Join us in shaping the future.
Welcome to our education collective, where teachers never stop learning—from ourselves and one another.
We feel your pain. The current reality of education as we live and breathe has a way of turning us all into mere tools driving a system—one founded on a severely misguided view of what it means to teach, and what it means to learn—cogs in a machine we neither own nor control. Join us in flipping this unfortunate narrative on its head.
It's why we teach that matters the most.
Sure, we want to help you excel as far as exams and going to university are concerned. But above all else, we want to make learning personally enjoyable for you—not an obligation to abide by, but an epic journey to traverse. To do so, our teachers’ knowledge extends far beyond the scope and depth of what is required by the conventional syllabus, the latter often far from enough to spark appreciation for the subject. Because of that, we are capable of stretching your horizon to an extent where you stand not only on the receiving but also on the giving end of knowledge creation.
We teachers understand just how important this stage of your teenage child’s life is. Their decision as to what to pursue in university and beyond depends very much on their general secondary education experience—so does much of their perception of the world and of themselves that will carry them forward in life. We therefore also understand the importance of having not only a teacher but also a mentor at this crucial stage—your co-mentor. As such, we work closely with you, the parent, to deliver the best education experience for your child.
We are very privileged and proud to be teachers ourselves, but it pains us deeply that the teaching profession has taken such a heavy beating since the neoliberal conception of education took hold of reality, as we know and live it. Therefore, we created Y1 as a means to return the ownership of teaching to teachers, so to speak, by ensuring three things: (1) that we do not exploit the labor of teachers, (2) that our teaching approach is shaped from the bottom up, and (3) that all teaching resources are co-developed and openly shared.
There is something about being a Gen Y teacher that injects a rather fiery sense of urgency into all that we do. Growing up at the turn of the millennium, we witnessed the unmatched growth of human knowledge and technology, alongside unprecedented historical development of our social and environmental conditions, all these in a rapidly shrinking world.
No thanks to the global neoliberal appropriation of education, however, the purpose of the human pursuit of knowledge—to progress science, technology, and human life—is quickly fading from our collective memory. This raises red flags in our book, and it turns education into a call to action. Insofar as 21st-century education is concerned, humanity itself is at stake; there is simply no time to waste.
We base our teaching on the four pillars of knowledge.
We don’t prepare the world for you, but you for the world.
The human language capability differs from that of other animals in one very fundamental way: We write, which makes it possible for us to record information and communicate it over much greater distances and durations, because of which ours can be learned, it can be developed, it can spread, and it can evolve, always becoming more complex in space and in time. But our language is more than a tool of communication; it is also a means of inquiry into the world around us. Just as one could imagine that civilization wouldn’t have emerged without our first having developed a social language in which to understand one another, without having then derived mathematics out of that social language of ours it would’ve been utterly unimaginable, the very idea of science, let alone the kind of technological capability required to dominate a planet.
Science is first and foremost an attitude, one powered by—as has been mentioned—a language capable of not only social but also natural inquiry. It is an attitude with which one perceives reality, that it needs to be understood and modeled, that there needs to be a process to that understanding and modeling, and that the methods behind that process need to progress as we learn. This attitude drives us to solve problems, and it reflects our thirst for truth, our desire to predict and steward our future, to craft our own destiny, by working on our present, after learning from our past.
To learn from our past is to first be honest about it, so that it may be taught, critiqued, and improved upon—to be willing to accept that we don’t always succeed, that we made and continue to make mistakes, whether by accident or on purpose. So long as we are also willing to reconcile with our failures, real progress is only a matter of action and time. The truth that this speaks to ranges from the individual to the global; there is to be worn a historical lens through which all things material, and immaterial, can and must be learned. It provides knowledge with a generally dynamic and fluid basis, upon which the progress of our natural and social reality is viewed primarily as a continuous chain of causes and effects, thus making it more perceivable, and conceivable, what it is that we could accomplish next.
