1: My story, My Beginning

Every Child Matters By Haryani Bakri

Transcript of Ep1: My Story, My Beginning

Welcome to Every Child Matters Show. I'm Haryani Bakri and in this episode, I will be sharing with you my story, my beginning.

Being the eldest in the family of 3 siblings, I've always felt that I should be the role model to my younger brother and sister. There are high expectations of how I should perform in academics, how I should behave and I felt that I've always needed to compete with my other cousins who are high achievers who are now accountants and architects. Growing up I felt that that I needed to be perfect all the time and I felt that I was not good enough.

I've always wanted to do mass communication studies after O levels but my dad rejected the idea and asked me to take up computer science in A levels because he felt that it's a future trend and I would have more options when deciding my next career path. I was very upset for not able to do what I wanted to do but I still went ahead and followed his advise to take up computer science because I felt that I needed to be the expected role model to my siblings and not disappoint him as well.

After A levels, I pondered what I wanted to do. Since I came from a family of teachers and because I love children, why not I teach and so I became a contract teacher. During my contract teaching, I was juggling with part-time studying at night for diploma and advanced diploma in computer science as part of my own professional development. Upon completion of my advanced diploma, I decided to pursue further studies abroad with my dad's encouragement.

I have always thought that my parents always have high expectations on me, always need to be the perfect child, the role model to my siblings and I was not able to make my own choices. But when my dad asked me what I wanted to do after my advanced diploma and I responded that I wanted to pursue further studies, he gave me the option which country I wanted to go. I replied, UK. Without any objection this time, he asked me to look at the available universities in the UK for the courses offered. When I went to study in United Kingdom, then I began to open up my horizons and I realised that those are just the little voices in my head.

My parents did not allow me to fork out my own savings, they financed my education fully, which was not cheap. They had to sell the house and my mom had to source for extra income by working extra hours running her Nasi Padang business just to finance my education with the help of my dad. Since it was a family business, my younger brother who was still in secondary school was roped in to help out too . Long hours from wee hours in the morning till late at night. My younger sister went to study abroad the same time as me too. These are big sacrifices that made me realise their unconditional love and extensive support for me.

Being a mom of 3 boys now, I fully understand what my parents went through. Without their full support, I wouldn't be where I am now. I realised and appreciate for the support that they have given me all this while in my learning journey.

Upon completing my honours degree, my passion for teaching was still burning and hence I came back as an Education Consultant in a dotcom company to train school children in both the primary and secondary levels as well as teachers in software literacy skills. After a couple of months into the job, I became a Senior Education Consultant.

Due to the dotcom burst, the dotcom company, now dot gone, was bought over by another company. I was brought in to join the new company and took on a new scope in post-sales to train and provide consultation to teachers on the use of online learning tools to enhance their teaching and learning for the students.

Fast forward, I took on an additional role apart from training, which is in sales with a publishing company providing both the digital solution as well as the physical teaching and learning resources in schools.

Having been in the education industry for over 20 years now, I’ve conducted regional trainings and workshops in Brunei, Philippines and Malaysia.

Throughout my career when I went around schools and the interactions I had with teachers, I realised and observed that there were still a handful of children as old as 13 and 14 years old who were still unable to read and hence a lot of additional support were needed. This dampened their self-esteem.

I remembered back then when I began my teaching career. My very first class that I undertook was the primary 1 children. You must have thought, wow, a newbie taking on primary 1 children? Challenging as it sounds, everything new - new to teaching, new to the environment; but I enjoyed teaching them as they were so adorable and I had definitely learnt a lot from them too. What I found peculiar was that, some of these children were still unable to read when they first entered primary 1. This hindered their interest in learning and most of them had low self-esteem; they tend to give up easily. Later, I found out that these children did not attend proper pre-school education nor were they exposed to reading as there was minimal or no learning support from home.

To build the self-confidence in these children and kept them motivated and connected, the lessons that I conducted centred around stories and games while stretching them as they progressed. Additional support was also given to these children outside school hours which just focused on reading. While it’s a learn and play phase for these children, I believe that it’s also important to expose them to reading at a young age.

Through these experiences and observations , I saw the need to help this group of children and of course, creating awareness to parents too as parents are children’s first teachers! There are first time parents who approached us as they may not have the ‘know hows’ or probably they’re grappling of how to start reading with their young children. Hence, they are my drive for the why I do what I do now. Alongside my business partner, who is also my mentor and literacy coach , Mdm Hanis, we formed Orange Ladder in 2015.

Under my mentor , Mdm Hanis’s tutelage, I’ve worked with children as young as 2 to 3 year olds together with their parents since then for one of our early literacy programmes where parents were handheld on how to start reading with their young ones – from choosing the right books for their children and eventually develop the habit of reading with them . It’s really amazing to see how these programmes have helped strengthen parent and child bonding through the interactive and hands-on activities and most importantly, parents have gained the ‘know- hows’ and their children find the joy in reading.

Apart from the usual literacy sessions, I’m also involved in planning and conducting literacy camps during the school holidays for both preschool and primary school children in our own centre as well as other student care centre too. I love these sessions because it give me the opportunity to explore wacky ideas and integrating life skills like cooking, handicrafts while still focusing on all aspects of literacy – reading, writing, listening and speaking.

In recent years, I’ve worked closely with primary schools to help children from Primary 1 to Primary 5 who are still struggling with reading, using our unique techniques and strategies which incorporates the read aloud component to, by and with the learner that involves the guided, shared and independent reading. Given the opportunity ...