“Sometimes I just come home and say, Wow God. Wow.”
In mid-2024, Toh Jia Qian, 23, lived life at full throttle. As a student at the University of Nottingham, her days were packed with assignments, cell group leadership, and church commitments. Like many young Malaysians in the Klang Valley, she moved from one responsibility to the next—fuelled by ambition, purpose, and a Google Calendar bursting at the seams.
A year later, her world looks strikingly different.
The relentless pace of Kuala Lumpur has given way to the quieter outskirts of Kuching. Instead of rushing to finish her own assignments, Jia Qian now hands them out. Long hours in traffic have been replaced with reflective silence. Life has slowed—but for Jia Qian, God’s voice has grown louder.
At the start of 2025, she joined Teach For Malaysia (TFM), a non-profit committed to providing students from underserved communities with access to holistic education. Through its fellowship programme, TFM places young educators in high-needs schools nationwide. That year, Jia Qian began teaching English to Form 4 and Form 5 students at a large secondary school just outside Kuching.
Nearly a year into the journey, she reflects on a season marked by challenge, growth, and an unmistakable sense of calling.
A faith that became her own
“I accepted Jesus when I was 11 or 12,” Jia Qian says. “But I didn’t really understand what that meant until I was 15.”
Raised in a second-generation Christian household, faith was familiar, but not yet personal. That changed during her teenage years, when a painful fallout with a close friend led to social anxiety and a prolonged season of darkness. Eventually, she sought professional help.
“It was during that time that I learned to root my identity in Christ,” she shares. “God wasn’t just someone I followed out of routine. I realised that He really is love.”
Prayer, coupled with the steady support of family and friends, carried her through. Since then, that revelation has remained constant. “In both mountaintops and valleys, I’m reminded of who God is.”
When the spark first lit
As Jia Qian approaches the end of her first year as a TFM fellow, she still marvels at how she arrived here.
“When I was about 17 or 18, I had the chance to teach at a school serving an underserved community,” she shares. The opportunity came through her church, and it was there that something shifted.
“I realised how holistic my own education had been,” she explains. “Not just academics, but character, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, life skills.” She became increasingly aware that many students across Malaysia never receive that same foundation.
That conviction led her to pursue an education degree at the University of Nottingham. Ironically, she spent much of her university life insisting she did not want to be a teacher.
“I used to tell my lecturers all the time that I don’t want to teach,” she laughs. At the time, Jia Qian believed real systemic change happened behind the scenes, through policy and structural reform.
But before she could change the system, she realised she needed to understand it.
“I began to see the beauty of being on the front lines – knowing the students, hearing their stories, seeing how their lives intersect with education,” she says. A TFM staff member encouraged her to try teaching firsthand. She applied and was accepted.
The front lines and the “belakang” classes
Nearly a year into teaching, Jia Qian carries herself like a hopeful, determined fighter – one with a few battle scars to match.
She teaches English to Form 4 and Form 5 students in a school in Sarawak with over 3,000 students, primarily from Chinese and Bidayuh backgrounds.
“I teach what they call the belakang classes,” she explains. Classes are arranged alphabetically, with ‘A’ often perceived as the strongest and those further down the alphabet quietly written off.
“My classes are 5M and 4P.”
“These are students who don’t really see the point of school,” she says candidly. “They don’t wear uniforms. Their feet are on the tables. By the time I walk in, half of them are already asleep.”
But Jia Qian is quick to look beyond behaviour to root causes.
“Many of them have fallen through the cracks. Some parents have given up on them and eventually, they give up on themselves.”
Vaping in class, missing items, open defiance – she sees these not merely as discipline issues, but as symptoms of deeper wounds. Broken families. Financial pressure. Students working to support households or caring for ill parents.
“You have to learn how to be hard and soft,” she says. “If a student is vaping or sleeping through class, you need to be firm. But you also need to know when to ask quietly, ‘What’s happening at home that’s making you so tired?’”
That discernment does not always come easily.
She recalls snapping at a student during SPM speaking practice, a rare moment when frustration spilled over. The student reacted angrily, slamming Jia Qian’s water bottle on the desk.
“In that moment, I had to be firm,” she says. “But I also wanted her to know she was still seen, still given space to try.”
Even now, Jia Qian admits she’s unsure whether she handled it perfectly.
When it comes to making a difference, many times the fruits of her labour are not immediately visible.
They come in the form of a student sharing an Instagram post thanking her at the end of the year, or a student asking for a hug or seeking advice.
Moments like these affirm her sense that this chapter is woven into God’s larger plan.
“This experience has shaped me deeply as a servant of Christ,” she reflects.
Counting the cost, knowing the ‘why’
“Before coming here, my Malay was basically zero,” she laughs. Instead of retreating, she enrolled in lessons and learned by immersion, navigating daily life in East Malaysia, where Bahasa Malaysia is the common language.
Growth, she says, has come through repeated discomfort, anchored by a growing trust in God’s sovereignty.
“The Jia Qian who left Kuala Lumpur in January is very different from the one standing here now.”
Yet she is careful not to romanticise the journey. Life in Sarawak has demanded more than good intentions. It has required humility, resilience, and a strong understanding of her own limits.
“You need a strong why,” she says. “You’re not a saviour. Let the Saviour save. Let the servant serve.”
Jia Qian is clear-eyed about the limits of what one person can do. She knows she cannot fix broken systems or rewrite every student’s story. What she can do is show up, day after day, with faithfulness and obedience.
“I can only do my part and trust God to do the rest.”
For this young teacher from Kuala Lumpur, that trust has become both her anchor and her compass, guiding her not toward comfort or certainty, but toward a calling she is learning to follow, one faithful step at a time.
