Author: cicedu

It is so sad over the tragic death of Adam Rayqal in the hands of the baby sitter, all I could think is either a negligence or an abuse case. I am not commenting on that case but my 20 years experience working with preschool teachers who are indirectly the child minders, could help us identifying good teachers from bad ones.

The key is to see how they prepare for their job. If they prepare early and do their homework well like preparing the lesson plans, teaching tools and organising their things, the teachers will find that handling children is a pleasure and the children will excel at learning. The same with baby sitters, we as parents should be able to see their preparations each day.

Preparation will make the teachers or the child minders ready for the job and they will not be stressful easily which if they become stressful, they can commit bad behaviour and can be harmful to the children.

For babysit, check also whether they have the equipments to assist them in doing their best, for example baby cots and the toys for the toddlers. The equipments also must be arranged at the right place for efficiency. The timetable and suitable activities arranged also important to keep the toddlers busy and will have an enjoyable and productive day..

If the baby sitters do not prepare, they will become tired easily, especially if they handle multiple toddlers. They will force the toddlers to sleep all the time and will act harshly towards the toddlers.

If parents send their children to taska or tadika, they must choose a professional administrator, or effective management. And make sure parents will work closely with the management and support them. Because the management will act on behalf of the parents and it is not easy to rule and manage the child minders and the teachers with many background.

In my experience, sometimes we found that the parents do not support the management and tend not to support the management in case there is an issue between the management and the child minder. Always remember that effective management will act on behalf of the parents, if they rule, it is for the benefit of the children, however not necessarily in favour of the child minders and the parents themselves.

We pray the goodness for all, with everybody playing their role at the best, nothing bad will happen insyaAllah. Bismillah, in the name of Allah, together we develop our next generation.

Alhamdulillah

Salawat

Our honorable guests,YB Datuk Mas Ermieyati binti Samsudin

(Deputy Minister of Tourism and Culture Malaysia), distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.

Assalamualaikum wrt

Thank you for choosing to spend your time with us here especially when I, myself cannot manage to go to each area for such a celebration.

When I started CIC 20 years ago, we had a very small event but as CIC grows to 70 centres today, I am no longer able to attend too many celebrations like this due to time constraint. In addition, it is unreasonably costly to conduct multiple events especially when we want to have a great one.

Time runs very fast at CIC when early of the year, we struggled to ensure every child was happy with the new environment while focusing on the quality of learning.

While regulating and monitoring the compliance of each centre, we were untiringly engaged with a series of teachers’ training.

As for the children, with a diverse of thematic learning, they were involved in the CIC Pocket activities and few educational trips.

Soon came the mid year, we were busy with sports day and during the month of Ramadhan, we had Nuzul Quran and Khatam event and a number of Ramadhan Roadshows and Haiya Bid Doa Contest.

All activities are to give exposure and learning experiences to our young leaders. In August, we had more of spelling contests and Merdeka Roadshows.

Towards end of the year we were occupied with students performance evaluation and intensive learning to catch up on all lesson plans. And last but not least, the Convo preparation. After this week, we will have Year End Ihtifal at every center and soon after school ends, we will start with teachers training for next year’s teaching plan and soon, we will prepare to receive the new students who will start their orientation on 15th Dec, just about 5 weeks from now.

And I must tell you, next year we will have Dream Big as the theme. We have planned many interesting activities related to that. Among the activities are the KLCC Challenge, My First Robot, Engineers at Work, Architects at Work, etc etc.. Make sure your children will not miss out!

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In fact time does not run, but flies when you work at CIC! With a busy schedule, CIC is already 21 years old. Alhamdulillah not many companies are able to sustain after 5 or 10 years, let alone 20 years. We owe this success to our customers who trust us. Alhamdulillah, from the first batch of customers we had, until now, we have helped more than 40,000 families.

Maybe the number is not huge compared to other large companies in other industries. Neither are we so big that we can spend lavishly on our 20th anniversary. Some companies spend a lot even for their 10th anniversary. But CIC cannot afford to spend lavishly.

Our profit which is just enough for the operation cost with slim profit margin does not allow us to even spend on our anniversary.