In the grand scheme of things, as the Irish poet William Butler Yeats probably did not say, “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.” It transcends mere accumulation of facts, serves as the catalyst for societal transformation, and underscores the dialectical relationship between economic structures and political as well as cultural institutions. Therefore, education cannot be passive; rather, it must actively empower individuals to critically engage with their socioeconomic conditions, foster class consciousness, and challenge prevailing power dynamics. Through enlightened minds, societal progress is propelled, dismantling obsolete structures and forging a path toward a more equitable future. Education, the spark that lights that fire, can never be dispensed with in the course of shaping the trajectory of human development.
We help you develop great vision through mentorship.
It is no surprise that vision, not least good ones, doesn’t just happen. To begin with, it requires a certain attitude—as Socrates once put it: “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” In other words, to develop a great vision is to be, first of all, curious, curious about ourselves, curious about others, curious about the universe, for with an inquisitive mind, one lives through time and sees the future, and the next thing they know: the only important thing left to do is to craft it.
There’s a reason why almost every Wikipedia page starts with a history segment. Naturally, understanding any topic or idea begins with coming to grips with its conception, i.e. how a thing came to be. That thing can be knowledge itself; one learning outcome is the outcome of a previous learning outcome, and without having first understood the latter one could never grasp the former. It is the same reason why we benchmark our present selves against our past selves when we measure our performance and gauge our skills.
However, agreeing with the idea that real knowledge takes time to develop, one link of information building upon another one connection at a time at the speed of brain, is not quite the same as making the actual effort to ensure that the nexus stays intact. We lament that the state of education, as it is today, has not been very good, to say the least, at incentivizing students to own their learning in the first place. So it is that upon many such first encounters with our students, they kept having the same problem: They could not remember what they had learned!
What might such an incentive be, then, one that drives the young learner to take his learning seriously? We think it has three elements. One, a sense of historicity in learning must first be instilled through diligent record-keeping (note-taking). Two, we must go deep enough into our inquiry to a level of complexity that organically gives rise to the need to investigate its discovery and apply the scientific method (which requires record-keeping). Three, there must be a narrative structure to every topic we teach, so that the learner is constantly aware of the big picture, and the plot of their learning, where knowledge unfolds in a series, which can be reinforced with frameworks such as diagrams and maps. As we’ll see later, this leads to the development of oversight, too.
Here, we may say that learning from one’s past successes and failures, as well as being diligent in documenting learning outcomes and keeping track of one’s progress, i.e. developing hindsight, is the first basis of great vision.
The effective learner introspects, operating on such a level of self-awareness that they dare stare into their own eyes in the mirror and ask, “What is wrong with me?” That takes more guts than most people give credit for. What, after all, could be the incentive to feel bad about oneself?
Well, solidarity helps. Only by tuning our ears to our students, whose struggles they know best, can we truly mentor them, engaging them in their process of change. In that process, a highly personal one, not only do we attempt to exchange honest, unfiltered feedback to learn what method needs to be improved, or strategies to be introduced, but more often than not we also find ourselves having to communicate and discuss the grander picture, namely what they envision for themselves and how they would want to contribute to society at large.
By facilitating a bottom-up, democratic discourse about change, we spark genuine interest and inspire learning ownership, compelling students to think critically about their predicament and potential. In practice, this means performing reviews between milestones and setting smart goals based on our educational version of the lean principle’s build-measure-learn loop.
Here we may say that introspective learning, i.e. developing insight, is the second basis of great vision.
Schools, do we even need them anymore? With the internet, nothing really can’t be learned on a screen these days, right? Whereas we leave to your imagination the answer to the first question, we’ll respond to the second: no, not really. While it is true that information can be accessed much more easily, now more than ever, it is also true that this gives the modern teacher more leeway to focus on teaching that which cannot easily be self-learned, such as how a theory is interpreted and applied in the real world, its social or environmental implications. To this end, we help you connect the dots both internally (discovering links between theories, e.g. between the chemistry of semiconductors and the physics of semiconductivity) and externally (linking theory to application and implication, e.g. how the concept of semiconductivity led to the invention of transistors, which in turn sparked the age of computers). By filling up essential gaps that would otherwise result in intellectual disconnection, and by developing a narrative structure to its explanation, the knowledge itself also becomes transferrable and therefore teachable.
