(ERRATUM) Part II: Reading and writing skills, vis-a-vis two cognitive enhancement skills: Creativity & Logic and Reasoning. We plan to set our assessments during the first week of July as a 'wrap-up' for the programme. (Erratum: August)

This was my final week at ORKIDS - what a lovely summer it has been, and I am so proud to have spent it with an amazing team, a group of mind-blowingly intelligent children with a passion for learning I've never seen anywhere, and most of all, extremely supportive parents who were behind us every step of the way, putting their trust in us with their children and helping us clear obstacles. A special shout out to our programme coordinator and external relations manager, the latter dealing with the notorious Malaysian bureaucracy and the former keeping the programme's internal operations smoothless. ORKIDS could not have worked without them. 

Wrapping up my reflection post, there is not much to break down into singular categories - the past few weeks have been busy as we prepare our students for the final assessment, got the tests approved by the Ministry and worked to ensure 3 students who failed our 'midterms' quickly wrap up their intensive learning programmes. We are proud to announce they passed, and were re-enrolled into normal classes. Using textbooks sought from our international partners on cognitive skills for special needs children, and designed the tests for the final assessment. We divided it into 2 components: 'hard skills,' and 'soft skills.' The former meaning a 'cognitive enhancement' test of higher skills compared to Part I, in other words, whether or not students can carry out day-to-day tasks at a higher level, like budgeting for a week, planning for a trip, using MS Office without pre-set instructions, requiring a more demanding set of skills than Part I. The latter meaning a test of logical reasoning, using a mixed method of quantitative and qualitative testing. In other words, we tested them on content like mathematics, reading comprehension, and solving puzzles. We got the exam sets approved by the Ministry, which took a while due to some unrelated logistical issues, fortunately. We got the final approval very soon, and proceeded with the exams. 

Our students performed exceptionally! We are very proud to say that our overall passing rate is 90.77%, an impressive feat since we only expected a passing rate of 75% at the start of the programme when I finished my onboarding with the team. Though we do not implement a scoring or benchmarking system, we could tell if a student passed with flying colours compared to the rest, and we made sure to privately let their parents know how much potential their child has - after all, we don't want to make any other student feel bad about their performance! The students who did not pass again re-enrolled in our intensive programme, which I will be sure to complete and wrap up before the end of summer, though it will be outside the scope of LiA. Nevertheless, it is only a handful, and they only marginally 'failed' some components in the reading comprehension/mathematics component. 

We are having a big get-together as a class on Saturday, reflecting on our past achievements and our progress as a class. This summer putting myself out there in the leadership team has taught me invaluable lessons on how to become better as a person, testing what I learned and knew about being a leader, and to always learn from others who are so much more talented, patient, and skilled than I am. It's been an incredibly humbling journey, and I am so glad to have had the Laidlaw Foundation's support to enable me to underwent such a profoundly illuminating experience. At the start of the summer, when I pitched about volunteering with ORKIDS to my friends and family under the Laidlaw programme, there were so many questions: how can you volunteer with a school? Do you have experience working with children? Do you know how patient you need to be - and can you hold your temper? Then, too, there were more logistical concerns about working in an NGO abroad, from getting necessary permits to finding my place to stay. It was a ginormous collaborative effort between my family, the school, and our contacts to get me to where I am now. I tried being a 'one-man army' to tackle these demands, only to find out what a herculean task it would be. That was my first exposure to real leadership - and I haven't even started!

Safe to say, LiA was a transformative experience, and there is little left for me to say but a thank you. Thank you to my team, thank you to the Foundation, and thank you to those who believed in me. It has been one of the best summers of my life, and I can't wait to wrap up my work with ORKIDS beyond LiA!