Alumni

Applying Knowledge and Experience from
IATSS Forum & Paying Forward to Community

Participant's Voices

Chow

  • Country : Malaysia
  • Forum : 61st batch(2019 Spring Forum)
Hi! I am Chow Geh Tsung from Malaysia. You can just call me Chow. I am a secondary school teacher and I teach Science and English to 13 - 14 year old students. I am also the scout leader in the school and the assistant district commissioner of scouting in the district of Kajang, Selangor. Prior to becoming a teacher, I was a sustainability and climate change consultant for almost 4 years. I decided to become a teacher after meeting some inspirational educators who made me realise the importance of education in building the foundation of a country. I’m in my sixth year of teaching now and believe that education is indeed my calling. I am very grateful for this opportunity and am looking forward to giving my best as a representative of Malaysia in the IATSS Forum. Traffic and safety sciences is a theme that is new to me and I am excited to dig deeper and learn as much as I can through this experience. I am amazed and truly humbled by the diversity of the participants and the wide range of topics lined up for the forum – they certainly transcend the boundaries of what one might consider to be traffic safety and sciences. I like how there is a strong emphasis on sustainability moving forward, and from various sectors too. Really thrilled to be able to share and exchange knowledge with all of you who will be on this special journey together. May this be an experience that is mutually beneficial for all of us and our home countries in ASEAN and Japan. Thank you once again to the IATSS Forum organising committee for putting this together. I will take personal responsibility to make the best of this shared experience. Chow
I have participated in several international leadership programmes before and I honestly feel that the IATSS Forum is hands-down the most impactful of them all. I experienced a sense of deeper learning during the programme that far exceeded my expectations. It is a programme that has been refined over decades to be what is today. The design of the programme is very holistic and purposeful. It covers a comprehensive range of fields with a common theme on leadership in sustainable development. It gets real here, and the learning is profound and authentic. In a nutshell, the IATSS Forum experience taught me the importance of self-reflection and awareness of how we interact with others. The IATSS Forum values conflict and how people could learn from them in meaningful ways. I have been applying what I've learnt in Japan with my students and it has been producing good results. For example, students in my lesson now do self-reflection, receive and give constructive peer feedback, before taking my own feedback to them as their teacher. This makes for deeper learning to occur. I am personally more prepared to handle situations of conflict after returning from the IATSS Forum. It is certainly an experience of one's life time.

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