Thoughts of a recreational canoe polo player

There aren't many out there in the canoe polo scene who are like me. I still enjoy playing the game, and (faintly) hope that eventually my team will win something again this year, but don't mind if we end up with nothing either. My team can't even come down to train together much anyway, though we usually can find 5 of us together to whack the junior team.

Not being very concerned with the competitive aspect of being in a tournament, I find it irritating to meet young teams who goes all out to win and abandons sportsmanship to the wind. You can beat people fair and square, but to do that by jeering the opposition shows your immaturity.

Right now, I am actually finding more satisfaction from coaching my juniors even more than playing in the game myself. It gives me great pleasure to see them learn and improve to be a match-winning team, and I look forward to the day when they join my alumni group and play alongside with me.

Ultimately, I like to think that I'm helping the sport to grow in this way. If we cannot exert our influence in great ways to grow the sport, at least we are helping to sustain the teams that keeps the sport alive and raise our standards.

Looking for a nice work place

Last Monday, the news was that our usual staff meeting will only last one hour, but then after that we have to go on a staff outing sort of thingy on chartered buses. It felt as if there's no difference for us in the sense that we'll still leave school at 6pm.

But then when we got up the bus all together, it turned out that I actually enjoyed the experience, of having colleagues laughing and joking about every small thing. We also had a few teachers who went up to the mike on the bus to share some of their past stories. At the end of the trip we all went to an eatery and had tea break together. There was food and talk and it actually made me quite happy even though I was in a terrible and irritable mood that day for no good reason at all.

Now if only my school will throw up nice surprises to us once in a while to make everyone happy like this. All too often, things are piled up onto us, and all of us are juggling tasks big and small day in and out, and the things we need to do are neverending. The school leaders are also wont to throw us unpleasant surprises such as cancelling a forecasted PE event which a colleague of mine had planned nicely, and nearly threatening to do the same for my CCA's camp this March. Even staff welfare activities seems like a drag when people have to specially make time for it.

I'm actually thinking of how I can perhaps try to make the office a nicer place for the other staff once in a while...

Staff welfare?

This year, I was selected to be in the Staff Welfare Committee and volunteered for the Secretary role. But the guy who got the program IC eventually approached me and asked to change positions with me, saying that I have more energy, I am more active, I know more about those PE activities kind of bull. I just gave in and we changed our position. Well he did ended up doing good work as a secretary, including things I wouldn't like to do such as making calls and sourcing out for presents etc.

Meanwhile, I was tasked to hold the first games day session for staffs last friday. It was a total flop. One teacher was there earlier and played basketball with the school team, but when the time came but no one came down to join us for the games, he went back to office.

I can't be bothered too. Fridays are CCA days and most people are in school because of it, and CCA always end late for everyone. If they don't have CCAs, no teacher will want to stay back on a Friday unless they have urgent work to settle, which also means they wouldn't want to come down and play. None of them are dressed in the proper attire anyway.

So eventually I saw my SWC head and she asked me if I can make an announcement to the staff room for teachers to come down. I hate the thought of doing that and didn't do it; I went to join my CCA group instead with the activities. just before 6pm, it drizzled, and I was glad that gave me the reason to make my escape.

Seriously, if I have to stay back on Fridays and I'm not in the SWC comm, I can't be bothered either. What a stupid suggestion. Next meeting I'm gonna shoot down this idea.

An unfortunate epiphany

Walking down the corridors of my school today, I suddenly realised that I really hate this job. In one good day, I bore grudges against the students, school leaders, parents and the work I do, all at once. A student is unrepentently disruptive and sneakily hide behind mummy's back to proclaim his innocence and counter that I used vulgarities in class! And others who refused to take part in an enrichment program of my school, which irritates me because I am collecting the consent forms and have to eventually call them one by one.

Protective mummy had defended idiotic kid for every bloody thing despite the so many complaints against the kid from different people in school. Another mummy wrote outright rude comments that sounded like a primary school kid's outburst on the enrichment program consent form.

My P and VP wanted to cancelled my CCA's anticipated camp, citing silly reasons like the students and teachers will be overtaxed and will end up taking MCs. They want to achieve the national grade for CCA scores, but come up with all sorts of ridiculous limitations to hinder my HOD's effort to try achieve that in an effort to show thoroughly unnecessary 'welfare' for students. They are going to let kids who skip CCAs 90% of the time for 3 years get a passing grade by just helping out for 1 day out of a 3 day CCA camp.

My work consists of handling large amount of paperwork, going for long and tedious meetings, calling up parents for all sorts of silly reasons unrelated to students' academic performances, and having to do silly things like organise games for staffs who are all equally taxed and have no desire to waste time playing in school.

I hate to wake up at 6am, and cycle to school 15 mins later. I hate to spend 15 mins after I reach school to set up the badminton court for my PE lesson, and end up feeling stressed and hungry without breakfast at the start of the day.

For the first time in my life, I am unashamed to say that today, I am in this job for the money, nothing more.

