Staying on track.

Ultinately I do not want to be bitter about the beginning years of my teaching career. I have no idea what my career path will be like, and right now I do no know how I can go about going the way I want to pursue. But I think if I want to stay sane, contented and satisfied, I have to somehow be more positive or carefree about things. Do the things I can, refuse the things I can't, and find ways to make myself feel like a person rather than a teacher after work.

That is why I have to stay on as a sports enthusiast, as a amateur athlete. We mustn't 'resign to fate' and give ourselves excuses about having to put work above everything else! I have to dream on about getting my foldable kayak and paddling out in the sea. If I can't make myself happy, I cannot find the mood to teach well in class. The school might not be able to help me, and so I have to depend on myself.

Trying for a view on the bright side...

It is inexplicable - I've got the weeks' lessons covered, but I can't help feeling Monday Anxiety acutely the moment I woke up to Sunday. I do everything with half a mind on the fact that it'll be another depressing week of work with no tangible rewards to be seen or joy to be derived. This is so bad isn't it?

Ok, so I try to make myself feel better. Well, I might be able to go off from work earlier for maybe 3 days this week too, if nothing crops up. This weekend onwards will be the start of my polo competition, and that makes things a little more interesting. Badminton on Wednesday will resume again.

A little further ahead, I look forward to the end of my literature classes with those sloths, and the busy period before and after the exams, settling the paper work before the holiday comes.

Part II...

...and I got off work around 3-4pm for 3 days already since there's no meeting etc. I just wanted to feel what it's like to drop everything take a nap in the noon, and also because it storms every noon and I have to make my escape from school before that happens.

Today I was stuck in the rain with about a quarter of the way back home. I hid under a block and the storm just blew and blew. I was hungry and see no point in standing around the void deck staring at the coffeeshop across the road, so I braved the rain and got a drenching running across for a meal and kopi.

It was already close to four when I got back. I read the news, showered, read something and decided to nap even though it was past five; I have polo training at 7.45pm, and probably need dinner. I ended up over sleeping, waking up at 8plus, got to NTU just before 9pm to find out that training was cancelled.

Ultimately what's the point of my rambling?

• So what if I have no pressing work now? I'll still end up planning for next week's lessons after office hours and in the weekends eventually.
• I'm sick of teaching my stuff, I'm dry of ideas, and the kids and I wear out each other.
• Something about the system must be wrong to have created such situations, though I can't point my finger to it. I know schools can tailor jobs for everyone, but that's just unfortunate.
  

And I pity those academic teachers who have to mark stuff nonstop. I think no matter how busy the work is, one has to pursue things that at least makes you feel like a human being and not a slave.

Oh btw I just got notice of my upcoming promotion in October, but I can't feel the joy.

Heartless

Today I was not in the mood to do my job properly.

The new timetable sucks and I already burned out teaching Literature for 3 consecutive days and CME for 2 days in a row. It is tiring to go 5 lessons straight, even more if I have to discipline kids numerous times throughout the day. And then I had to walk into a class which have no interest in my stubject, and then I have to go crap my way through a CME lesson (no one has told me what to do, or had passed me the resources yet).

I am guilty of staring at the clock constantly wishing the lesson will end, but ultimately, I still look forward to getting away from it all..

New toys!

I've got new toys! I was just eyeing the Gundam Unicorn at the shops recently; it looks really pretty in pink and I'm into Master Grade models recently. Have also been looking at the miniature cute models too, don't even know what they are called but I think they'll all look very cute in my office hehe. I have to resist the temptation to start building them right away every time I see them; already, I have torn off the plastic wrapper to take a peek inside.

All thanks to Karen who bought them for me at some Isetan sale. Looks like I'll have to support her shopping habit from now on!

Good Friday

Good Friday is so good! Somehow, having it coming immediately my short one week break really made me happy this week looking forward to it. Thursday was especially enjoyable when it arrived, even though I had meetings and realised I have another paper to set. I went for polo training yesterday night and also this morning, and after that went climbing till my body's all soft now. Shiok.

