What's On Your Mind? Care to Share?

To Kill A Mockingbird

2011-04-04T06:51:00.000-07:00

Happy International Women's Day. What can you do to appreciate your loved ones, your mothers or your sisters?

2011-03-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

Exam results have been released? What's your plan next? Make a wise choice and in Allah you should trust :)

2011-02-20T23:08:00.000-08:00

2011-02-18T05:14:00.000-08:00

Everybody has his or her own theme song. What's yours?

Happy Chinese New Year to all my Chinese friends all over the world.

2011-02-01T03:44:00.000-08:00

Phil Collins - A Groovy Kind of Love

2011-01-29T23:41:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays to all students and teachers. Have a wonderful Chinese New Year celebration to all my friends:)

2011-01-27T03:36:00.001-08:00

Suggest some ways on how to help teenagers to control their anger.

2011-01-26T02:52:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year 2011 everyone ! Hope this year going to be a great year to all of us.

2011-01-03T19:13:00.000-08:00

How important is Facebook to you?

2010-09-25T05:42:00.000-07:00

What is your favourite song at the moment and why do you like it so much?

2010-07-19T07:27:00.000-07:00

How to make students love reading in this 21st century?

2010-05-30T06:13:00.000-07:00

Who is the person that influence your character?

2010-05-24T21:33:00.000-07:00

Do you sometimes feel like you are a stranger in your own land? Relate this to the sivic consious among fellow Malaysians.

2010-04-10T19:06:00.000-07:00

MBMMBI....Memperkasakan Bahasa Inggeris? How far this is going to be effective?

2010-04-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

When giving comments after reading our students' essays, teachers have to give constructive comments and never ever be judgemental.

2010-03-22T22:34:00.000-07:00

Vocabulary is the essence of meaning - Dr Raja Letchumi 2010

2010-03-07T19:01:00.000-08:00

How to make students speak English more in the classroom?

2010-03-07T17:09:00.000-08:00

Any suggestions for the activities for the Upper 6 students in 2010?

2009-12-28T21:32:00.000-08:00

Wishing everyone Happy New Year! Welcoming 2010 with an open arms :) What are the new year's resolutions?

2009-12-21T23:47:00.000-08:00

Long Term School Holiday is finally here...what should we do to fill our free time wisely?

2009-11-27T05:28:00.000-08:00

Home-cook meal..the very best for you and your loved ones.

2009-10-14T20:40:00.000-07:00

Beef Stew from my mom (Madam Aminah's Recipe)

1 kilogram of sliced beef (the size of a steak but thinly sliced)
8 dried chillies
1 large onion
4 shallots
2 garlic
prawn paste (belacan) the ammount may vary according to your taste
a little salt
a table spoon of brown sugar
2 table spoon of thick soya sauce
a little tamarind juice

Task 1

Boil the beef until all of the slices are will coked.
Then use a rolling pin and pound on the slices of beef until there are shreaded.
Then add thick soya sauce to each slice, on both sides.
Then fry each slice in a frying pan containing little oil.

Task 2

Fry the dried chillies in a frying pan containing little oil, until the chillies are slightly brown.
Then boil the chillies until they are soft.
Then blend together the soft chillies, onion, shallots and garlic in the food processor. Add a little ammount of water.

Task 3

Add 4 table spoonsful of oil in the frying pan and pour the blended ingredients in the pan.
Stir it until is it boiled.
Add the sliced beef.
Add some prawn paste, salt,brown sugar and a little tamarind juice.
Cooked until the the gravy is well mixed with the beef.

Enjoy it with "nasi minyak" , white rice or just bread....Enjoy and all the best :)

Natural Disasters are happenning almost on a daily basis. What does this mean?

2009-10-08T07:09:00.001-07:00

Wishing all of you Eid Mubarak or Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri. Any suggestions to make this celebration more meaningful?

2009-09-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

Care to share any motivational or inspiring words that you like very much?

