AZIZI KHAMIS (811920)

SGDU4031 CO-CURRICULUM MANAGEMENT

REFLECTION WRITING ON CLASS (28 29 MAC 2013)

In this reflective writing, I am going to talk about the class held by Dr. Hjh Rahmah among Fellows of Teach for Malaysia. In the first part of class, we went through the definition of co-curriculum, its objectives and importance. Truthfully, this was not new information to us as we have been in schools during the past year and have had our shares of experience dealing with co-curricular activities but nevertheless, it served as a refresher for most of us. However, I couldnt help but notice that the delivery of content during this session was a bit flawed. The language, particularly in the presentation slides, was quite erroneous and somehow affected the level of engagement between Fellows and the course content. I feel that better preparation (and an amount of proofreading) before class could have made this session more impactful. We were then given the group assignment of preparing some paperwork to organize a mock student trip, which exposed us to learn to justify the importance of such activities in the eyes of the school and parents. It was also during this session that we had an informal discussion with Dr Rahmah, in which she mentioned that while she has not been in school system since 30 years ago, she has been one of the main proponents on the forming of the co-curriculum blueprint. After hearing some of our stories (and woes) with the regards of the ways our schools are implementing co-curricular activities, she decided to address them in the next meeting with her fellow staff. I will have to say that this is one of the crucial sessions in which any issues on the management of schools are addressed by the Fellows and given due attention. I truly hope the matters will be brought up, analyzed and actions be taken proactively in the interest of the students personal improvement. In the third part, we were given a group assignment where each group was to present based on the topics given. My group presented on the importance of students involvement in co1

AZIZI KHAMIS (811920)

SGDU4031 CO-CURRICULUM MANAGEMENT

curricular programs. While at first we were a bit clueless to search for information, Dr Rahmah provided us with reading materials which greatly helped us to create a simple yet impactful presentation. I also found the presentations from other groups to be eye-opening, such as determining students preferences in joining any co-curricular units. This coincides with the issues in many of the Fellows schools where students are not given the liberty to choose which co-curricular units they would like to join, but instead have their names listed down randomly, resulting in poor levels of participation and appreciation of activities by the students. Towards the end of the day, we had a forum, which was a mock-discussion on planning a scouts camping event, was a good one. Each group was delegated tasks for the camp, including venue management, promotion, logistics and the opening/closing ceremonies. With the help of all group members, representatives of each group managed to perform this task wonderfully, creating a discussion which covered almost all important aspects of planning the event in a short session. The discussion was lively, and combined with wit and humor from some of the participants, made this session one likely to be remembered. In a nutshell, I find the Co-Curricular Management classes by Dr Rahmah to be quite useful; albeit it did not appear so from the start. However, I sincerely hope that should classes like these be conducted in the future, their content should include addressing of issues in managing co-curricular activities and strategies to increase students interest and participation levels. Thank you to Dr Rahmah for coming and providing us with meaningful content for us to engage on and leaving us with the notion that while there are many challenges in implementing effective co-curricular management, it is still salvageable with determination and perseverance from all of us.