I flooped!

It is a day to remember. Finally, on the 16th of February, in the presence of my paddling kakis, I did my first floop.



Think it has been more than 2 years since Jacob first did the floop, but I have only been trying to do it practicing in spurts, busying myself with a lot of other things. Having been practicing more regularly now, I have got used to some of the required movements, but it was only today that I caught 2 more details to doing it -

1) Takeoff angle must be forward-leaning and not purely vertical.
2) After throwing the body forward, the back-arching and legs throwing forward must be done immediately before hitting the water.

Now to replicate the success in my own playboat, and to aim for consistency and adaptability.

Inequality in the class

I'm marking the comprehension questions for my Sec 2 normal technical class's English common test now, and the disparity in standards among individuals is shocking. The questions are all pretty easy to begin with, and I start off the answers with a few words, so they need only to complete the sentence. There's a third who got almost everything right, and roughly the same number of people got everything wrong. How the hell are these kids going to catch up with the rest?

I have been toying with the idea that perhaps I can start an after-school reading program for the kids, because the kids badly needs to learn to read better, but I have no idea how to go about doing that. Do I get them seated in a circle around me while I read out stories word for word to them, or do I select things for them to read themselves? And how am I going to convince these kids to stay back to do something they know is boring?

It is almost a feeling of guilt, that I don't have the time to think about doing something more outside of class to help them in English. I devoured a book titled There are no Shortcuts by America Teacher's Award winner Rafe Esquith recently, and it sort of stirred up these complex emotions in me, provoking me to consider if I can just busy myself doing what I am doing so far without going the extra long mile like that guy did to make his students mature into outstanding individuals.

Will post a review of that book when I have time, it's really disturbing to my waning convictions.

Pride

An email was sent out to teachers by the teacher of the student council, asking us to excuse those Sec 1 students who are to attend councillor selection. There is a whole list of people from the top 2 Express classes, and only 3 names from my class, the last Normal Academic class of the Sec 1 level. Two of them were nominated by me, but a few others wanted to go for it too. So after assembly talk today, I called them out and asked them to submit their forms asap if they have not done so.

I don't know why, but I am upset by a sense of injustice from seeing the list. I had been discerning and only nominated 2 of my kids with clear potential to be good leaders. I am not sure how many of those in the long list of Express students were actually teacher-nominated (the rest have to get the form themselves and look for teachers to endorse their nomination), but even for these students I suspect there is a lack of care in selecting them, or perhaps over-zealousness in wanting to promote these students. My kids have fine personal qualities too, and I want to ensure that they have equal opportunities.

Post-CNY blues

I spent Sunday morning and evening preparing lessons for 3 different subjects, plus writing up my 15 page work review form.

I have been trying to make myself gain back some paddling power again, and have been doing my pullups fairly regularly. After badminton yesterday, I am now aching at the lower back, rotator cuff group and wrist extensors. And it was a sucky session for me too! Hard to keep up playing standards for the game still.

Woke up feeling like shit, and dozed off at a meeting just now. Next meeting coming, I hope I don't concuss. Not that I mind what I am missing...

This week is gonna be busy...shucks...am hoping to play one more round of mahjong this Saturday before the New Year mood wears off...

CNY holiday!

Ok it has been a good break this holiday. I've been busy offline doing things, and don't even feel the urge to check my mail etc. After the half ay of work in school on Wednesday, I went for badminton session before the reunion dinner. First round of mahjong yesterday night after the visitations, and second round coming later! Have to finish my work review by tomorrow before going for movies and more gambling, and it's sporting Sunday as usual for me.

In the last few days, I...

• finally won money at mahjong!
• nearly got outplayed in pool by a 10+ years old girl, but somehow managed to be pretty good myself despite not playing for years.
• had seen more examples of my Principal's ineptness and lack of EQ. I wonder if the horde of new teachers who joined my school this term did their research before coming over.
  

My holiday seems shorter the more I enjoy it...

Professional Development

Had a talk with my HOD yesterday to discuss about target setting for work assignments and review. I'm glad I did my homework, and all the targets etc were agreed upon. I took the chance to find out from her about my future career path, and I asked her how I can work towards the MOE Specialist track at HQ.

Basically, there are literally only a handful of people who are on the specialists in each branch within HQ, and the rest of the teachers who don't embark on that track will be reposted back to school eventually. Selection for these positions is pretty much by networking - making your name known to the people that matters, such that if vacancies appear they will approach you with the interview offer.

The problem now is that my school has a principal who wants to take the most direct way to getting good results for the students, rather than look at things from a larger perspective and focus on staff development. We can only be allowed to go for a single course if it is a full day program that will cause us to miss classes.

Hence, most likely I'll have no chance to take up important courses related to the outdoors as they are all full day courses lasting several days. If I can't go for any courses organised by the branch, they can't get to start knowing me and the work I do.

5 years will be the longest I'll stay in this school, unless I start getting opportunities for greater things.