However Alhamdulillah Alhamdulillah, we have managed to spend on lots of trainings to our teachers.. and in 20 years, we managed to give a stable employment to many people. Quite a number of our teachers worked with us for many many years, and some of them have retired with the opportunity to open a CIC of their own under our franchise program. Alhamdulillah it shows that CIC is barakah.

Not only have we helped with the employment, more importantly CIC has helped many thousands of children to have a very wonderful childhood. They started with positive happy high performing environment and the first batch of our children have already completed their university studies with flying colors.

Even though we cannot afford to celebrate our anniversary, we are very grateful to see these children successful. We hope we can do more for them especially if we have more time.

I still remember last 2 years, on this same stage (last year we did our Convo at different place). But last 2 years we did it here. I still remember how an autistic child happened to throw a tantrum when other children were performing. The beautiful part was how the other children accepted the difference that their friend had. They were calm and continued performing even when their friend took the microphone and continued throwing a tantrum. Seeing this, I felt so proud of these CIC’s young leaders that they managed to control the situation, being more adult than some adults, accepted differences and loved without condition.

We need to learn from these children. We must learn to accept differences. In this way the world will become a beautiful place to live in.

This is what we want to have at our school. Diversity. Accept differences. Multicultural ready. This is what most of our schools even high performing schools in Malaysia lack of. Research shows that almost all of our kebangsaan or jenis kebangsaan schools do not prepare the students to be multicultural ready. While in this global village, those students who are multicultural ready will have a big advantage and will have a higher chance to become more successful.

Saidina Ali KW said, “Give the education of future to your children”. We hope our children are more advanced than us. Today they are talking about Artificial Intelligence and many new technology. Why not give the opportunity to our children to go the highest possible of future education?

We believe our school offers that future education. To continue to give more to our children and hoping we can continue the excellence of CIC to the next stage, we have established Abedeen International School. We are very proud that in its first year it received an award of Corporate Social Responsibility Leadership due to the fact that Abedeen’s facilities and standard is as high as the 1st tier International School however the fees are as affordable as the 4th tier of International School.

Hope to see your children at Abedeen just because the excellence must be continued.

Finally I want to congratulate our young leaders, parents and teachers for the success of completing this year’s lessons and making our 6 year old children CIC’s preschool graduates!

I am sure it is never easy but we have made it together! Together we develop young leaders!

Wabillahi taufiq..

Thank you again

BismillahiArrahmanArRahim

It is CIC’s honor to be part of the young leaders’ first education. It is hoped that they will continue to get the best education and grow up as successful adults, having a blessed life.

However, I am sorry that at this moment, we have yet to set up a primary school for the continuity of their education. Therefore, allow me to advise you young parents, if you were to choose private school, choose an institution with clear vision and goals so that the children will not become the victims to the vulnerable education planning.

Do not simply choose a school that offers the lowest fees because you have to ensure that the school has enough budgets for good facilities, teachers’ training and development which are very costly.

Every Moslem parent wants the children to be soleheen and solehaat, but please be careful of those schools who make use of Islam.

Government schools normally have good facilities with certified teachers. However, our children might loss his potentials as there will be less monitoring. If you decide to send your child to government school, please consider CIC’s After School Program for their enrichments. CIC’s After School Program has small number of students enable your child to flourish more.

At CIC, we develop young leaders, hoping that they will be given opportunities to learning as much as they can and develop their highest capabilities to be able to optimize their best roles in every field they are into in the future.

History of formal education started with the royal families, aristocrats and the elites. Meaning that only children with certain background were educated. Public children were not educated and were thought to use the weapon to go to the war.

Later, when public children also went to school, the system produced them to be labors and taught them to be obedient. Those people who were against this, voiced about freedom and setup alternative schools to offer the freedom of learning and things unavailable in the mainstream education.

Now brothers and sisters, I believe we have to be moderate about the 2 choices. Mainstream education is not perfect. In fact education is never perfect. But the key is to keep improve. However, we cannot get trapped in the alternative education as pulling the children out from the mainstream education is not a progressive move. Remain in the mainstream education will make the children more competitive.

Besides, there is no absolute freedom in Islam. While we believe that people are free, they are still accountable in front of Allah for what they do.

