Pride comes before a fall

Today marks the end of my stay in school till 5pm for storytelling training! :)

The child that I was co-training with another teacher didn't make the cut to the Finals.

I found myself feeling relieved and glad that she didn't get in actually.

Not that I'm mean, but it often means that I have to stay in school for 10 straight hours without doing anything except training her with a senior teacher. From 1.30 pm to 5 pm.

Personally, I think it's ridiculous to conduct training for 3.5 h a day for storytelling. If it's really solid, on-task training, there's no need to make the child stay so late in school. The other teacher is a single, without a child. And she works in the afternoon session, and she doesn't have any class until 5pm! To her, the training is done during her working hours. But to the kid and me, it's 10 hours straight. We get really tired and want to go home, but the senior teacher insists that we continue. I don't want to be mean but I think that the teacher is being inconsiderate and selfish. She doesn't put herself in our shoes and think of how we feel, mentally and physically. Very often, I fall flat on the mattress or couch the moment I reach home, because my feet hurt so much from standing around. And I'm totally exhausted from the long days.

And all these without being able to do my marking! It's ridiculous!

The other teacher takes LSP classes and has virtually nothing to mark! So while my books and worksheets keep piling, she's as free as a bird.

I get upset with her very much, but I can't say anything since she's a SENIOR teacher. I did voice out to her on one occasion that I would prefer not to stay till 5pm and having my stuff unmarked, but she said something to the effect of 'When I do two sessions, I got no one to complain to.' Honestly, do you do two sessions as often as I do? And with tons of marking undone? You don't even have a book of compo to mark for goodness' sake!

But well, for the sake of good colleague-relationship, I just have to bite the bullet and go on with it. But it's inevitable that I'm abit half-hearted about the competition stuff.

The child herself was getting conceited over her victory in the Semi Finals. She laughed and played with her friends cum supporters all the way to the venue while we were in the mini van. And when she was at the venue, she practically treated that place as her home. It was terribly embarrassing! It all started when she was allocated as the first storyteller. She panicked and we tried to calm her down. The senior teacher asked her if she needed a drink and treated her like a princess. She approached one of the personnels there and asked for warm water, and went back to assure her that warm water was coming. When the warm water came, together with coffee and tea, the senior teacher asked her what drink she would like and got her some milk tea. (Yes, I feel that the senior teacher was at fault in this.)

So she naturally assumed that she had access to the beverages. During the break, she went to her friends and asked what they wanted for a drink and offered to get it for them. I had to put my foot down and asked the 3 girls to 'get out'. I didn't want to be harsh in a public place, but I didn't have much choice, given the way they behaved.

Subsequently, they continued to throw my face away.

They went on stage to take pictures during the break, which was alright. However, one of the girls made a minor damage on a prop and the storyteller screamed at her. Hello! You are on stage leh!!! It was as if the place was her own house. Either that or she thought that she was a finalist-for-sure. Then she ran around the place with her friends, not realising that people were staring.

Embarrassing, embarrassing!

So to a large extent, I was glad that she was out. If not, she would have continued to think that she is up there with the best, when there's still much room for improvement. The worst thing was, she forgot her lines, and her expressions. It was quite a shoddy performance to speak the truth. I saw what 'Pride comes before a fall' meant on her. Incidentally, she narrated a story about a moral.

She cried at the end of the competition. I comforted her on the outside, but I thought she quite deserved it on the inside. :)