Malaysians' Ways of Lives to the Eyes of American Children...

Today was another interesting day for me as I had the opportunity to carry out my first lesson with the 8th graders at Riverside Middle School and the topic of my lesson was Introduction to Malaysia and the Malaysian culture. During my lesson I shared several things about Malaysia with the students. I talked about the Malaysians’ ways of greetings, their festivals and the sumptuous food found in Malaysia.

Besides, I also shared some information about the two schools that I have worked with in Malaysia; SMK Bintulu and MGS, Ipoh. The students were very excited to learn about something that was completely alien to them.

The Traditional Malay Ways of Greeting

I was taken aback when the students did not know anything about Malaysia. They had a lot of questions about our food, people and also culture. I had weird response from them too when I told them that we also celebrate Christmas in Malaysia….a student stated “ You celebrate Christmas in Malaysia?”…They did not know that we have Christians who celebrate Christmas.....

The students seemed to enjoy the lesson as I did some demonstration on how to greet the people here during their festivals and the traditional Malay style of greeting. The students were active and inquisitive learners, so they bombarded me with so many questions, the one hour lesson was just not enough to describe everything about Malaysia...….

All together I had five hours lesson with five different classes, repeating the same thing about Malaysia, at the end of the day I was very tired, but at the same time I was very happy as I had a sense of achievement….the experiences that I have gained all these while through various courses and training sessions as well as my debating skills has helped me to brave through my lessons today.

I am looking forward for my next lessons to see what I can learn from the students and also teachers at the Riverside Middle school who seem to be very excited to have us with them… at least they get a break from their 5 or 6 hours lesson routine that they have every day…  I will soon share about the teachers’ routine in US…

see yaa....!!