Teacher In Sarawak Uses Own Money To Transform Classroom Into Hipster Cafe To Motivate Students To Attend Classes
A good teacher inspires and few people are as inspiring as Cikgu Tarmizi.
Some teachers touch the lives of their students in the most special ways.
A teacher in Sarawak, Malaysia, recently had the brilliant idea to give his classroom a total makeover, transforming the otherwise drab place into a chic cafe.
Kelantan native Muhamad Tarmizi Awang, known as Cikgu Tarmizi to his students, worked on the project in conjunction with Malaysia's Teacher’s Day, which falls on May 16.
The renovation was done with the aim of motivating his students to attend school.
He shared before and after pics of the classroom on Facebook, writing: “From an ordinary classroom to a comfortable one. I would like to share some of the work done by me, a teacher in a rural school in Malaysia.”
According to reports, Cikgu Tarmizi has been teaching at the primary school in Daro, Sekolah Kebangsaan Kut, since 2019.
Since they were located in a rural part of town, Cikgu Tarmizi’s school of 32 kids have never experienced what a “hipster cafe” is like. So he came up with the “The Cafe Class”, a better and more aesthetic learning space for his students.
Cikgu Tarmizi started out funding the project himself, and later received financial assistance from the school’s parent-teacher association. 10 teachers and school staff also helped him with the renovations.
Here's what the space looked like before...
Cikgu Tarmizi, along with his colleagues, have also decided to renovate other areas of the school, in hopes to increase attendance.
He has since worked with the school’s headmaster to launch a garden project, on which each student takes care of their own cabbage plant, from watering to fertilising, to eventually selling it.
“We did this to teach students about responsibility, and most importantly, so they would enjoy coming to school because if they don’t, their cabbage plants might die,” said Cikgu Tarmizi.