “Dialog Prestasi” are good avenues for teachers to discuss, share their thoughts and provide feedback in an effective manner.
Moving forward, Puan Shahida hopes that her team will be able to expand their efforts in implementing CCI successfully to bring about a transformation in the school’s culture toward 21st century learning and teaching.