2009-09-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

Why is it so difficult for certain youngsters to fulfill their duties as true Muslims in Ramadhan?

2009-08-27T06:06:00.000-07:00

Ramadhan is here Alhamdulillah. Any tips on staying healthy this Ramadhan?

2009-08-21T03:56:00.000-07:00

"Shuffle" is a type of dance that is a craze among teenagers now. Is it good or bad for youngsters?

2009-08-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

A study has been done in U.S which shows college students who frequently use Facebook do badly in their exams. What about Malaysian students?

2009-08-08T22:30:00.000-07:00

Why can't you stay away from your mobile phones?

2009-08-04T19:27:00.000-07:00

The usage of "air daun ketum" is very popular among the people in the rural areas and it has become an addiction. What should be done to curb this?

2009-08-03T00:06:00.000-07:00

Why is it good to grab an opportunity to travel overseas and see a lot of places?

2009-07-31T01:54:00.000-07:00

The crime rates in our country is increasing day by day. What should we do to protect ourselves, our properties and our families ?

2009-07-30T06:25:00.000-07:00

How do you describe a true friend or friends ?

2009-07-28T20:21:00.000-07:00

What are our responsibilities as fellow Malaysian to curb the infection of H1N1?

2009-07-27T04:33:00.001-07:00

When is your favourite time to read and what do you like to read the most?

2009-07-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

Kenapa budaya membaca sukar diterapkan di kalangan rakyat Malaysia?

2009-07-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

Too many horror t.v series and horror movies in Malaysia nowadays? Is it good or bad for us?

2009-07-21T02:57:00.000-07:00

Yang mana lebih menarik dan membantu anda? Adakah melalui cara belajar Bahasa Inggeris semasa menonton t.v atau mendengar lagu-lagu Bahasa Inggeris?

2009-07-19T23:03:00.001-07:00

How does watching English and American t.v programmes help you to improve your English besides reading?

2009-07-19T21:01:00.000-07:00

What is the best way to capture the students' attention?

2009-07-19T02:25:00.000-07:00

What qualities must a good teacher have?

2009-07-18T01:44:00.000-07:00

Regarding the matters of the hearts. To share or not to share the problems with others. That is the question.

2009-07-17T02:42:00.000-07:00

The most delicate matter there is..the matters of the hearts.

2009-07-17T02:35:00.001-07:00

Heart Don’t Fail Me
By
Amiza Hazni Bt Mohd. Radzi

To be honest with you I had this title in mind for so many years already. My former university professor once mentioned the title of Diana Ross’s song, “Heart Don’t Fail Me.” The title was catchy then and it still is until this very moment. It kept appearing in my mind these few days and this definitely signaled something significant which I could not brush aside. Life has different meanings to different individual. As for me life is just great! I am not being cynical neither I am being boastful. Life is full of co-existence of many opposite concepts, ideas and things. Good and Evil, Happiness and Sadness, Success and Failure, Promises and Lies and Tears and Laughter co-exist peacefully in this world. I am not being a hopeless romantic. Please bear with me and let me clarify further. After each and every one of us had gone through a lot in our lives, it begins to make sense to us why certain things happened. At first we might wonder, “Why and how it could have happened?” Unfortunately not all questions have answers and worse if those who have the answers remained silent. The only thing left for us to do is to rely on our hearts because hearts do not lie not even to us.

Resilience is an inner strength that we have in us. We keep telling ourselves to stand up, walk slowly, faster a bit, run now and then fly every time after we fell. But deep inside us, a small voice in our heads which surely would have come from our hearts whispers to us how long can we stand this never ending occurrences of rise and fall? It goes back to the strength of our hearts or some might say our sanity. If we are hurt some of us might cry, some might fight back and some might just ignore the sinking feeling and move on. It solely depends on our hearts whether things will be alright eventually or things will get worse. Some of us seek help and comfort in others and listen to advice but after having listened to loved ones, closed friends or professionals, it usually brings us back to our own hearts. We just have to listen to our hearts.

