Teaching 4.

I forgot.

This is a continuation of the previous post. I just had an epiphany and I need to write it down before I forget.

I taught my form 1 essay writing, and I asked them to write me an essay. I realised I did not give them a proper scaffolding and it was selfish of me to ask them to do something they have no idea on how to do it yet.

During my lesson, I introduced the format of essay (intro, body, conclusion). However, I should have pace myself and teach them how to do each part first before asking for the whole essay. I feel ashamed now. How greedy and selfish I am to demand them to fulfil my requests when I myself did not guide them carefully. I dismissed their complaints of not knowing how to do the essay as excuses, and that was unfair of me. What was I rushing for?

Gosh. There are so many things I realised I should have done. I should have explained the proper way to write introductions, thesis statements, topic sentences, and also conclusion. I should have given them more vocabulary so that they can add a variety to their writing.

I hope it is not too late to amend my actions of demanding to walk before they can even crawl.

Woeful till then.

Teaching 3.

Holla!

Yesterday was a full day for me. I had back-to-back classes, and it should have made me feel tired, but I was not feeling tired in the slightest. Matter of fact, I felt like I am on a roll and I could keep on going for hours.

Suddenly the prospect of me becoming a teacher did not look so bad anymore.

I had my mentor observing me for the first two period, where I was teaching essay writing to my Form 1. They were very responsive and was eager to finish the work that I gave, despite the lack of information being provided. I even managed to stop them from copying off each other or from my work by threatening them to rip off their paper in front of them. I know, I know, it seems harsh. I was not going to do it for real anyways. I might do the ripping paper act, but it will be just a bluff. This statement, combined with my stern face and loud voice, I was pretty sure I spooked them. The silence was deadly after I said that and I could see them rushing to correct their sentences. At least now they will try their best to make their own sentence and not rely too much on copying off each other.

Next, I have the Form 4s to teach. I just wrapped up the presentations on the short story that I had started a few days back, and after that I let them work on their speaking test.

After that, I have the Form 2s. We discussed the answers to the exam papers, but I felt bored by the time we finished the first two questions. I could see the students' heads slowly bowing down towards the desk, and I know I had to do something immediately. So I asked them if they want to play dingbats, a symbolic word puzzle that I used to play when I was in college. Surely, they were enthusiastic to do just about anything apart from work. After a few puzzles, it was easy for me to convince them to finish up with the discussion with the promise to play more if there were more time available. Of course, the class ended with no time left for the puzzles.

Next, I have a period with the Form 3s. I was feeling a bit rushed by this point as the classes were far apart from each other and I have only a few minutes to transit between classes. I was oddly energetic when I entered the class, and this might explain what I did next. Looking at the students' faces (they looked energetic yet they somehow appeared lethargic), I decided to not start the class straight away. Guess what I did?

Arm wrestling.

Yes, you heard that right. I asked them to arm wrestle with each other (of course, with the same gender). The boys shouted gleefully and I could see in the girls' reactions that my suggestion to arm wrestle have stirred up their interest. Some of the girls were eager to participate, and I also gave an option of massaging their friends' shoulders or just move around  to others who refused to arm wrestle. The activity took about 15 minutes, and you would imagine that they would want to spent the whole period arm wrestling with each other. Yet, after 15 minutes, it was easy for me to instruct them to stop the activity and transit them to the next one which was completing the past years' examination paper. Although there was only 20 minutes left on the clock, most of the students finished the exercise and were eager to show me their work.

I tried to do the same thing with the next class that I have, which was the Form 2, but I did not get a satisfying result. I assumed it was the difference in the level of rationale and maturity that lead to a different outcomes to the same approach. So I quickly ended the arm wrestling activity and proceeded to doing dingbats. I asked the students to focus on finding English expressions that can be turned into puzzles. This dingbat puzzles will then be used on other students  to test their ability to guess the right expressions. The aim for this activity was to enrich the list of expressions that the students have.

All in all, I really enjoyed yesterday. I felt like everything turned out quite alright and I learned a lot in what I should have done and where I could improve for a better teaching. For a better me.

Till then,

Him.

Right now,

I hate how he makes me feel.

Useless. Abandoned. Unloved. Useless. Stupid. Whiny. Useless. Useless.

USELESS.

Saying things like "I don't have time for this" makes me feel like yelling out a retort "YOU DON'T HAVE TIME FOR ANYTHING ANYMORE".

I'm slowly dying inside.

Slowly.

