To provide supports and enhance the educators’ physical and mental health as the pandemic COVID-19 has caused sudden shifts of teaching patterns and other pressures, an ‘Educators’ Physical and Mental Health Webinar’ was held by the Education Division, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Malaysia and the Federation of Alumni Associations of Taiwan Universities, Malaysia (FAATUM) from November 13th to 14th, 2020. The webinar was co-organized by the Taiwan Alumni Association Of Sabah and the Sabah Education Department. In this two-day event, there were over 1,000 participants registered and joined the webinar. Although the local government has announced the Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO) to prevent the widespread of COVID-19 in the local community, the event was a great success as the organizers had held several webinars during the Movement Control Order (MCO) and all earned great praises with quality content and innovative design. Since the first wave of COVID-19, the global community has strived to prevent its next attack, and yet the COVID-19 pandemic has already led to huge changes to our living patterns, economic contractions, and also the learning patterns of our young generation. It is not an easy task for educators to be quickly adapted to this new and challenging teaching method. Besides, the educators are responsible to ensure the students have been following the strict standard operating procedures (S.O.P.) on campus. With these sudden changes and duties, the educators are getting burned out and the pressure on them is enormous. Therefore, the talks in the webinars were designed to release the mental burden and provide supports to the educators. Five professional speakers from Taiwan were invited to promote the correct understanding of both mental and physical health. They also shared plenty easy and useful counseling skills with the participants so that the educators could also help the students and parents in this challenging period. Dato’ Ting Siew Haw, the Chairperson of FAATUM described this webinar as a good chance for the participants to listen to themselves. He added that the participants could also improve their counseling and even teaching skills by learning from each other. Charlin Chang, Director of the Education Division, TECO expressed her gratitude on behalf of the Ministry of Education, Taiwan to all the teachers who attended the webinars and also the effort to ensure the students’ rights of learning despite the schools are closed. She mentioned in her opening remark that she is glad that the relationship between the education industry in both Taiwan and Malaysia has been further enhanced as the collaboration and interaction between two sides are not interrupted even the borders are closed due to the travel restrictions. Pang Thou Chong, the President of the Taiwan Alumni Association Of Sabah also mentioned that this webinar provides professional and innovative support to the participants with the talks given by the experienced speakers.
As the number of registered participants was limited, the organizers have decided to keep the videos of the talks on the FaceBook page of FAATUM so that other interested individuals could also gain beneficial knowledge from the webinars. For further information, welcome visit FAATUM page.