Call it whining and groaning if you like

I just came home from a Science workshop.

I feel so sprawled out I see a mental picture of myself sprawled out on the floor.

Teaching is crazy. People who criticise teachers for being whiners and groaners ought to be teachers themselves.

I have nothing against the job. In fact, I like children and enjoy them a great deal, just that when it's a whole lot of 40 of them, especially when they are unadorable in their behaviour, it really puts you off.

Yeah, I know the talks about 'we should love the unadorable' or 'it's like doctors saying they want to cure the healthy'. But do you have 40 patients coming to the doctor together and you spend 5 hours a day with them for one whole year?

It's really a different matter altogether.

How many people gulp down their lunch every single day, with just 10 minutes for them to buy and gulp? It's so unhealthy. We teach about digestion, and make all the talk about being healthy, and yet, teachers lead one of the unhealthiest way of life of among civilised people. We don't have time to even mark the books because we're occupied with nuances of admin work, workshops to attend, and neverending calls to make. I can't believe people saying that replying emails is within their jobscope. We don't have time to exercise that's for sure. We don't have a life. Our friends are our colleagues because we don't have time to go out to meet some REAL people. Even among colleagues, we don't get the lunchtime to talk over because we either don't have time for lunch or we gulp down lunches within 10 minutes so as to rush for another set of work. It's not as if we ask for these work. Oh, and our own kids suffer the most because their mothers are too busy for them.

In my heart of hearts, I do want to sit down and come up with some Grammar exercises and Composition word bank for my class. But I don't even have the time and energy to mark the compos I gave them weeks ago!

We work non-stop for 10 to 11 hours. And I mean non-stop. And our job dictates that sitting down is a deadly sin. Even factory workers get their one-hour lunch break (although I cannot be 100% sure since I don't know any factory worker personally).

I'm not sure if it's this school or have all schools become like this.

I'm just so tired.

Last Friday, when school was out, he came to inform me that I was 'nominated' to attend a workshop after school for two days, so 'no relief is required' - as if it's something worth being ecstatic about. When I told him I got remedials to conduct on Tuesday, he asked me to get some teacher to cover it, so that I could do two days of remedials the following week!

It's ridiculous!

He flatly refused to cancel it.

Why do you do something unto others when you yourself wouldn't want to be treated in the similar manner?

Sometimes I do miss my previous school. At least the HODs do reliefs, and are humane enough to put themselves in the teachers' shoes. They don't pile on something on you they wouldn't do to themselves.

I just hate the neverending meetings over there. Almost every other day, there're some kind of meetings which in turn generate more work at the end of the meetings.

Are teachers so darn stupid? Always giving themselves more work without taking the old stack off? Perhaps we deserve where we are. Work work work, and work work work. I am too embarrassed to tell others that I don't have a hobby. The only hobby is blogging, and chatting. Because basically, I don't have the luxury of time to have a hobby, or to step out of the house.

And sometimes, I don't bother to end my posts with a concluding statement - you know how GP essays always need to have a proper ending? Because I just don't want to bog myself down with details like this in my personal life, when I've already have too much of it in my work life.