Assalamualaikum! Good morning everyone!
Thanks for inviting me here today.
A lot of great speakers have spoken before this as well.
My name is Dzameer Dzulkifli and I am
The co-founder and managing director of Teach for Malaysia.
Today I'll be talking to you guys about Teach for Malaysia,
and specifically, a program we are doing, which is
Empower to Empower.
What is this actually?
What is actually an education?
For us in Teach for Malaysia, we believe excellent education
in Malaysia is where all children
are empowered to be leaders of their own learning,
their future, and the nation's future.
This is what empowerment means:
the choice to do whatever you want,
wherever you want, and not being afraid
of being told that you cannot do it.
Here are some stats for Malaysia:
44% of 14-year-olds in Malaysia do not meet minimum
international literacy proficiency levels.
60% do not meet numeracy proficiency levels.
1 out of 5 of Malaysians do not complete
their secondary school education.
This is the stats.
How does it look in real life?
How do you feel this and see this in the classrooms in Malaysia?
I got a short video here that I would like to share with you guys.
My name is Rakis
I...old...old...old
You try to read this. Just try only
...
I...
I...wit...to be...
No.
Totally do not understand?
OK, never mind. I'll ask you another question
Just give it a try.
One two three four five six seven eight nine ten
eleven...twelve... I don't knoooow
After twelve you don't know?
My name is Jayalatumi.
I old is twenty... twenty years old.
Twenty years old?
How do we pronounce 13 in English?
Twenteen years old.
Thirteen.
Thirteen years old.
OK, Jaya. Can you please read this for me?
When.
When I...
You try?
When I...
These are some of the kids in Malaysia
that have been going through the education system
and so struggled.
Their background often limits their opportunity.
It's not they lack the ability.
I personally was very shocked once, when I visited the classroom.
I went into a Form 2 Geography classroom.
There was an excercise going on.
Most of the boys and girls were active in the class,
except for one of the boys, who was at the back,
sitting very quietly, looking down.
And I asked him, What's up? What's going on?
Kenapa berdiri di sini? (Why do you stand here?)
Ada masalah tak? (Are you ok?)
Boleh saya tolong? (Do you need any help?)
And then he said:
Cikgu saya tak tahu baca (Sir, I dont know how to read).
This was a Malay boy who could not read
in Malay Geography class
and that really shocked me.
It wasn't the usual challenge, one of a SJK (C) or SJK (T) challenges,
but this was in his own language,
his mother tongue language,
that he could not read.
And if you cannot read, you don't have access to the information.
These are what the stats don't tell us about
living in low-income communities, right?
Kids at the age of...
Sometimes even at the age of eight
have to start working for their families.
They don't have any role models growing up...
The university or the creative arts or starting up barbershops as well
they don't have the role model and programs like JOHO are amazing.
They did not pass UPSR and this has created self-defeated attitude.
No one has actually told them "You can succeed!"
"You can progress!" "You can be amazing!"
And that is what the kids really need:
the sense of hope and motivation.
So given all the challenges that we have seen in the education stats,
what does the little organization like Teach for Malaysia want to do?
We believe that talent is at the key in any successful organization
and more importantly in the education system.
If you attract top graduates and young professionals
that have never been considered the career of teaching
because they have been told to be doctors, lawyers, engineers,
maybe startups founders or now-a-days bankers and consultants,
who is going to pass down the civilization to the next generation?
Teach for Malaysia is going out there to recruit top graduates to teach
as full time teachers in underprivileged schools for two years.
During that two years,
they all make an impact on the students,
but more importantly they understand what challenges
faced by the students and how to remove those barriers in a long run.
They can decide to stay in the education system
or they can decide to leave,
but there will be always an alumni movement dedicated towards systematic change.
Not only pushing the boundary of one kid at a time,
but pushing all of Malaysia forward, simultaneously.
Now I am going to show you a video about one of our fellows
sharing a short reflection.
You met Jaya earlier on. She's been talking about
how she worked with Jaya for two years in her fellowship
on top of being a full time teacher,
she did after school classes with Jaya as well.
In my first year of teaching, I had a student named Jaya.
She was thirteen years old when I first met her.
So she was at Form 1 and what really strucked me with Jaya was
She could not write and read at all.
She knew the alphabet, but she did not know how it sounded.
So I offered to give her extra classes after school
and she took them up.
And she will come to my house every day after school.
We will go through all the books together.
So we started at Peter and Jane this was at Level 1A.
And I realized that she could not read the first word in the book,
which was Peter.
