:MY DaY MY WaY:

Sunday, April 01, 2007 I went to Sentosa with a couple of friends today to sun out, but the weather was pretty haphazard, with a sudden downpour and lack of wind in the evening. In any case, it was a good outing nonetheless, and we managed to catch a glimpse of the new attraction, "songs of the ocean" off the train terminal, and some eye candy as a sideshow. ~ ~ On the first day I assumed appointment at my seconday school, my predecessor left me a whole load of undone and/or slipshod work, and the best thing is he refused to come back, instead choosing to further his relief at another secondary school. I cannot blame him for his actions; why should he take responsibility when he has passed the short end of the stick to me. For instance, he did not do a composition which should be an examinable component for the coming semester. When I asked the classes what he has been doing, they told me he told ghost stories and set little to no work for them. What work he had set, he hardly marked. So it was pretty daunting and I have to try to get work done first, and learning later, through no fault of my own. No wonder neighborhood kids are stuck in the vicious cycle of non-learning, with such a high turnover of teaching staff. (I am the third in 3 months.) ~ ~ Another weird thing was the introductory session for new recruits. Besides the three of us, there was this petite Chinese teacher from China who sat beside me. The problem was she hardly understood a word of English, and I ended up as the default translator, dutifully translating everything into Mandarin. The vice principal asked me if I was in a SAP school, since my Mandarin was pretty fluent, and my translation pretty quick and spot-on. I said I was not, and that I spoke Mandarin at home. She made a note, and I was saying to myself, "oh dear, what if there is a lack of manpower, maybe get me to teach English and Chinese concurrently?" That will be so funny indeed. The weird thing was, how did someone from China who cannot understand basic English get employed over other job seekers, with respect to a few of my friends who had wanted to teach Chinese? This is no discrimination, since I believe her command of the Chinese language is vastly superior, at least compared to me, but she will suffer since this is a totally new (sights and sounds) environment for her. (Kids in China still respect their teacher, unlike the spolit brats here) On hindsight, she is pretty, so I guess that is a bonus over seeing any of my man-friends employed instead. ~ ~ It has been two weeks since. So far, my class discipline is pretty slack, and I am even made fun of, by my female students, for being too nice to them. A boy even tried to introduce me to a PE teacher, and making the both of us feel weird in the process. Nonetheless, we still made some sort of small talk, but for a schoolboy to do that, I must be so disarming indeed. (or I look desperate) I look stern, but have a heart of gold, and give them far too much respect according to them. I have already made a boy cower, and sent two kids to the discipline head for groping and retaliation respectively. In spite of this, I am still too soft apparently. But I cannot destroy a girl's pride as I can destroy a boy's (he will have to face it when he is 18 anyway), or she will be shamed forever, so it is a dilemma all around. How to be impartial, when I risk complaints of abuse if I whack the girl verbally? In addition, I have no idea how to do social studies to noisy NT classes, since social studies is non-examinable, and is an extension of the dreaded national education curriculum. In the end, I ended up playing hangman, setting topics of uniquely Singaporean symbols to stay on topic, (at least I told them the merlion is unnatural, and they should go figure) and that is not counting people who blatantly tattoo each other with pens or walk around. At least they did not play truant, which is commonplace for some of the higher secondary students my friend has to teach. ~ ~ So far, I think I am sufficiently enjoying my stay, and gladdened by the fact, some Sec 4 kids who I am teaching actually asked me to conduct a lesson for them during their lull in lesson timetable. They do not take biology, so they could have a free 1 hour break if they so desired, but they chose to spend it with me, so that is a compliment I guess. So I did an impromptu lesson on oral and topical discussion for them. One thing I do not know is whether the level which I pitched my teaching, was suitable. For instance, for oral discussion, I asked them to consider alternative interpretations, and that history is the word of the victors, who then wrote "histories", for instance in the case of World War 2. Japanese texts, in contrast to other Asian countries, tell a different variation of the story known as post-war history. I hope they can pick up skills to interpret, differentiate, and ultimately build up all-purpose skills to tackle the pictorial and topical components of the oral examinations. It may be too hard, but I guess they will have to pick it up anyway in JC/poly, so might as well teach them something they are not likely to pick it up in secondary 4 english language classes. There is still so much fire fighting and rote learning at this level, though. ~ ~ Hopefully I can use less of my voice to yell at them soon, and more to tell them some good. I still want my voice for weekends, and no sane person will want to lose his voice on rest days. Hopefully I get some work done soon, since there is effectively only 5 weeks left, before mid-year exams set in. weijie froze in time on 1.4.07

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