Another such gap we strive to fill is the ability to organize knowledge through framework building, modeling and consolidating your learning outcomes in a systemic and accountable fashion—so that they become much more accessible, incentivizing you to also keep a habit of regularly reviewing them. Much of this has already been mentioned in the section on developing hindsight.
In simple words, we equip you with a bird’s-eye view of knowledge and the ability to manage your learning curve. This also allows us to shift from merely instructing to coaching, to providing mentorship in practice, and to being your learning partner.
Here we may say that big-picture, integrated learning, i.e. developing oversight, is the third basis of great vision.
It may not be possible for us to physically travel to the future, but in a sense, our consciousness can do just that. In fact, another defining human feature is that deep within each of us lies the intense desire to predict what comes next. We are indeed a creature programmed to think ahead, to envision, to plan.
Prediction, however, requires not only a lot of data but also the ability to analyze those data. Case in point, in order for the student to envision and chart their future, such as their professional path, they need to be given the informational basis on which to match their interest with societal needs.
That’s where we come in, by always relating their studies to reality, the theoretical to the practical, and by always challenging them to propose solutions to real-world problems whenever we can. The more they apply what they learn, and the more specific and relatable that is, the closer we bring them to the frontier of human knowledge, and the more quickly they shall discover their calling.
Here we may say that learning with an end in mind, i.e. developing foresight, is the fourth basis of great vision.
Work with us.
If you take education seriously, and if you have big ideas for how education needs to be transformed, consider joining our cooperative. Drop us your CV at hello@y1education.com.
It bugs us very much that we constantly find ourselves at odds with education in its present form. Neither do we find ourselves comfortable, quite literally, working within the confines of the public education system, no matter how much respect we have for public school teachers. Chiefly, we disagree with conventional teaching for how much of it in this day and age serves to fill up pails: employment numbers, GDP, and whatnot, rather than light the fire.
Going to the market, we admit, is far from being a solution, but at the very least it frees us from a top-down system that we know is nowhere near a commensurate response to the needs of the 21st century. We’re all for decommodifying education, but in the meantime, before the bugle sounds, we shall remain firm in doing our best to socialize work at Y1, so that there will be no hierarchies, no secrets, no hoarders, and no idlers. This we take to be our central struggle.
The best kind of teacher is one who never stops learning; meanwhile, the best kind of learner is one who also teaches. To both of these ends, our training’s primary goal is to attract young teachers to the service. It doesn’t matter if it’s your first time teaching; so long as you want to teach, and if you consider our mission agreeable, we will offer you comprehensive training, free of charge.
If you happen to be in Kuala Lumpur, consider teaching at our academy in Solaris Mont Kiara.
Free in-house training is provided (see above).
The rate ranges from RM60 to 120 per hour, in addition to company shares and bonuses.
We are currently looking for teachers who teach the following subjects:
- First Language English—Checkpoint, IGCSE (or equivalent)
- Biology—IGCSE, IAL (or equivalent)
- Science—Checkpoint (or equivalent)
The rate and arrangement depend on our negotiation with the client. Typically, after a match is made, the teacher begins with a paid trial lesson; if both the teacher and the client wish to continue the engagement, the teacher only needs to pay us 50% of the first month’s revenue as commission, after which the teacher receives full payment from and deals directly with the client.
We prefer teachers whose expertise ranges from languages to the sciences, and from lower secondary to pre-university level.
If you have dropped us your CV, we will contact you in the event of a match.
Our ever-growing eLibrary needs your voice. It is a platform primarily for teachers and students to connect, where you can publish articles, essays, learning materials, and more.
