Sydney, the teacher that made Sabah proud

24 April 2024

By Nabalu News Journalist

KOTA KINABALU: A teacher from Keningau Sabah Sydney Engelbert was named regional winner of the 2024 Cambridge Dedicated Teacher Awards.

She has been named the regional winner in Southeast Asia and Pacific, for her commitment to cross-cultural collaboration, which helped to develop her students’ communication skills.

Sydney teaches at a rural school in Keningau, Sabah, where her students will rarely leave the district. The judges praised Syndey’s role in enriching her students’ education despite this isolation.

Sydney kickstarted an online exchange class in 2022 with several other vocational schools in Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia and Indonesia. Khalifa Affnan, also from Keningau Vocational College, won the Cambridge Dedicated Teacher Awards 2022.

“I am greatly honoured to be awarded with this recognition. It’s important that we create a learning environment rooted in cultural exchange to help students develop the practical and communication skills needed for the future.

“I am deeply proud of the success my students have had as part of our online exchange class that is centred around cultural competence and exploring topics beyond the standard curriculum,” said Sydney.

As a regional winner, Sydney Engelbert will win £500 (RM2,972) worth of books for their class, a trophy, take part in a regional awards ceremony and receive publicity for them and their school during the coming year. They will also appear on a ‘thank you’ page at the front of new Cambridge textbooks.

2024 saw a record number of nominations from people wanting to thank a teacher. Cambridge received 14,840 nominations across 141 different countries, topping the previous record by over 1,000 nominations.

In a statement Rod Smith, Managing Director of International Education said, “We need 44 million teachers worldwide by 2030 if the world is to meet the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 of inclusive and equitable quality education. For this to happen, at Cambridge we believe we should be celebrating the profession and highlighting the hard-working teachers currently instilling a love of learning, often in difficult environments."

“We launched the Cambridge Dedicated Teacher Awards to ensure we took the time to thank those preparing their students to be ready for the world, whether tackling challenging educational issues like climate change or breaking down cultural barriers. I wish to congratulate Sydney Engelbert for their immense accomplishments, which I’m sure will inspire teachers and learners across Malaysia,” he stated.

The public can now vote on their favourite teacher out of the nine regional winners, to become the overall winner of Cambridge Dedicated Teacher Awards 2024. The deadline to vote is 6 May 2024 and the Global Winner will be announced on 29 May 2024.