SIDMA College Early Childhood Education (ECE) students taking Partnering with Communities and Families (DEC2223), headed by Helory Morisin collaborated with the relevant authorities and schools to conduct SIDMA College Partnerships with Families and Communities Day at SIDMA Atrium on 09 November 2019.

The event advisor and facilitator, Miss Jila Bingalun, explained that the event act as a platform for these ECE students to interact with SIDMA surrounding community and beyond, the people, the families and things associated with teaching and learning; extending their horizons to develop positive attitudes, skills and knowledge they need to become effective future ECE teachers.

These ECE students need to understand that their role is not just to be teachers on the classroom, but more importantly, it is their responsibility to interact positively with their school children, to build healthy relationships, as well to perform their role models by providing the necessary guidance to their students. In order to enable them to perform effectively, they need to help their school to collaborate with its communities, particularly parents; and it’s such partnerships that a school teacher can reflect, understand, built sympathy and empathy, and thus able to help to meet the needs of all these school children of their care.

In order to build such partnership with parents, teachers need to respect and value parents’ knowledge, and insights about their children. Likewise, parents too need to respect and value teachers’ knowledge and insights about the learning process and understanding children’s educational needs. True partnerships are based on mutual respect. Thus it is important for teachers to build bridges in order to work together so as to ensure that children are safe and healthy. Ultimately, schools, families, and community members need to recognize their common goals to be able to collaborate together to provide children with enrich and supportive learning environment.

During the one day event at SIDMA College, more than 50 parents accompanied their children mainly from Sri Kandi Nursery and Kindergarten, Kota Kinabalu and Sunday School Angel Kids Penampang and their respective teachers participated in the event. With the assistance from their parents and school teachers, the students showcased the ability in musical creative movements as well as singing.

Various fun-based activities such as tossing ping pong balls, dizzy walk, throwing rings, hunt & match, coloring competition, and singing competition for kids and adult were organized by SIDMA ECE students. The winners from each of the respective events received prizes sponsored by various individuals from the communities.

Prof Dr Morni Hj Kambrie (Chairman and Founder of SIDMA College), and Madam Azizah Khalid Merican were very impressed with SIDMA ECE students’ abilities to conduct such activities with minimal intervention. They too conveyed their appreciation to various head of schools who have sent their kids and teachers to support SIDMA’s activities. They too convey their appreciation to all SIDMA staff particularly the ECE lecturers for their willingness to come to the college on Saturday (public holiday) to conduct the planned activities with the students

Through such activities with schools, parents and their kids, they commented that this is a good evidence that SIDMA College is friendly and welcoming to family members and having easier time with its staff and students. Thus, they reiterate the need of schools and teachers to always offer good, frequent, and user-friendly communication as well as to provide good after-school activities that involve parents and organizations.

By Teo Eng Seng and Zain Azrai,
SIDMA College Sabah,
88300 KOTA KINABALU