Looking forward to more breaks like this!

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On a separate note, there's this prominent blog by a teacher who abruptly shut down his site unwillingly, leaving a farewell note on the site and removing the entire archive away. So sad! I wonder if I'll be forced to do the same one day, with my incessant complaints about my school's people and issues.

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On Thursday, this teacher who used to be a contract teacher (now in NIE training) in the school came back to visit us, and she even said that she hoped she is coming back for her practicum. I didn't know what to say so I kept quiet, but I think eventually I might want to update her on all the unhappy incidents our department faces, and see if she'll need to reconsider her decision. She's such a nice teacher, so I hate to see her 'suffer', though she might be so good that she'll be able to take everything in her stride. I know I can't, because I live for my ideas and I don't compromise on my principles. I just want to go to a school that's at least 'normal'.

Atrocities

My dear principal just postponed my CCA camp again till the end of the year. And my English HOD wants to shut down CCAs for next week so that English teachers can go for some workshop. The P just grilled my HOD for 4 hours yesterday on NAPFA results etc etc, but ultimately it's all about her trying to emphasise that all this school cares about this year is the academic results.

She is the one who does not see the big picture! You don't try to get students to be eager learners by getting them to do assessment work every week. You are not thinking of their physical and mental health if you prevent them from having quality PE lessons (for just 40 pathetic minutes each week) and CCA activities.

Just shut down my department la. 4 more terms before I go, should start countdown already.

Observations in school

1. I think it's damn sad if you're a principal of a school and every time you go to the canteen for lunch, all the teaching staffs avoid you like the plague. Well apparently, a certain principal either can't be bothered to reflect on the reason why, or the EQ just wasn't there to appreciate the situation. If the grade of the school depends on the climate survey, the school is gonna burn every single year...
2. I can't help say this, but outside of the classroom, I will help students very reluctantly. I just have endless admin stuff to do to want to try make time to help students who can't be bothered to pay attention in class. They should thank their lucky stars that at least I take my time to plan lessons.
3. There's a teacher in my school who is sort of the official spokesman to the media whenever there's some functions etc. He is damn diplomatic in his words when it comes to talking to parents etc, but he probably isn't very sincere about his dealings with them, seeing that he is so overworked to care about petty complains. I try to be like him when I deal with parents, but some parents really irritates me with their ridiculous parenting principles, and therefore I really hate to contact parents for any reasons at all. I probably don't really belong to this profession if I don't want to be a hypocrite. But then again, I guess PR is necessary everywhere.
   

The US$ is falling!

The green dollar is getting cheaper by the day, though the price of so many things else had skyrocketed. It's so tempting to go for a shopping spree online, damn! But I can't get the things I truly want...

A NOLS course = Not enough leave for it, too late to prepare for it. (Hm...really? Hm...)

Foldable boat = But Feathercraft has dropped its USD pricing and stuck to CDN pricing to avoid losses! Maybe I should look at other brands...

Maybe I should just go for a holiday at Hawaii or something this June...

I'm a sun!

I actually got the chance to had a consultation with a Chinese geomancer yesterday, who gave me and Karen several good wedding dates for the next year based on our horoscope etc. He also gave us both a personality analysis, and I got to say that most of the stuff that he said about our character was right!

Apparently I have 'big fire' in my character, and uses the analogy of the sun to describe me. According to him, I am generous to everyone, needs freedom to shine, and should engage in business as I have sunny prospects in money-mining instead of getting my creativity and ideas stifled in an environment where no big fortune can be made. I am frustrated and aggressive when I see people blocking my ideas or go against me, and so I should stay away from the government sector as far as possible and go into business and sales myself. From there, I'll have to specialise in something, be humble and work cooperatively with other people (because people will see me as a threat if I'm too aggressive).