But surely.

p/s We made up. All good. I'm not dying inside anymore. But whenever we fight,  piece of me died inside.

Rain.

It's raining outside, as though the sky is weeping. As though reflecting what I am feeling in the inside at the moment. The sky looks grey and cloudy, and there's not even a single ray of sunlight that I can spot anywhere.

It's shark week. Hence the emotional swings and endless tears. Continuous sorrow and sadness. And the cause of that? Practically nothing and literally everything. Being a lady is so complicated. I'm craving for anything yet I desire nothing. I'm looking for something sweet and chocolatey yet I could not even accept the idea of having sweets. I don't know what I want and I am getting agitated for not having what I want

Somebody pamper me please!!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday, I cried in front of my roommate. I cried because I miss having animals around me. I miss holding babies in my arm. Or cats. I want cat. I want Ulat. I want to hear him purring and feel him rubbing his head on my leg when I feed him. I want to grumble when I see his fur everywhere. I want to go to sleep with him at the end of my bed, and realise in the morning that he have made his way up and next to me. I want to look outside my sliding door and see him kneading and pawing the door, begging to be let in. I want him to look at me with his lazy eyes, and ignore me just so that I can be annoyed with him.

I want company. I miss company. I miss Botak. I miss my good friends when I was in New Zealand, people who care for me as much as I care for them. I am lonely here. I am sick to my core and I am lonely.

So again..


PLEASE PAMPER MEEEEEEEE!!!!


Depressing till then...

Teaching 2.

The first week in school was quite something. The teachers (English ones) were all busy with PT3, which loosely translated as Form 3's assessment. We use to have a national exam called PMR for these kids but they change it to PT3 as PMR was deemed to be "too exam-oriented". To be honest, PT3 is no different than PMR, except it's internally assessed rather than on a bigger scale.

Anyway, so this left the students with no teachers for almost a week. Out of sympathy (more like concern), I volunteered to deliver some lessons or anything that my mentor may have planned for these kids. My mentor seemed a bit shock with my eagerness to not let these kids spent the week without learning English, but she declared that she trusted me enough to let me teach without her supervising me. So I got that going for me. :D

So I've done quite a few more lessons after the last ones, mostly to the Form 2 classes (14 years old). Well, you can't really say it's teaching since I am just making them do the exercises that my mentor gave them before. However, we did discuss the questions together and they did ask me things about the exercise that they didn't know, so I guess learning did happen somewhere in there? I think?

I have done running dictation with the aid of another teacher. As there were two classes combined and confined into one place, it became a little chaotic. Ok, maybe not little. There were many disruptions and getting them to focus on the task was a challenge. And to make things worse, those distractions and interruptions all came from my students.  The first disruption was that my students were late to come into class!! I had to go out to look for them as they were 10 minutes late and were keeping the rest of the class who had to wait for them to begin the running dictation. It took me a lot of patience just to deal with them, but to be fair, my mentor have warned me that the students in that class were indeed more rowdy than the rest.

I'm trying my best to remember the names, as names are a highway to building rapport with your students. It's hard, and sometimes I got their names mixed up (which I have apologised profusely). Luckily, they were understanding. Some of the students were brave enough to come and approach me, which I am really happy about it. Sometime in the first week, my 13 year old students came by to the staff room and approached me. While looking bashful, a girl asked me

"Teacher, why must speak English to you?"
"Well, you need to practice your English. When you go to study abroad, at least you already know how to speak in English."
"But you Malay teacher!"

At this point I was very amused with the question and couldn't suppress my smile or my chuckle. I replied with a situation.

"Well, the Indians speak the Malay language, but are they Malay?"

They were taken aback by my answer. I could almost see the wheels and gears turning in their heads. I guess it made sense to them, or they were trying to make sense of what I said. Either way, my mouth was the one responsible for replying before my brain could properly analyse and consider if the answer was appropriate or not. So blame it.

They were also chuckling while hiding behind one another (girl's behaviour that sometimes doesn't make sense to me) and went away. So that's one of my little funny story that will probably stick with me till I'm old, or I forget it, whichever comes first. Another little story was when a girl (from the same class), who were listening to me discussing things with her classmates accidentally slipped out a comment loudly.

"Comelnya mata cikgu (Translation: How cute your eyes are)"

Okay, maybe I am bragging a little, but I really do wish they would never lose their naivety and innocence. It's so adorable.

Well, this will be one of the longest reading you'll find among my post, so enjoy!


Till then.