Heading to Tawau

This week and next, I am teaching in Tawau at a teachers college.  Tawau, which is in the Sabah region of east Malaysia, is a 2 1/2 hour flight from KL.  I will be teaching in the Sebah region primarily now.  The campus is very spread out and has 500 students that are working on their teaching degrees.  Our program is using one of the lecture halls at the college to retrain PE teachers.  This week's class has 50 confirmed, but could grow to 100 or more (we will see what happens a couple hours from now).

Week 1 is in the books!

Here is a picture of my first class of students, who all successfully completed the Games Approach to P.E. and Sport class.

The Play Practice method we taught is quite a bit different than the traditional method of teaching P.E. that emphasizes drill work.  Play Practice is based on increasing the understanding of the game through the intentional use of play to teach the game and game techniques.  While the students were reluctant and confused the first day, by the end they understood and fully embraced the concept of Play Practice.

The students really embraced group work and did an excellent job learning from each other.  With the format we were using going from 8 AM to 10 PM on our three long days group work was key, if I had to lecture that whole time I would have been putting myself to sleep.

 

The final test.

With all the arranging that has to be done with such a larger program coming together so quickly, facilities were not available for next week in Perak, so classes will probably be larger to make out the lost week.  The first week there were 29 students instead of 50 since not everyone could be released from their teaching responsibilities at such short notice.  So in addition to adding the 50 for next week, we still have 21 from last week to get caught up. So big classes coming up in the next couple weeks.

I've come to learn that the Perak area where I am located this week is known for its sea food.  I have been able to experience a number of types of sea food that are not found at  your normal Friday Fish Fry in Wisconsin.  Just today I've had two different types of fish, prawns, squid, and string ray.  All of which have been very good.  I'm starting to wonder if my side goal of traveling halfway around the world and coming back lighter after six-months will work.

First Teaching Center in Perak

On Tuesday I traveled with Kelvin, who has been assigned by KH Sports to help me during my time in Malaysia, by car a couple hours to our first training site.  Due to the rush of putting the program together the first group may be smaller than the standard size of 50.  I am about to teach my first session in two hours. 

Kelvin and I are staying in one of the center's VIP suites.  My bedroom is good sized and has its own bathroom.  There is a common living room area with TV and a small kitchen that leads out to a small balcony.  Plus the VIP rooms have AC, where the other rooms where students are staying do not.  Here are some pictures of the room I am staying in this week.

Taipai Airport

After our 13 hour flight from LA, we arrived in Taipai.  We had a short layover before our 5 hour flight to Malaysia.  We arrived in Kaula Lampur and headed to the Crystal Crowne Hotel where we stayed the night.  After a couple hours rest we had a brief orientation about the program before heading to dinner with out hosts KH Sports (who has been involved with working with the USSA and the Malaysian Ministry of Education).  This is the first program of its type (being instructed by an outside source) in Malaysia.

Crazy day, my flight was so early I had to what until the workers showed up at 4:00 AM to check in my luggage.  Since it took so long to try and check my bags all the way though (which wasn't possible) I had to rush through security.  The plan was slow to get going out of Milwaukee so I almost missed my connection in Houston (had 2 minutes to spare - new personal record).  Got into LA fine, and met up with the rest of the team.  Eventually had lunch and completed our orientation meeting.  Got a short nap before dinner and heading back to the airport.

Heading out tomorrow morning for a 5:20 AM flight out of Milwaukee to meet up with other long-term instructors in LA.  After a brief orientation we will fly out of LA at 1:15 AM to Malaysia.  In Malaysia we will be conducting close to 6-months of instruction, training 1,000 Malaysian P.E. instructors using the US Sports Academy's physical education international diploma curriculum.  The program includes 8 courses that will be taught from mid June to the middle of December.

Each of the 6 long-term instructors have been assigned to one of six regions in Malaysia.  My assignment is to the Perak region.