Dwi Emas International School: Revolutionizing the Process of Knowledge Acquisition

“We continue to educate ourselves on where the future is heading and tweak our delivery to nurture future-proof skills like self-discipline, adaptability, initiative, cognitive flexibility and decision making. This way, we know we’re always preparing students for their future”.

Located in Selangor, Malaysia, Dwi Emas International School is an educational platform for transforming talents of today into leaders and trailblazers of tomorrow. At the pace the world is moving, education is the most powerful weapon for changing the world. Education ought to go beyond academia. Dwi Emas International School believes entrepreneurship is the way to go.

Students at Dwi Emas learn entrepreneurship whether it’s through starting their own business or thinking like an entrepreneur. The end results are the acquired 21stCentury skills and heightened awareness of how the world works so they thrive when they’re out there. The school achieves this through the award-winning ACE EdVenture Approach and their Powerpreneur Programme, the winning combination that makes Malaysia’s First Entrepreneurial School.

The school provides an education that is different and most importantly works for the children and also offer sports scholarships for student athletes who represent the school at the state or national level.

Inception story

There are two major paths that led to the inception of Dwi Emas International School, Malaysia’s First Entrepreneurial School. The first is when the founder, Anne Tham, started ACE EdVenture (the group that owns the school) 23 years ago. It started off as tuition classes around her dining table which evolved into a tuition center, then multiple centers, and eventually their first international school, Sri Emas. It was throughout this process of running her business and having this cause to transform education that Anne felt she was learning so much practical skill, knowledge, and values – so why aren’t these real-life lessons being taught in schools?

Secondly, and also the main reason she started ACE EdVenture in 1995 in the first place, was after observing how ill-prepared students were in language, skill, and confidence for the real world (and it’s still happening!), so she set out to transform education to make it relevant for students, in the truest sense of the word “Educate”. The ACE EdVenture Approach and its schools have also evolved over its 23-year existence to accommodate the times so that parents are always getting the best education possible for their kids when they come to any of their schools.

As proponents of real-world education, the school strongly believes from their experiences that entrepreneurship, mindsets and behaviors that come with it are crucial for kids to navigate their future with the rapid changes of the world and the 4th Industrial Revolution. That’s where Dwi Emas International School comes in to grow the future’s trailblazers and the world’s modern-day adventurers.

Leadership’s Mettle 

The school is led by its founders Anne Tham and her sister, Melinda Lim. Between the two of them is 50 years of teaching experience. Anne started ACE EdVenture in 1995 and Dwi Emas which was opened in 2015. Being the visionary of the organization, the entrepreneurship component called the Powerpreneur Programme of Dwi Emas is her brainchild. Powerpreneur aims to teach students the fundamentals of entrepreneurial behaviors and mindsets: financial literacy, collaboration across borders and professions, creating causes or being part of ones that positively impact society, being adaptable, disrupting industries or even creating new ones, going against the grain, solving great problems etc. On top of that, Anne brings with her three decades of teaching students from primary to college level. She’s got the knack for the English language, humanities, and entrepreneurship.

Melinda on the other hand is the Group Chief Academic Officer and Principal of Dwi Emas. An engineer by training, Melinda spent approximately 20 years teaching maths and sciences in Singapore. She identified that much of the way conventional education teaches STEM subjects caters to the math and science-inclined students, who only make up 20% of the total student population, so what about the other students? Melinda has the ability to humanize these technical and abstract subjects like maths, physics, chemistry so that even more students are able to learn and enjoy learning. The latter is what Dwi Emas is all about. That said, the school’s vision is made bigger and made possible by the passionate team of teachers and staff.

Eloquent Offerings

Dwi Emas employs methods of content delivery that encourage active learning that suits a wider student audience like role-play. Teachers are being facilitators of learning instead of spoon-feeders of information so that students are independent learners and develop resilience through both failure and success. The school utilizes the prestigious and world-renowned Cambridge IGCSE which gives the students myriad options once they’ve graduated from school.

What makes academia unique at Dwi Emas International School is the ACE EdVenture Approach. The following is a breakdown of what this award-winning education system entails:

  • Reverse-Engineering the Future

As educators, the school continues to educate themselves on where the future is heading and tweak their delivery to nurture future-proof skills like self-discipline, adaptability, initiative, cognitive flexibility and decision making. This way, they know they are always preparing students for their future.

  • Progress, Not Perfection

The school pushes their students to grow beyond their limitations! Expecting perfection of them is unrealistic. Instead, they strive for progress. They stand by their students through their journey.

  • Making It Relevant

When the teachers teach, they like to give their students the big-picture view of what they are learning. For example, a teacher takes his class on a jog through the corridors, telling them to pay attention to the sensations they feel as they slow down or take the corners. This leads to discussions on the concepts of Momentum and Inertia in Physics, how it applies in their lives and beyond.

  • Throwing Out the Box

The school is constantly creating new ways to get their students excited and engaged about lessons. A lot of these ideas are implemented in class coursework, which has been a staple of their approach from the very start.

  • Young and Passionate about Education

Being young and passionate about education, teachers can connect and relate to the students as their role models. It’s not unusual to see teachers and students hanging out together during breaks. The boundaries are still clear of course, and this mutual respect enhances learning in the classroom as the teachers are in a better position to guide and coach students to progress.

  • Trained to Fit their Teaching Style

All the teachers go through ACE EdVenture Training Programme that has been developed in-house. The training is derived from the success that had impacted students for the past 20 years and flows from Anne and Melinda are teaching experience. School training programme not only focuses on subject delivery, but also on building a class culture and every teacher is able to embody the ACE EdVenture culture and teaching standards are maintained across the board.

Extra-curricular Activities

The school consists of Skills Enhancement subjects which consists of Hip Hop, Drama, Art & Design, Vocal Training, and the recent addition of Maker Space – all led by trained professionals in their respective fields. These take place within the school hours and are not extra-curricular per se so that the students can have a balance of study and free time. That’s not all, with the training and exposure they receive from their teachers, they have several other opportunities to perform outside of school whether self-curated or by invite.

The school also offers a variety of sports, ranging from futsal to dodge ball, cheerleading to table tennis. Each is helmed by professional coaches that have led the students to compete both regionally and internationally. Fitness classes and sports take place 3 times a week and that frequency ensures that the students are at the top of their game not just physically, but mentally.

Words of trust

Being an entrepreneur in Dwi Emas has given me to many great opportunities and I’m continuously learning to adapt to new situations!

-Maia, Year 10

The teachers really give you a platform for your colors to shine and your inner creativity to be expressed!

-Jonathan, Year 10

I used to view schools as places I don’t like but when I moved to Dwi Emas I realised that I never thought there could be a school like this.

-Shailaja, Year 3

With Dwi Emas, I got to do something I’m passionate about while creating value and win-win situations for people!

-Jed, ex-student

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