Teaching, Week 2

Week 2 started well with a 2-day crash course in teaching over at Teacher's Network, not so much as the overall effectiveness, but more so the extra hour of sleep I got those 2 mornings! It was a good break from going school and the lecturer was quite entertaining and insightful. 38 years in MOE... try beating that!

All good things must come to an end and thus came Wed morning I trooped back to school. A brand new timetable greeted me and caught me totally unaware with no lesson plans in hand. So I thought up some last minute word games for my English classes. Then came the History classes on Thur and Fri, which ended up with me flopping my 1st attempts of passing off as a competent Sec 2 History teacher with (up to) Sec 2 History background. Luckily the kids weren't paying much attention anyway, heh.

In the midst of this madness did came an event which was really meaningful, to say the least. I got "arrowed" to take charge of a class to help out in packing foodstuff at Tengah Airbase for the tsunami victims. My school volunteered our students to help out the Red Cross for this good cause. I was extremely tired after a busy day of teaching and had to admit that wasn't something I was looking forward to. But what I experienced was truly touching. Throughout the 4 hours of packing, I witnessed for the 1st time what the IJ spirit was about. We were so deeply focused in our tasks at hand that it really made me wonder why the hell these girls find it so hard to pay attention in class. Oops, just ignore my spastic comment. To see the girls working so hard for a common cause was very heartening indeed. Their spirits were so high that although we were dead tired at 6pm, they still managed to shout out school cheers to congraulate each other for a job well done. In the end, we managed to pack a total of 11,100 sets that single afternoon, a truly amazing figure with just 300 plus Sec 3 students.

Well, I think I overwrote, so here's to week 3 and more History drama classes! Bye for now!