First, there was an 'envisioning' seminar for the staff. We basically dissected, discussed and presented about everything in the school's values, vision, philosophy etc, so you can imagine how productive the whole thing was. The first thing the English HOD told me upon our first greetings is to inform me that I will be teaching 3T1 English for the next half year instead of literature, and that effectively soured my mood for the day.
Then my former lit supervisor I did practicum with stood up when one group presented on 'integrity', and basically torched the whole room quiet like a firebrand searing the conscience. She said that we had always blamed the kids on not having such values, but failed to looked at ourselves. In her own words, most of us only regurgitate to students things that they have heard since primary one, and dare us to confess that we had walked into classrooms with the confidence that our lessons will shake the students up and ignite in them a passion like ours.
As always, whenever she said anything, the whole room was quiet as if death had struck one of us unexpectedly, especially when she has jolted us out of the hypocritical optimism and note of cheeriness in the content of our silly presentations. Credits to her for being able to get worked up over issues such as these in the brain-numbing session, for her courage to lambast vehemently everyone in the seminar room, fairly or otherwise.
The day after we have our staff meeting in school; it was insufferable as usual, with the Principal spending plenty of time talking about things that no one needs to know. I found out that I was to be the co-form teacher of the same class that I will be teaching English for.
My problem with that is with the form-teacher - by some coincidence he sat beside me, and when he found out I'm his co-form he immediately told me how I have to 'go hard' on the class, that he will not intervene in any way if I was to punish them, and that they are a terrible bunch generally. He cautioned me against being used by the kids such that the two of us would turn against each other, perhaps because he intuitively know that's probably gonna happen.
Incidentally, he was the idiot I mentioned in a previous post, and he managed to outdo himself right there and then, saying that the school should ban kids from bringing those small fashionable sling bags to school because they don't bring back their textbooks home and bring back their homework to school. Here's a teacher without sense and passion (only thing he has is bad breath, which he inflicted on me whenever he talks) as far as I can see, and it will probably be maddening for me to see him and his ridiculous attitude in action when interacting with the class. It will be a long half year for me. I will do what the school wants me to for this time, but rest assured that I'm not gonna be stuck with this guy in 2008.
English meeting was a breeze in contrast, and I was left with a lot of time to organise the things I lugged back to school. I am placed back at my former table, but this time I made it a lot nicer and homely, shelving a few thick books there as resources, bringing my black kitty beanie and my lizard toy-paperweight to cheer me up, and putting up my poster of the khatsalano to remind me of my dream to carry on kayak-touring.
Familiar environments like these makes me feel comfortable; to sit in the chair that I used to slump into whenever I feel drained by the work, to put things in their usual positions again. I meet a few kids who came back to school for badminton training, and chatting with them made me feel good again about staying on in the school.
I really cannot predict how I'll feel about things eventually; I just hope that I got the energy to last through the bad patches, the cool to back away from difficult situations, and that I can retain a zest for life outside of school, which I failed to retain during my practicum period.
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