Image via Taylor’s College
In the past, teachers have always been revered by the community but in recent times, a few bad apples have unfortunately managed to spoil the image of the whole bunch.
Despite this, Taylor’s College wanted to help the truly good teachers shine out of the bad ones by giving them proper recognition via the RISE Educator Award.
This award has shown that there are countless amazing teachers working hard behind the scenes to help each and every student, regardless of their race, location, accessibility or even abilities!
Image via Taylor’s College
Image via Taylor’s College
Muhammad Nazmi Rosli, or better known as Cikgu Nazmi, has gone above and beyond for his students at Kampung Long Sukang, a rural village in Sarawak, who were labelled as “hopeless”.
Due to rationed electricity, lack of cell coverage and zero internet, the students didn’t know much of the world outside of their village.
If anyone wanted to use the internet, they had to travel 3 hours to the nearest town via timber roads, which was what parent Jenny Bulan Gelawat did to nominate Cikgu Nazmi.
Image via Taylor’s College
Image via Taylor’s College
“On my first day in SK Long Sukang, I was going to teach them about money transactions, but I realised the kids there have not seen ATM machines. They also have a problem with writing essays. Sometimes the exam questions are about talking of their experiences going to the beach or being on a plane, but they have never been to a beach or on a plane!” said Cikgu Nazmi.
Many teachers were demotivated by the lack of resources and some people also further discouraged the educators by saying that these students will never become anything, nor will they ever go anywhere outside of the village.
Image via Taylor’s College
Image via Taylor’s College
However, Cikgu Nazmi paid no mind to such negativity and instead found creative solutions to help the students ‘experience’ the outside world. He made use of plastic bags to build a swimming pool, a dobi out of cardboard and a train out of furniture, among many other things.
Ever since his arrival in the school, the students made so much progress that some of them became top scorers in the district.
Image via Taylor’s College
Image via Taylor’s College
Of course, as if things haven’t been tough enough… the recent Movement Control Orders (MCO) dealt a blow to the progress of the school students, as teachers were only given one option – online teaching.
Due to the lack of resources in the villages, Cikgu Nazmi didn’t sit around waiting for a solution. He used a Hilux to go around the jungle to every 111 students’ homes across 13 villages to deliver homework, school materials and even food.
Image via Taylor’s College
Thankfully, many parents such as Jenny cooperated with Cikgu Nazmi to turn their homes into ‘Learning Centres’ for the kids.
“There is a saying; it takes a village to raise a child. This is a literal living example of this,” said Cikgu Nazmi.
Image via Taylor’s College
The other top 5 teachers of this award were (in no particular order):
Abdul Muiz Hussin
This teacher took it upon himself to learn mandarin so that he could teach it to his students in a fishing village.
Hairul Azuan
Most teachers don’t earn a big salary, but this didn’t stop Cikgu Hairul from collecting funds to help the needy in a FELDA community.
Law Yee Chen
Due to the MCO, many of Puan Law’s students had issues with online learning. However, the educator made the effort to ensure the poor students were able to have access to devices and the internet for online learning.
Teo Yuan Teck
Differently-abled students deserve proper education and guidance as well. One student who had special needs was turned away by many schools, but Mr Teo didn’t hesitate to teach the child computer programming.
Image via Taylor’s College
There’s also a Taylorian Edition, won by Taylor’s College lecturer Raja Imran Raja Azhar, whom the nominating student praised as a lecturer who was detailed, had high expectations of his students, and went the extra mile in explaining the teaching materials to them.
Each of these teachers won RM2,000 cash while the nominators won RM500. If you’d like to find out more about the stories and voting results, you can check out Taylor’s College Facebook.
For more info and updates on Taylor’s College, visit their website.