We started from there and it was the level she began with
and we moved from there to few different levels as well.
So after four months,
she could finally finish reading book 1A Peter and Jane
and she asked me if she could bring her entire family along
to the reading session.
Erm, I said sure.
So she brought her family along and I realized that
her entire family could not read.
So she has a brother who is 16 years old at this point
and he could not read as well.
What was really shocked me after seeing all that was
the moment when I saw her at book 3A.
She was at 3A at this point, but
she was confidently reading to her sister and her brother.
And she was telling them how to pronounce certain words.
And at that moment,
I realized that I was not just teaching her,
but I empowered her to teach her entire family as well.
So this is a ripple effect:
One teacher impacts one student one bit in a time, and
it impacts the whole family.
That is what we are looking for
and so far, in the past 5 years
Teach for Malaysia has recruited 253 fellows to be part of this program.
31 of them are actually based in Pasir Gudang, Johor.
In 22 schools not too far away from Johor Bahru
and also Sungai Segget
which I just learn a lot about.
We are here... I mean...
we'll be placed in an underprivileged school,
low-income communities, industrial communities,
and we want to be working with all sorts of like players and stakeholders in Johor
to help these kids to see a different future for themselves.
They need the exposure and
the most memorable line I had that a fellow told me
they said, Dzameer in the end of the day
we are just the routers.
We take the kids and show them the outside world
and we get the outside world and we show them to the kids.
Once the kids see that there is already a natural spark in them
that continues to glow.
Now what happened after two years Dzameer?
What can you do in two years, right?
What can you do with 250 people?
So far, 150 fellows have completed their two years
and this is where the real magic of Teach for Malaysia happens.
What happens here is that they decide what to do the next
and out of these 150 around 45 of them
are in the education sector
so they continue to be a full-time teachers
with MOE (Ministry of Education) as a civil servants.
About another 40% are in the social sector or education sector
and then another 30% is in the private sector,
places like Shell, CIMB, Bank Negara, McKinsey, etc.
But what they are going to do as a group?
Here're a few examples.
5 of them that remains as teachers demonstrated such great leadership
that they influenced their principals
to start up an Innovative School Transformation Project,
the Trust School Program.
They are teaching and training almost 80 to 120 other teachers
that impact another 1000 students.
This is only on the third or fourth year of teaching.
Some of them decided then that the classroom and
the school environment is not for them.
They wanted to start an after school program.
And the after school program is really pushing kids
because there is no curriculum
there is only problem plus programming.
And when they did this,
they were so successful that they are taking kids from low-income communities
they were even challenging the Sekolah Berasrama Penuh
and the International School kids
and programming and coding challenges
and they were winning awards.
And then spotted them and telling them that
Hey we have been thinking about
rewriting the computer and science curriculum
can you come help us do it?
You understand the system, you understand the computer science,
let's do it together!
And so they appointed them to rewrite
the computer science curriculum
as well as train 22 other pilot schools to run this program.
Another group of alumni said,
You know, I have been teaching in classroom
and the most things that I struggle with is without resources.
I don't have exciting book, I don't have exciting resources,
I can't take my kids for trip,
It is so difficult...
What we are going to do?
Let's start a crowd-funding platform for teachers.
Not just for Teach for Malaysia fellows
but every teacher can sign up a program and fundraise.
And so far they have raised more than 380000 MYR
for different projects around schools.
This is only with Alumni
with in the third fourth to fifth year of the program experience.
In the next twenty or thirty years,
in fact Teach for America,
Teach for Malaysia is part of the global network
called Teach for All
And Teach for America is one of the oldest partners there
where you have even the Minister of Education
as well as the Head of the IRS
was a Teach for America alumni or is a Teach for America alumni.
In fact, I just heard about a story that
one of them was even a fireman, and if there is a fire in the school
you know you will be getting there first.
So it takes everybody, it takes a village to raise a child in that sense.
I am going to leave you again
talking about this thought how the empowerment has such a strong ripple effect.
You heard about Suet Lee teaching Jaya
who then impacted her 16 years old brother.
I am going to leave you with one video to thank the teachers,
but also to see how Suet Lee's little brother Jason also became a fellow.
The amount of joy
satisfaction enjoyment
(Audiences clapped)
I also wish that I had a teacher like Ms. D or Jason as well
and I know many of you do
And so as I leave today I just want to ask you
Who was that teacher that left a spark in you?
We should tell them and thank them while they are still around.
And if you want to empower a kid or kids in Malaysia
What would you say to them?
Empower to empower.
Thank you very much.