Receiving a hate mail

I finally got my haircut!

It happened on Thursday when my colleague told me that there was no 2-hour Contact Time after the Compulsory Exercise Hour.

Another colleague remarked that it felt like a bonus when you know it just after the Exercise Hour.

And because of the cancellation of Contact Time, I could rush home to confirm Coco's birthday cake design and flavours, and go for a haircut which I had been dying to have for a long time. But by the time Coco and I reached home at 10pm, both of us simply collapsed on the bed and conked out.

Yesterday, I took the students to Newater Plant. After I came home, I ate some maggi mee, went to my room, and collapsed on the bed to a trip to zzzz land at 7.30pm.

When has teaching become such a tiring job? It literally saps your energies - mental, emotional, physical - every single day. And we're not talking about marking yet.

I've been telling myself to train Coco for her Oral exam which is this Monday, but I haven't been able to find time for it.

I asked a P5 boy to write a letter explaining why he didn't like me lately.

He had been a good boy when I first taught him in P3. Recently, I noticed that his attitude had changed. He banged his things on the floor, or stamped his foot hard, and turned and looked elsewhere when I scolded the class.

Let me qualify the situation first:

This is a very active class. Every teacher complains about the class. Teachers who relief the class in my absence tells me that the class is 'horrible'. The students have very poor listening skills. They have difficulty paying attention and listening to others when they talk. They are constantly talking. Instructions always have to be repeated 4 or 5 times before they get what the teacher wants them to do. They eat in class, talk loudly, and of course, default on handing in homework. And this is supposed to be the second class at the level.

So, I tried to talk to the boy, but he refused to talk, and as usual, I had time constraint because I needed to go for a workshop. So I asked him to write me a letter explaining his behaviour and why he didn't like me.

He really did it, surprisingly. I surmise it's because it's something that he's been wanting to do all along.

In the letter, he wrote that he knows that I think he's 'playfull, stupid and many more', 'naughter', and he doesn't like me because I always make the class stay back after school as his parents scold or nag at him whenever he's late in coming home.

Now, when the students go home at 1.30pm or 1pm, I get to have a short break of half an hour before the real work commences, every day.

However, this class is so active that they refuse to behave properly during lesson time, and every day, I have to wait for them to settle down at different points of time during my lesson, waiting for them to finish expressing their neverending opinion, waiting for them to finish settling their disputes that happen to arise during class when they are talking among themselves, waiting for them to finish talking to one another, or shout at one another right under my nose. Time is always wasted waiting for them, so recently, I've been making them stay back to finish up the lesson.

Truth be told, I've always been a strict teacher when it comes to classroom management. However, I try very hard not to let the strict teacher in me take the rein when it comes to this class. And I get extremely irritated if I have to repeat my instructions twice. I make allowances for this class, and pull up my threshold for noise level, knowing that it is a very 'special' class. But it apparently doesn't work.

The boy also wrote in his letter that 'every group must have people that will not like you' - I have divided the class into different groups to encourage competition for good behaviour and good results. Apparently, it doesn't work with this class either - and I went back to tell the class I really don't care if they like me because my job is not to make them like me. And they were surprised. That expression was priceless!

Yes, sometimes you wonder if the job's worth it. You make the children stay back after school to finish up the lesson and they hate you for it. But they don't recognise that it's their fault in the first place to begin with. They just want to have fun regardless of the time, place and context. As a supposedly jaded teacher, I really would like to let go and don't care if they do badly, but for my personal pride, I can't let go. This class is under my charge. I cannot let them go without helping the good or well-behaved children reach their potential. The majority of the children may not be worth it, but I cannot let that affect me and shortchange the ones who desire to learn.

It's this pride that's preventing me from becoming too jaded.