Thursday, August 16, 2007

Patience

It is as I feared - my new normal tech class refused to do work today and got me freaking pissed.

Ok, not all of course. And their refusal may be due to the fact that the paper has quite a lot of questions on one passage, or that it is the last period of the day, or that they are simply not in the mood at that time. Many just say they don't know how to do it when I bugged them, and I shot back at them asking if they even tried. I wanted it to be a CA assignment, but in the end, because half the class copied from each other, I dropped the idea and got the few idiots left to forget about copying the answers to pass to me after the rest of the class was dismissed.

Maybe I got fed up because my imagined scenario really played itself out, because I actually accepted CA work from my other normal tech class even though a lot of them copied from each other too. Or maybe I was just finally fed up with not being able to stop that from happening. It's not as if they will learn anything from copying, so the whole exercise is futile.

Patience. I must remember that these mentally immature kids usually do better with the soft approach; no use scolding and alienating them permanently. Some really do try hard, and I should carry on doing things for them. They are the product of years of mismanagment by their environment, and it will be arrogant for me to think that I can change their behaviour after knowing them for a few days. Just carry on, help those who seek help, in between say a few encouraging words to the recalcitrant few and see whether miracles happen.

I am in school for 12 working hours for the past 3-4 days. But I wouldn't complain working even longer hours if I only had to sit in an office and do paperwork; that is nothing compared to having a bad lesson which makes you feel depressed and useless for the entire freaking day.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are definitely not useless, never think of yourself that way.

Yes, I agree they need another method of teaching. I get a taste of this every Saturday when I teach music and I go from a 'famous/good' school to a neighbourhood school (no judgement please). You just have to teach them in a way they want to learn and you really cannot apply the same teaching methods to both.

And already once a week can drive me nuts so I can certainly imagine the sheer force you are handling when you face it for more than 12 hours a day!

Keep trying and don't give up ok? ;)

Do this in a level headed manner with realistic expectations.

Wolfie said...

Ha...eh teaching music should be fun la...don't let it drive you nuts. I suppose I did that too to my violin teacher previously, when I go for lessons without adequate practice.