Taylor's University College

Teaching is a pleasure. Kim is teaching grade eleven English. Many students need this to qualify for grade twelve English which they need to graduate. Bill is teaching grade twelve Business Leadership. We each have three classes and only one preparation. Classes range in size from a low of 15 to a high of 25. As we said the students are wonderful. Kim has commented several times that we see no angry kids as we so often do in Canada. The students here are truly wonderful. In the main they are dedicated and intelligent. Each day we are thanked for the lesson. They do, however, have some difficulty adapting to the Canadian style of education. They come from a system that requires them to sit quietly while a teacher tells them everything. This information must then be memorized and fed back on the final exam. the final is 100% of the final mark.

Many of the students are government scholars. They have their tuition paid by the government as long as they maintain an average of 80%. If they do so the government will support them for 4 years at an offshore university. This is important to them because many graduates of the national university are not hired by Malaysian companies because the local degree has little respect. Offshore graduates do get preferential treatment. (More about this another time when we discuss the political climate)

Getting to the teaching is not such a pleasure. Our classes are on the fifth floor and there are no elevators. We walk, climb or crawl up and down a minimum of twice (round trip) each day and often more. For the benefit of our skiing friends, our legs will be staying in shape. The good news is that all of the indoor areas are air conditioned; in fact is is sometimes so chilly inside that we feel the ice cubes forming between the shoulder blades and/or in other unmentionable places.

The college is quite a conglomerate. It is spread over three different campuses and the plans have just been completed for a forth campus. Completion of the new location is scheduled for 2009. As a result there is little in the way of high end maintenance being completed. Because of the climate (hot and humid) there is a need for constant work to keep mold and mildew at bay. The main campus (ours) houses several programs. These include:

• International Canadian Pre University Program (ICPU). This is basically Ontario grade 12 and we are supervised by the Ontario Ministry of Education. We use the Ontario curriculum guidelines in both content, methodology and evaluation. Students here are required to complete 6 grade 12 subjects including a level four English. They also have to complete 10 hours of community service.
  
• South Australian Matriculation (SAM). This is the Australian pre university program and it is very popular because many students travel to Australia because of the proximity and therefore the economy of attending.
  
• Cambridge A Levels (CAL) This is the English pre U. It is here because until 1957 this was a British colony and many people still see this as the education to have. The college also has an affiliation with a couple of British universities.
  
• A law degree
  
• An engineering degree
  
• A medical sciences degree

The college itself tries to be socially responsible. In the past each program has operate one or more charity events. This year, to reduce disruption, we held a charity day that involved all of the programs on our campus. The Canadian program (that's us remember) held a barbecue. The staff did the cooking and serving and all was headed up by my colleague in the business leadership program, Carl Boodram. Carl has been here for eleven years and the barbecue is his specialty. I ended up cooking and Kim serving. The students and staff were surprised to see a cook wearing a tie. In the end we raised RM1500.00. The ringgit Malaysia is the local currency and trades at about 3 to 1 against the Canadian dollar so we raised about $500.00 Canadian.

So far we are having a wonderful time. The staff and students have been very welcoming and it is truly a joy to be back teaching. It is to be noted that kids are kids everywhere. They come with all of the ideals, joy, humour and angst that we see at home (all except the anger; we wish we knew why)