Meaning that rulings and system are very important in the children’s education. They are not totally free, but free within boundaries.

Therefore I believe we must continue with the mainstream education sytem to develop highly capable citizens who can contribute to the country while enrich them with virtuous independent characters that are strong emotionally and spiritually. In other words, I am worried that the alternative education, you might find it in many names, might be vulnerable to prepare our children for the established world system.

Lastly, as in the history, those who have superior abilities and qualities to the rest of the society,are advanced in the education of their children, they normally see the opportunities and the needs of education in preparation for reaching the opportunities ahead of others. I hope you and your families will be among them.

As the famous saying in the Islamic tradition, “AdDunya Mazra’tul Akhirah”, meaning that worldly affairs are the plantation or the investment of Hereafter, we understand that world is important for the hereafter and we have to be clear on the purpose is for submission to Allah SWT.

(Qutren Nada Ahmad)

بِسْــــــــــــــــــمِ اﷲِالرَّحْمَنِ اارَّحِيم

Alhamdulillah.

I hope our children had progressed and enjoyed the learning activities at CIC and it will be a wonderful experience of a lifetime.

And Alhamdulilah we are now in the month of Hajj, the month of blessings. Last week, children at CIC started performing the play on wukuf, setting the tents in the classroom, reading khutbah and doa. Last year they performed the play “Safari to Makkah”. These were among the many exciting things we did at CIC. To the children, it is the excitement that they will not forget, but to us, it is the knowledge and values that we want to instill in them.

Education in early childhood is more than teaching to read but to develop the innate belief. My son once told me, “Mummy, do you know that the scariest month is October?” I asked why. He said because of Halloween! So Halloween is one of the examples on how the English culture has become part of my son’s belief which I cannot control. In this 21st century, the knowledge are unlimited, the global influences to some extent are good but can be harmful if we do not balance it with the religious beliefs.

Dear parents, our children are like the empty glass, their childhood experience and belief will characterize themselves. Therefore as parents and educators we must pay close attention to the daily experience of a child so that we are able to intervene before it is too late.

It is important for a Muslim child to be upbringing in good environment but for developing a strong character, the kid should be toughened up. This is normally happened to many great leaders of the world who were sent away from families to make them tough.

The Hajj itself is the training camp of Allah that He has made it compulsory to all Muslims. We see that Allah has placed His sacred house, Kaabah in the most rugged stony part of the earth and commanded the people to turn our attention towards it. Allah had not placed His Sacred house in the lush gardens with streams because of the lightness of the trial. As a matter of great test, extreme trial, Allah has made us throw away our good dress, with only pieces of cloth, uncut hair, dusted faces in order to approach Him. Allah tries us by means of different troubles and He wants us to render worship through hardships to extract arrogance and to settle humbleness in our spirits. When people remain humble before Allah only then they will accept His obedience with sincerity.

Certainly, we should take a lesson from this training camp of Allah. If we want our children to be selected individuals, sometimes we have to engage them in tough situations so that they will grow with strong leadership capabilities but remain humble in front of God.

Lastly, I really hope if we can continuously work hands in hands to develop our young leaders. In February 2011, in celebration of Maulidur Rasul, CIC will have an education conference which we will discuss few important issues in children’s education. I like to invite all of you to join us. We are playing a very important role in human history, what we do today, helps to shape the future. Therefore, hope to see you in that conference. Insya Allah.

With that, I thank you.

BismillahiArRahmaniArRahim

Thank you for coming to this small ceremony. I always appreciate your supports to CIC in whatever ways that all of you always give. May Allah consistently guide us to the right path.

This year CIC is 12 years old. Alhamdulilah with all the supports from you and the people like you, CIC continue to be stronger. As our brand is well accepted we start to receive attacks from those who may not like us to be around. I found that one or two persons start to propagate that our English program is not good because the teacher speaks Kelantan’s accent. Even though to me nothing is wrong with the Kelantan’s accent as Britons, Americans, Australians also differ in accent and many of the successful people speak Kelantan’s English, believe me, none of our children read Kelantan’s English because they learn from Kelantanese teacher.