Anyone has any ideas on good business opportunities for me?

End of term break!

It's almost the end of the term break; term breaks have never mattered so much to me before. It used to be just play and play. Now, it's still pretty much play and free time, but then there's always the spectre of impending work haunting me, reminding me to repay the debt of due work soon, spoiling my mood ever so often.

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I spent some days climbing, one day playing canoe polo, watched a movie, and the 3 days at a school camp. The camp was rather a waste of time for us teachers, who went around looking as if we are supervising the activities, but actually we simply can't be bothered. We all brought our laptops there to do work, and all we could think of is to disappear and go off to set exam papers the moment we finish our meals.

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Depressing news 1 - I heard from my boss that my principal is going to stay with the school for the next few years, so there's no way I'll stay longer than him. I'll have to plan to make my escape either at the end of my second or third year. I cross my fingers and hope that there's a good school out there for me to go to.

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Depressing news 2 - My English HOD who came visiting at the camp was saying that he chanced upon a bungalow for sale, and that he had wanted to buy it within a $2 million budget. Hm...when will I get to that sort of financial position...

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Depressing news 3 - Every piece of news my department receives from the top is a bad one. In the holidays, the P said that students look sloppy coming to school in their PE attires, so he don't want any students to be seen coming to school in PE attire even if they have PE in the first period. They want us to change our PE module system so that it's easy for them to change timetable, they want us to finish our NAPFA test but don't give us time, and now this. There's so many bloody things that impeded our work already, what's one more man. We'll just do our daily work and all go at the end of our contract that's all.

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So. The term break is coming to an anti-climatic, low-energy end. Thank goodness next week is shorter by a day. After that, my time table will be changed and loaded with more periods, and I'll probably be teaching more nonsense from then on. Teachers are gonna die, students are gonna die together with them.

Wedding bells rang!

Congrats to Xiao Ming and Sharon!~

Thanks for the dinner, it was great! Ah ming ah, when my turn comes you go and help me sing hokkien song ok?

And every time I attend a dinner I will inevitably be reminded of how much I lost contact with friends and people from my past. It was great to see the whole ODAC bunch there, esp. those from the 17th comm. Made me nolstalgic all over again thinking of the times when we see each other at YIH in shorts and slippers ha.

Have a great married life!

If your kid is schooling now...

...just some things you might want to know -

• If the school and certain teachers put in hard work and time to organise enrichment activities for your child, please do take our offer sincerely. We are not trying to do any sort of indoctrination or spread any propaganda through this (though the school might be, by promoting activities under the ministry guidelines, I dunno). But really, we teachers only want to see all students participate actively in everything the school has to offer.
  

• If you really are not interested, just write us a letter of excuse. You do not have to write a long/rude/angry/vehement/malicious one, because we are not really interested in the reason. We just need your signature on black and white to cover our back.
  

• The comments about your child that we wrote in the report book doesn't amount to very much. We try to be as precise as possible when describing your child, but most of the time, they are all just as obedient and attentive as any other kid in class. If your kid doesn't fit in or draws special attention from teachers, you will probably have gotten phone calls about them before that.

• We are teachers, and not tools for you to discipline your child if you don't know how to do that yourself. Please do not come to a parent-teacher meeting and say "Can you ask him not to sleep late/talk too much on the phone/be violent to siblings" etc. They are your kids, not ours.

Passion waning

This week has made me really fed up, mainly because I have to collect stupid forms from my entire level, and chase after the defaulters everyday. Sometimes people will just send out emails, or leave stacks of paper in my paper tray, and ask me collect this and that data or returns from my class. It's all a bloody waste of my time because I do not even have the chance to see my form class to do all this.

I'm really getting pissed off. A teacher's time is wasted on so much useless paperwork, where the hell is there time to try help the students? If the school leaders have some sense, they better reduce all this crap if they really want the school results to be better.

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.