Teacher's Day..

Had my 1st Teacher's Day today as a teacher. Was pleasantly surprised to receive a few gifts despite only teaching for a couple of weeks. The most ironic fact was that the presents were given by those that I least expected. At least there are students out there who appreciate me.

Got to know more about a few young colleagues during staff lunch. I got diverse views about the job. One still thoroughly enjoys it while some are burnt out already. A few adviced me to think twice before signing the bond. Frankly speaking, at times, I enjoy the job while other times, I dread entering the classroom. I think it depends on which subject and which class I'm going to teach. But it's hard to find a job which one would like all the time. Most of the time, I get very frustrated when the pupils don't listen to me. I hate the feeling of not being able to control the class which makes me feel very incompetent. This is the main reason why I dislike the job. On the other hand, deep down, I know that there would be downsides in other jobs as well. Sigh, I dislike it when I can't make a decision about my life.

I tell myself to hang on to this job till the contract ends and not be a quitter. I console myself that I shouldn't get stressed out so easily. Compared to Dad, my job pales in significance. My task is simply to teach groups of 40 students while Dad's job is multiple times more complex than mine. He has thousands of people to manage, numerous meetings to chair, countless matters to deal with, bosses to report to, datelines to meet, press conferences to attend to and at times, acting as an English-Chinese translator to the media. With this in mind, I try not to voice out my unhappiness about my job to Dad, preferring to relate more positive experiences to him. I'm sure he has more burning problems to be bogged down with. He would probably think my problem is just a minor issue, which I think, it's true.

Right now, I'll heed the advice of my HOD: Just take it one day at a time. School holiday tomorrow. A very timely break for me :)

First Month..

Today marks the one month anniversary of my career. It has really been an eye-opener, getting to see all kinds of adults and students. As time goes by, I slowly get to witness the negative traits of my fellow colleagues. On the other hand, I'm beginning to see the positive traits that my students possess. I hope I'm not speaking too soon.

I've seen a fair share of a certain male colleague behaving like a wimp, pushing the blame on me, as a result making me the scapegoat and being reprimanded for no reason. Although he did apologise after that, I've learnt to stay clear of him unless there is an absolute need to communicate with him.

Irresponsibilty is the most common sight, surprisingly, not only for students. Some of them are too lazy to clean up after making a mess of the staff common table. Nobody bothers to go downstairs to get printing paper when the paper has run out in the photocopying machine. The most common solution is to get paper from the printer or use one sided paper. And that certain male colleague mentioned above just could not be bothered to print the correct number of copies of worksheets for his students. His excuse: they can always share. He apparently jammed up the photocopying machine but had no guts to inform the photocopying lady, who fumed in anger when she found out what happened. I could have had my revenge and let the photocopying lady know who the culprit was but I didn't want to be in the same 'league' as him.

I hate to say this but I realise that the older generation in my job tends to be more dedicated, responsible and most importantly, possess more civic consciousness. Perhaps the former comes with years of experience. But I feel that the latter two comes from one's upbringing, which sadly mirrors the type of people that Singapore is going to have for the next decades.

An incident happened while I was in class today. It touched me a great deal when I saw my students helping a particular classmate of theirs to cool down and get a grip of herself. While assisting her, they didn't mind getting their uniforms stained by the marker she was holding or getting scratched by her. Frankly speaking, if it weren't for them, I would be at a loss. It then struck me that although their actions were rather childish, their minds were not. And through this incident, I got to differentiate between the caring ones and those who were only concerned with going home early.

I think there's a lot of learning to be done for me if I were to treat this as a career, rather than just a job.

Random Thoughts..

My job hasn't been smooth sailing or as enjoyable as I expected. All the passion about nurturing our next generation has almost evaporated only after a month in this line. My ideals about making a difference in the lives of the teenagers seem too over-realistic all of sudden.

I guess it has to do with me being a perfectionist. I get bogged down whenever things are not done properly. I hate it when not all 40 pieces of work are handed in. I dislike having to 'chase' students to hand in work. To me, responsibility need not be taught. It should be something instilled into a child since young. As a student, I always adopted the attitude that "if I don't hand in my work, or if I don't study, it's my own business. I'm responsible for my own future." I don't recall any of my teachers constantly going after my classmates to hand in their work or my parents nagging at me to do my homework. If you don't hand in your work, it's your own freaking problem. I can never understand how and why responsibility needs to be taught.

The worst part about this job is classroom management. Some students can't seem to even shut up for 5 minutes when I'm teaching. I detest it when I'm not shown any respect at all. I got so demoralised on the first day when I officially started teaching that I couldn't sleep well that night. People tell me to just ignore the noisy ones. But I feel so irresponsible if I don't teach the whole class effectively. It's impossible to teach well in a noisy environment. I guess it's partly my fault. I'm just not fierce or firm enough.

At the moment, I'm just living day by day, with no sense of purpose and direction, only looking forward to my pay cheque every month, but not thoroughly enjoying my job. I realise I do not like children as much as I thought. Now whenever I see groups of roudy teenagers on the streets, I find them a pain in the neck. I think I'm not suited for teaching, which requires one to be an educator, parent, administrative officer, social worker and police officer (dealing with gangsters). I don't mind the 1st three roles, but certainly not the last two.

I'm back to engaging in my past favourite hobby: flipping through the Recruit Section. At the meantime, I shall go back to my marking and preparation of lesssons for the little emperors and empresses.

Working Life..

My life for the past week and the next 2.5 months would be as follows: Wake up at 6am and be in bed by 10.30pm on weekdays. I shan't be going into the details of what I do in between those times as I don't wish to indulge in the favourite hobby of the people in my profession: Complaining. All I want to say is that getting a bunch of 13-14 year old kids to shut up and listen to you is no easy task. My perception of a certain group of people has been reinforced through this 1.5 weeks. Shouting doesn't work. So does staring. Maybe I should start taking drastic measures once I officially take over the classes. Whatever it is, I hate discipling kids. At times, I wish they could stop being so talkative and disruptive. Ok, I shall quit whinning.

At least the week ended on a positive note. Managed to build rapport with some of my sec 1 students through my first CCA meeting. While testing out the grand piano with my current favourite song (Guang Liang's tong hua), the kids who were surrounding the piano actually sang along. I was really pleasantly surprised. It's quite a satisying feeling when there are people who appreciate my music and request for repeated playings. There was even one student who asked me to teach her how to play! It got me to realise that not all of them are so disobedient after all. Anyway, the ironic thing is that their current music teacher knows nothing about pop music. When the students approached him to play a song, he told them he only knew how to play Classical music. Immediately, the kids weren't interested already. I don't blame them. What would a neighbourhood school student know about Beethoven's music?

Exhausted. Bedtime.