Listening to our hearts is surely a risky business. What if we our hearts fail us again? We should have known better because through our personal experiences we have been hurt one time too many and we have no choice but to trust our instinct and listen to our hearts. Is it a risk or a chance we are referring to here? I would say we are taking chances. So why not just go ahead and take chances. I cannot guarantee we have nothing to lose but there are chances that are worth taking. Our hearts are the strongest organs in our bodies so they are surely strong enough to withstand any circumstances in our lives. So just pray silently and hope our hearts will not going to fail us.

2009-07-16T07:07:00.000-07:00

Becoming a Phenomenal Teacher

By Amiza Hazni Bt Mohd. Radzi

Frankly speaking, the life of a teacher is never a bed of roses and that is for sure. I can personally guarantee that speaking from my own experience of 11 years of teaching. Comparing my plights and challenges with teachers who have been in this noble profession for 20 years or more, mine would be minute and theirs would be gigantic. Not to sound provocative or biased, being a teacher in the 80s and 90s was not as challenging as being a 21st century teacher when every task requires intelligence, great patience, up-to-date knowledge at the global level and good mental health. Still it is not impossible to be an incredible teacher who is really fit emotionally, mentally and physically.

This is the time when we teachers have to revamp ourselves to meet the challenges at hand now. Nowadays, being good is never enough. A teacher has to be phenomenal, charming, memorable, exciting, inspiring, motivational, very calm in critical situations and not forgetting intelligent as well. Then there is another question of how to become one? I just want to share my views on how to become phenomenal ourselves. First and foremost, make sure we are happy at home only then we can try to be happy at work. Even though our workload can be overwhelming sometimes and our students seem impossible to be helped at times, at least we have a happy family and a nice home to go back to. Refresh our emotions and our bodies at home and the next morning is a brand new day for us.

It may sound cruel but if our lessons are boring and our students are bored then it is entirely our fault. Do something about it, please take action now! Make our class exciting does not mean we have to use ICT equipments all the time. There are various kinds of teaching aid or teaching material that we can always use. Do not rely on newspaper articles only to make lessons exciting. What about National Geographic magazines, Reader’s Digest, Newsweek, entertainment magazines, health magazines, automobiles magazines, sports magazines and fashion magazines that are always there at the school libraries or at our homes. Not forgetting the Internet, just goggle and type any topic of your interest or your students’ interest and then use all of them in our classrooms from time to time. Music is indeed a universal language and it heals troubled teenagers’ minds so use appropriate beautiful songs to incorporate it in our lessons. Very easy indeed just be creative and everything will be alright.

Personality makeover is essential to become a phenomenal teacher. What to do? Well recheck our sense of humour level. Are we funny enough to crack appropriate jokes to make sure our students still awake in our classes? Are we able to laugh with our colleagues and students whenever a funny incident occurs? Being able to just laugh is very important to maintain our mental health and balance our emotions. Please laugh accordingly and never suppress ourselves from being cheerful and happy. It is not wrong to smile to others, in fact a smile and a laugh are indeed very powerful and infectious.

If Martin Luther King was inspirational, so can we. First thing first, we have to be inspired. Take famous world personalities as role models and read more about them and use their success stories to motivate us. Share those success stories which are relevant to our students in our classes. Our beloved students need role models to look up to in their lives so we have to inspire them. While our students are paying attention to us take that opportunity to motivate them to become better sons and daughters and better students. Encouraging them to get better grades is not enough. We want to produce “modal insan” so it is our core business not only to teach but to help them to become better human beings who are not prejudiced, hate wars, love to recycle, ever willing to help one another and moving towards success.

Enough said, becoming a phenomenal teacher is not impossible. The choice to become one is always in our hands. Make the right choice. It is never too late to change. Change, improve and keep up the good work fellow teachers.

Should Teachers and Students be best buddies?

2009-07-16T06:56:00.000-07:00