LiA Kuala Lumpur, Week 1 & 2 Reflections
Many may not know but Malaysia is not a party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and lacks domestic legal frameworks recognizing refugee status. Refugee rights in Malaysia are almost non-existent, refugees have no formal right to legal employment, public education, or statutory protection, leaving them vulnerable to arrest and detention. Even the right to drive a car is one not afforded to those with Refugee status in Malaysia, with the acquisition of a UNHCR card not protecting them from arrest or detention.
With interrupted schooling and a lack of stability, educational provisions are limited to say the least. Fugee school is one of the only formal institutions that offers actual education and formal academic qualifications to refugees that enable them to do more, be more, and not be limited by a country that labels them in a way that determines their identity. Fugee students deserve to develop their soft skills alongside the hard ones the curriculum provides.
Having studied formal logic, argument structures, and being familiar with argumentation and debate, I realise how incredibly important these soft skills are to both have and develop. The structures of arguments. How they’re formed. How the premises lead to the conclusion. Once your skills of pattern recognition are honed you start to see this everywhere. Politicians and their attempts to make you vote for them. The delivery of news. Even in daily conversations. You start to see the structure of arguments and it is actually through that you can start to deconstruct and challenge them. The development of these skills should not be limited to a certain few but to everyone, especially to students whose right to exist is constantly challenged or questioned in a country that will never fully accept them.
To help develop these life skills, I am delivering a series of workshops across 6 weeks for Years 7,8 and 9, on argumentation and debate, completing this programme by organising the first ever Model UN event Fugee School has done.
I had arrived with lesson plans for the six weeks but actually, the best decision I made was to spend the first week just shadowing lessons, collecting data, and familiarizing myself with the context of the school, country, and the students. The information from this first week was invaluable. By learning what worked with the students, and allowing them to familiarise themselves with me, I was able to adapt my lesson plans to be more effective and was better received as a teacher- given they had seen me a few times before. Week 2 was the first lessons, the adapted lesson plans encouraging engagement and ultimately were more effective than if adaptations weren’t made.
The ultimate thing that has guided me throughout this whole experience, 3000 miles away from everything I’ve ever known, in a part of the world I am more than unfamiliar with is- ‘it isn’t difficult it’s just new.’. It truly isn’t hard, it’s unfamiliar. Unknown. That’s what’s most terrifying about it, any experience. Especially when doubts linger or start to cloud your judgement. ‘Will I succeed?’. ‘Will this work?’. ‘Am I capable of doing this?’. What you are scared of is the unknown, not necessarily the difficulty. So, amongst these reflections, I will leave with one last quote that has quite honestly stuck with me. Almost a mantra if you will, that’s been repeated myself the past two weeks, and I foresee this pattern continuing for the next few weeks. It comes from the classic (Oscar deserving) movie ‘Cars’. When Lightning McQueen was asked, ‘How did you know you could do it?’his one and only response was,
‘I don’t know,
I just never thought I couldn’t.’
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Beautiful Fatima, Laidlaw knew it had to send me an update to check out your post. I love how you're using your degree in practice, and that its proved to be a shield to all this noise around us. Rooting for you!!
Laidlaw just knows, thank you so much cutie, can’t wait to continue to see the incredible things you do and your unbelievably insightful reflections!!
You are so cool!
You are the COOLEST!!!!
Fatima, this is a powerful opening reflection. You establish clearly why access to education matters so profoundly for refugee students in Malaysia, whose opportunities and identities are constrained by a legal and social environment over which they have little control. Your argument that students should not merely receive academic qualifications but develop the capacity to analyse and challenge the claims surrounding them is especially compelling.
Indeed, I wonder whether 'soft skills' fully captures what you are developing. Argumentation, critical interpretation and confident expression can provide a form of epistemic agency: the ability to recognise how knowledge and authority are constructed, articulate one’s own position and challenge narratives imposed by others. For young people whose status and right to belong are frequently questioned, these capabilities may be particularly significant.
Your decision to spend the first week observing rather than immediately implementing your prepared plans was excellent. It demonstrates that preparation and adaptability are not opposites. You arrived with a structure, but had the humility to recognise that effective teaching required understanding the students, the existing classroom practices and the local context. The relationships built through that initial period may prove as important as the changes made to the lesson plans.
As you work towards the Model UN, it will be interesting to consider how the format can be adapted to these particular students rather than simply reproducing a familiar model of debate. What forms of participation will enable quieter students or those working in an additional language to contribute? How might argumentation be framed as listening, revising and building collective understanding, as well as defending a position? Given the students’ circumstances, sensitivity around the political topics and identities they are invited to represent will also be important.
Finally, 'it isn’t difficult; it’s just new' is a valuable way of approaching uncertainty. Some elements may, of course, prove genuinely difficult — but refusing to interpret unfamiliarity as evidence of incapacity creates room to learn. Your willingness to observe, adapt and begin despite uncertainty suggests that this mantra is already serving you well. I have somehow never watched any of the Cars films, but your reflection may finally have convinced me that I have been neglecting an important source of leadership wisdom. An excellent start.