They also spread that we cook for our children using Ajinomoto which is totally not true. Let me tell you, you do not send your children at CIC for English Language only because CIC is not a language centre. But you send your children to CIC for an integrated education which I believe is the best foundation for your children’s education. And I also believe that at CIC your children never lose the English Language as they can read and write well in English. But they have the advantage of learning Quran and have learned to worship Allah very well at their early stage of life.

Nowadays majority of our people are in easy circumstances because of the advancement of technology, education and monetary status but regretfully the morals and spiritual values are disappearing among them. It can easily be said that so many crimes, murders, suicides, intentional accidents which occurred are frequently resulted from immorality and irreligiousness.

Therefore our children need not only basic education on religion but most importantly they must believe and apply it. Religion is for us to apply throughout our lives so that we are safe and other people are also safe from our ill doings till the day we depart from this physical world.

Many people know the knowledge but somehow do not embrace it. It is even more difficult to worship Allah. For that, we must train ourselves to worship Allah as the act of worshipping needs training. Worshipping Allah starts from birth even before actually. We should be grateful to Allah for choosing Mu’minin parents from whom we get Islam and practise it. The same goes with our children nowadays, they are grateful to have you as their parents.

Frankly, I am sad when I found out here children being grown up by parents who themselves are lost in this physical world, forgetting the purpose of life, and they do not realise that what they think as good for their children in long term is harmful. Some parents are very trendy. They give reactions to certain trends in the business world and tend to forget the principle actions that they must do. For example, when it was IT trend, many kindergartens offered learning computer without thinking deeply on its harms or the needs of having it. When some friends send their children to Chinese school because it offers Mandarin classes, we start to react to that and want to send our children too. Well, to some people, it is a proud sending to Mandarin Medium as it is more expensive even comparing to the English Medium.

I am not saying that learning Mandarin is not good, but I am questioning on its effectiveness if you send your child for only a year. Would in a year, your child can wrap up everything for being able to understand and use the Mandarin language when he grows up. I believe that it is totally not effective unless we continue to make him learned in Chinese school for years. You can send your children to Chinese school for 6 years if you really want him to learn Mandarin. But usually life is about choice. Once you get one thing you might have to forgo the other. Our children might lose other more important things that we need to give them as a strong foundation i.e. the spiritual wellbeing. However there is good option if there were Chinese school that can give good religious education and decent environment, besides need to ensure that the teachers are the Murabbi who himself walks his teachings.

That is among the important advice that I continuously tell to CIC’s staffs, that we must always act towards our goals not to react to certain circumstances. Some of our staffs also tend to react to external factors that sometimes we cannot keep them working with us for long term. In fact it is our national problem because very often local staffs especially Malays do not want to take more challenges, they have many choices around and are comfortable at their zone. Therefore we can find many businesses overcome this problem by importing staffs from countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh.

It is not easy to manage children’s centre like CIC. Due to the fact that it is service and labor intensive oriented, CIC’s requirements is high. We cannot simply employstaffs who are able to teach English only because we need them to know Quran and Islamic knowledge as well. Besides we need them to be the Murabbi,the roll models and transmit the spiritual aura to our children.

Currently, we have a manual system that is consistently and frequently monitoring the quality and the progress of our children. We are monitoring closely the quality and performance of our staffs according to our standard of KPIs whether they are new or experienced staffs.

Extending that, I am proud to tell you that we are now developing our IT based system, that cost more than RM30,000 to manage the performance of our centre. This system will tell what to do daily on a particular child, in term of his schedule, subject to teach, how to teach, what book to be used and what assessment to use. Our staffs who will be monitored by our quality controller, will just have to follow the instructions and updating reports. With this system, I hope students produced by CIC will continue to be more excellent. Lastly, I also like to share with you that we are now been granted the status of franchisor by MECD. If anyone of you or your relatives or your friends like to own a CIC, please let us know. The preparation for 2010’s intakes should begin now as the franchisee needs to undergo process of selections as well as proper trainings

With that, I thank you. Please do not forget to put CIC’s sticker on your car to show your supports to us. I pray that Allah will bless us and the way to the hereafter through this world life is prosperous always. Wassalam

Hjh. Qutreen Nada Ahmad