A) My opinion on Rita Piersons video on Every Kid Need a Champion

There are many factors that affect child's education. Poverty, poor attendance and bad
influence of friends are popular reasons which result in students drop out. Rita Pierson, a
teacher, whos come from educators background, has seen numerous forms and
perspectives of education. Herself, as an educator belief that in education, connection and
relationship between teachers and students are important, especially when teaching kids
because kids dont learn from people they dont like. It is indeed true. I have experienced
before during my primary schools. When I was in Primary 4, I dont like English because I
dislike the Englishs teacher. She always scolds me for not answering right to her questions
and exercises. Therefore, I resists to learn English during her class. I agree with Rita that
educate is not tough. For me, both teachers and students play an important role in
developing the education system. Teacher especially plays the most important role in
educating students because the teacher is the one that will communicate and conduct the
whole class session.
Not all people are born to be good in building up relationships. A relationship can be built
through many ways. Rita believes that, even though as a teacher, one that had done wrong
should apologize to the other party. That is how a relationship between teacher and students
should be made. She once had taught wrong in her mathematic lesson, but she did make
an apology to the whole class. Since she was very excited during the class, her students just
accept her apologize. It shows that, by saying I am sorry when we did wrong to the
students, it does reflect us as a human being. It does not minimize ourselves, but we might
also gain their respect and we actually reflect a good manner to teach the students.
Rita also believe that a relationship with the students could be built with trust and good
expectations. I strongly agree with her belief because for me a relationship built a trust, and
through trust, education is developed. She has once had responsibilities to teach
academically deficient classes. It seems tough at first, but with her skillful communication
and her passion, she had finally built up the students self-esteem, positive attitudes and
confidence levels to perform academically. For me, positive expectation of the teachers are
important to retain students trusts towards them. Good relationship needs good
communication between both parties. Trust is vital in communication, and through
communication, people develop confidence. People with confidence will be more educated
because of their awareness and positive attitudes towards themselves and towards others.
Ritas mother believes in existentialism. Existentialism concerned with the subjective, or
personal, aspects of existence. This philosophy believes that, in order to succeed in
education, students need help from others either from teachers or educators. She just let her
students explore their own values, meanings and choices. She encourages her students by
providing all necessary things to keep her students cleanliness and that had helped her
students take care of their personal care themselves. Her students are allowed to determine
their own values and identity. Students may forget what we have said, but they do not forget
what we have made them feel.

B) My Philosophy of Education
Education is life. Education presents the past, reveals the present, and creates the
future. It is the most powerful tools that can change the world. Behind all these, there lies the
educators. Educators give experiences, inspire hope, ignite the imagination and instill a love
of learning. As an educator, I should direct the students belief that education is all about life.
Science educate me more about life. That is the ultimate reason I chose to study and
teach science. Everyone knows that science is interesting. The more you learn, the more
you will find out about the world. Learning science is based on fact and processes, not
merely just an opinion or preferences. There are many scientific terms that need to be
memorized and some may find that study science is tough. In my opinion, in educating
science courses, especially, traditional lecture class is not just boring, but also ineffective.
Therefore, learning science should be fun. It could be done in many ways. I am teaching
Microbiology. During my undergraduate, apart from the practical sessions, lectures in
Microbiology was just about listening to the lecturer, with old slideshow played on screen for
the 45 minute class. Because of that, I dislike Microbiology. During that time, I feel like I have
taken a wrong course for my study. For that reason, I find it hard at first to teach the course,
but surprisingly, when I start learning and explore more about the course, I have found out
that, there are a lot of interesting things that we can learn from Microbiology. This proves that
an education is not just about giving lectures and notes. In education, for teaching and
learning science related courses, especially, a class should consist of not only students, but
passionate and creative educators, with fun and interactive way of learning. It is not enough
with that, education is best learned through experience.
I live my life like the free birds. In teaching, I explore as many ways of teaching
methodology as I can as to create a better way of educating the students on science.
Learning and teaching are not just about lectures and notes. Great communication will be
achieved through the interactive and an entertaining learning process that focus on the
students involvement. Capturing students attention is important in order to retain their
interest during the whole class session. I prefer to use student centered approach in my
class. In one of my sessions on the topic Prokaryote versus Eukaryote, I have held a class
activity in which the students sing a prokaryote and eukaryote song using the Bruno Mars
music. In the activity, students in their respective group, need to extract the information
available in the song, and present their findings to the other group members. The whole
class enjoyed singing the song and they did come out with a good presentation about the
topics. I only facilitate them, and they had gave full commitment during the activities. I
believed, music has its own power of attraction. Until the class has ended, they keep on
miming the song. I have found out that this method do increase students understanding and
interests towards the course. Teaching is not hard, and learning is not tough, yet
entertaining. This also proved that students learn better when they are allowed to discuss
and engage with each other.
Life is a series of experiences. Same goes with the education. Studying science
might be tough for certain students, yet, attending the Diploma in Herbal Science at KKTM
Lenggong need them to learn about herbs and its medicinal uses. Speaking about herbs, not
only students, but most people I believed, might not know that all plants that have medicinal
values are called herbs. As a lecturer, I am assigned to educate students about herbs. In

Malay, we have a proverb says Tak Kenal Maka Tak Cinta. How come you fall in love if you
do not know the things? I am in charge of constructing Herbal Garden at my college and I
have named it Ibnu Sina Herbal Garden. I have designed the garden using an herbal body
that uses five human body systems as the concept. The herbal garden is not built just for the
landscape, but I have used it for a tool to educate the students about herbs and their value
to the body. To educate the students about herbs, I have involved them in the process of
building up the herb garden, from planting to landscaping. I have let them see, touch and
plant the herbs themselves. Through this experience, they not only gained knowledges on
the medicinal value of the herbs, but they also know about planting the herbs and what
condition best for the growth. Learning about herb will be no more tough and boring.
Learning is not about reading and memorizing but learning is the product of the activities of
the learners.
Syllabuses at KKTM Lenggong need us as the lecturer to expose students more on
practical rather than theory. Practical expose students to current practice, and will challenge
their thinking and develop their problem solving skills. Those are valuable experiences that
give great knowledges and meaningful impacts to the learners. I still remember spending two
whole weeks during my postgraduate research study just to learn on rats dissection and
organs identification. But now, it only takes around half an hour for me to finish the whole
processes. Same goes when educating the students. They should be exposed more to the
field, let them touch and explore, let them experience and imagine. It helps develop their
skills, creativity and intellectual curiosity, thus, give impact beyond their academic study
which could be used later in their job once they graduated. Experience is the best teacher.
Live your life to the fullest. For that to happen, one should put his or her heart while
doing everything. Excellence students come from an excellent educational background. The
main core of excellence in education is the educator. Educators play important role in
developing the students. Students without teachers is nothing, teachers without passion is
boring. An educator should love teaching, and with love, it evokes passion and inspiration.
Passionate educators will have positive drive and be more committed in encouraging
students desires to learn. In my class, I have asked the students to be in a group and name
their group after a microbes name. I name myself after a bacteria known as E. coli. In every
class, before I start my session, we eagerly share our knowledges about the respective
microbe and learn more from others. For me, if we want students to commit to the activities,
we as educators should also show our commitment and passion in it. For that, lecturer
needs to be passionate so that the class will be more energetic and get full commitment
from the students. It takes a big heart to help shape little minds.

I may say that I agree with constructivism that students should learn from experience
and with progressivism that education should be student centered learning. Apart from that,
excellence education requires passionate, inspiring and creative educators that dedicated
themselves during the whole learning process. In a nutshell, lecturer should plays important
as an educator that helps develop the students education.