school daze

Growing up, Mumsy never forgot to remind me what a bad girl/student/daughter I was whenever she could, and that always made me feel like the worst kid around. I know exactly what's it like to feel as though you've self-esteem issues but I also now know she probably didn't mean it back then and she's just behaving like most other Singaporean Chinese parent; always ready to lecture and never giving enough credit to the kid. 

Anyway, the stipulated 5-week teaching attachment of my second year ended 2 weeks ago. Like last year, I had to take time out from our long mid-year break to spend at my allocated schools. But unlike last year, where we merely observed lessons at a primary and secondary school for a week each, I stayed put for 5 weeks at a primary school and got to interact much more with pupils this time round. 

And learnt what an angel I was. So, I went back to Mumsy, wagged my finger and asked her, "Why were you so unhappy about me back then?"

I mean, how could I be such a bad kid when the naughtiest things I did in school were merely throwing tiny chunks of erasers into the front of my classmate's (notice I didn't say "friend") blouse to shut her up when we got into heated arguments about who should give out worksheets, and sticking fallen feather-dusters' chicken feathers into some girl's ponytail because I got bored of the teacher's monotonous droning during big-book reading.

And I guess to Mumsy, academic results = good/bad discipline. Not exactly the best equation you can put together and I shall not go into the things that I had to go through when I scored something less than a perfect 10 for spellings in my lower primary school days, but you can be assured that they didn't leave very pretty marks on my arms/legs/other-unfortunate-body-parts.

So... enough digressing and back to the teaching attachment. I was made to observe two Primary 3 classes, one a higher-ability class and the other a lower-ability one (and yes, pupils are still separated into classes according to their learning abilities) for about 2 weeks before I decided "NO. No more observations or I am going to fall asleep in class with the kids." And I got to teach for the first time, finally. 

Then I found out that teachers do not merely impart knowledge to their pupils. They also have to complete many administrative tasks, break up fights/squabbles among pupils, take charge of CCAs, sit for endless meetings, finish teaching the syllabus even when there's a lot of interruptions in the forms of workshops/concerts/celebrations/etc, speak/complain to parents about their children's attitudes/work, mail out good behavior cards, be in charge of concerts and celebrations, account to the principal and vice-principal when pupils misbehave or do poorly in tests/exams, bring pupils out for excursions/field-trips, put on a fierce front even though you are really at your wits' end and crumbling inside/dying from suppressed laughter, and of course, have trainee teachers come into your class to disrupt the flow of lessons.

But all thanks to my CTs (teachers whose classes I'm crashing) and the two classes, I now know slightly more about teaching, managing and engaging primary school kids than what I used to (basically zero knowledge). I learnt that the same trick may/may not work for 2 classes with different learning abilities, primary 3 pupils love it if you can include games and videos (something interactive) in your lessons, there are only two favourite colours (pink and blue) and this is reflected in their choice of schoolbags, they react strongly to the words "boyfriend" and "girlfriend", lowering your tone gets their attention and signals an ominous occurrence, bimbotic behaviour starts at 9 years of age, some children speak faster than they can think, some children stand up to answer questions even before they thought about the answers, boys can have higher pitches than girls when they are 9, the points-reward system works quite well. 

No other term would be more apt than "eye-opener" to describe my 5 weeks at the allocated school. Apart from all the nitty gritty teaching-related/classroom-management bits, I also heard about different 'horrors' that some of the permanent teachers had went through. When my CT told me of pupils who would hit teachers or throw chairs at them, I thought she was kidding. Only she wasn't. I've heard of such things happening in secondary schools and ITEs, but primary school, aren't the students a little young here for furniture-tossing? Oh... and if you're interested to know what you can do if you ever get caught in such a scenario, don't laugh now... sit on the chair quickly before the kid can raise it! Apparently it works quite well.

And this is probably the Nth time I'm saying this, but you know how some teachers threaten to call parents occasionally when the pupils misbehave? That doesn't work so well in this school, but threats to call the police work like a charm, most of the time.

On my last day, I had lunch with my CT and two more colleagues at Holland V. We ate and talked about the pupils, and their parents. And then I felt a deep sense of dread, knowing that I am definitely going to be stuck in some helpless situations in the near future when I finally have to deal with parents... I need to start racking my brain for solutions to them. Anyhow, you will not believe how irresponsible some parents can get. Parents who are drug addicts, pedal contraband cigarettes, receive financial assistance from the school but drive big cars to collect the money... just to name a few examples. In such instances, it seems totally irrelevant to be angry with the kids if they are the ones giving you problems in class. You really won't be surprised to find out why they ended up the way they are. I can't help but feel sorry for them, and right now, I can't help but not do anything else. 

All that sharing by my CT and colleagues made me realize how lucky I've been, growing up. And it also made me realize how little I know about the world of students. I won't be wrong to say that I've been leading a very sheltered life in all the schools that I've been to in my life, but not witnessing any traumatic bloody fights doesn't mean that they don't happen... and this attachment's shown me what an ignorant twat I've been. I'm looking forward to my next attachment, and since I definitely will not be posted back to this same school, I'm going to look forward to facing an entirely different set of problems in the next one. Till then, I hope the kids that I've worked with in this school will study and play hard!

ps: I miss being called Miss Chang... a little.