On the 12th of January 2021, the first staff meeting at SMK Dato’ Usman Awang was carried out, headed by the new Principal Cikgu Mak Sew Yin and the Penolong Kanan (Vice Principal) Cikgu Zaleha Abdullah. The Principal is a newly appointed principal and I sense that she is very motivated in carrying out her new responsibilities.
The meeting began with a reminder and description of the school plans that will be carried out throughout the year. In particular, the principal highlighted the SKPMG2 (Standard Kualiti Pendidikan Malaysia Gelombang 2) which is an instrument used to measure the quality of education provided by a school. This document has five standards which are : Kepimpinan, Pengurusan dan Organisasi, Kokurikulum, PdPc and Kemanjadian Murid. Teachers were emphasized that they should be concerned with standard 4 which involves the direct day to day classroom teaching. Their teaching will be observed and graded by the administrative and leadership team.
The principal was also eager to better organize the Professional Learning Community (PLC) which involves every single teacher in the school. Mr Siva had been appointed to lead the community. In the PLC, Lesson Study and Peer Coaching will be conducted as well as one other professional development program. PLC will meet once a week every Thursday. I am also quite excited about this as I think this will help me to achieve my KPI for LI and also quite in direct relationship to my job as a lecturer.
It was also planned that homework and exercise books should be checked regularly by teachers and the school administration will, throughout the school year ask teachers to submit to them students’ exercise books. This is to ensure students are keeping on track with their studies and teachers are aware of students’ short term achievements. School attendance is also important and the aim was >95% student attendance for the whole school year. She also mentioned that ’a good teacher can help students to improve their understanding and skills by 50 percentile in a span of 3 years. ‘
Finally, the principal highlighted KPM’s Tagline-Kegembiraan, Kasih Sayang dan Hormat Menghormati. She says that the feeling of happiness is when you are immersed and concentrating in doing a task and that we should strive for our students to feel this happiness. I think what she yas here correlates a lot with Dale Carnegie’s book.
The meeting was then continued with speeches by the Penolong kanan, penolong kanan koko dan HEM about certain tasks and jobs as well as the plans for the new year. in all, the teachers took the instructions with good heart and enthusiasm. The meeting ended with a short retirement celebration for two teachers, Mrs Voo and Mr Khoo. Both of whom have been in service at the school for many years. Both teachers remined the importance of teamwork among teachers.
I am very much looking forward to my year in SMK DUA as on my first day here, many teachers were very welcoming and greeted me with a warm smile. They were quite chatty and a happy and easy going group. I think I will enjoy my time there and hope to learn a lot from them.
