Monday, April 17, 2006

My First day in School! ;)

I finally got it.
This morning.
A Monday morning.
At about 7.05am I received a call, mind you, 7.05am. What could it be? Relief teacher required. And required before 8am. That meant I had about 45 minutes to fully wake myself up, get prepared and travel to school. Luckily for me, my dad offered to fetch me to the school.
Reached school at about 7.45am. Incredible for a person like me. I must have broken my record... er..or rather my speed limit. haha....
When I entered the office, the clerk hurriedly gave me the timetable for the day. Luckily, my first lesson was at the fourth period. Whew! That means I have more than one hour to get used to the surroundings and prepare myself to conduct my first ever lesson in front of a whole class, not to mention that they are students whom I have never met before. Actually, I was only expected to "babysit" the classes as the teacher on medical leave would be coming back on Thursday. The classes I was assigned to were mainly the normal (technical) classes and I am to take them for English and Social Studies.
The 4th period came and I stepped into the classroom. I introduced myself and greeted the class. "Good morning class, Mrs K***** has an essay for you all to be done in class today. You have one English period now and 2 after recess rite? Can continue doing during those periods if you can't finish since I have nothing else for you all."
I walked around the class. The students were talking among themselves and some were sleeping. Even those two sitting right in front of the teacher's desk. I went over and tried to wake them. "ok...ok.." and back to sleep again. This time, I pulled the desk away from where the student was resting her head. She simply pulled it back and continued sleeping. Later I found out that usually the teacher would allow them to sleep in class as they had to work after school till late at night. One of them even helped out in her mother's "Zi Char" stall till the wee hours of the morning so actually the only time she has left to sleep is in class. Sigh!
15 minutes after the start of the class, I found that there were only 4 or 5 students doing their work and luckily this handful of them were near completion already. How about the rest? You should have guessed it right. Still talking... and some worse... playing non-stop. But well, what do you expect of youngsters nowadays? Especially when you have seen worse in army camps and experienced a similarly high decibel environment in a top class way back in secondary school.

"It's ok." I told myself, and I went round the class asking nicely the students to do their work. They should be cooperative if I treat them nicely. Young people of secondary school age would only accept you and the things you tell them if they find them reasonable and when you are not too demanding. They are way past the age when you can just shout and scold them for being noisy--- aka primary school and kindergarten kids. Even some of the upper primary students would already have a stand of their own and would behave better if you reason things out with them. Some of these were learnt from my personal experience during my schooldays.
It's a fact that all classes, from any school or having students of any type, would be noisy to different extents. Young people mah, shouldn't they be lively rite?
The students were generally friendly towards me and would not (so far) talk back. Occasionally, there will be an act of defiance (like continuing to disturb their classmates) and I would have to talk to them sternly. One main focus of students to me and other relief teachers alike was about our age. Sometimes I would ask them to guess. "Teacher, are you 18 or 19?" most would ask. But at other times: "You have not even started the work I have given you and your exams are round the corner and yet here you are asking trivial things like my age?" Haha. The students can be very cute sometimes. And very mischievious too. :p

Posted by charles at 8:07 PM