After 4 years ...

Today is the last day to apply for a transfer to a new environment.

I was in a dilemma. There were factors to consider:

For staying

1) The colleagues are probably the nicest I have ever come across.
They are helpful, approachable and friendly almost all the time. I am not sure about how much politics there are because as far as I am concerned, I don't think there is any.

2) The middle management think well of me.
They spoke up for me when I was attacked by the bitch. They think that I have the skills to handle upper-level children.

3) The First and Second Bosses are nice to me.

4) The bitch is leaving.
I won't have to be afraid of anyone attacking me maliciously at the ranking session.

5) The distance of the school is just nice.
It's not too near to my home, so I don't have to be conscious of my dressing, behaviour in my own neighbourhood, or hide at home for the whole day when I take an MC. It's walkable from the MRT station so I don't have to go through the gruelling and stressful experience of waiting for a bus every day.

For leaving

1) I am tired of the apathetic attitude of the children towards their own studies.
Most of them are satisfied with a 'Pass' and are not affected even if they fail. The place is a feeder for Normal Academic students for the neighbourhood schools.

I can't give homework to the children, because I end up spending more time chasing after the homework! And if I can't get the worksheets back, guess who has to do the photocopying for the children? We do have book- and file-checks by the middle managers. It's our fault if the children's files are not complete with worksheets.

2) The long working hours
The last straw came when I received an email about a workshop that falls on Teachers' Day Celebration, and it would start at 3.30pm! I can assure you the workshop will last till at least 6pm or 6.30pm. What kind of Teachers' Day is that?!!

It reminded me of the meaningless stays in school week after week. That was the decision-breaker.

When the ministry stipulated that schools would end at 10am on National Day Eve, I had to stay back for a 3.5 hour meeting to do up a stupid lesson plan!

I decided I have had it with this school.

I am scared of the unknown. Who knows what kinda people and workload I would face out there? But I really don't want to complain no end about the school when I can do something about it. If I have always thought that there is no place that can be worse than here, then what am I doing?

3) The inefficient systems in place.

a) Worksheet-printing

In my previous school, we just have to send in the worksheets to the printing lady and it's none of our business anymore.

But here, before you send in the worksheets for printing, you should negotiate a comfortable deadline with the printing lady. Sometimes your printing is rejected (!!!) because she feels that it's too much for her. Although the First Boss had stipulated that we should send the worksheets in 3 days before we need it, the printing lady could reject printing your worksheets even if you send in one or two weeks before, depending on how much she has to print! After successfully sending in the worksheets for printing, you need to check with the printing lady if your worksheets are ready. If they are ready, you have to carry the whole level of worksheets up to the staffroom to distribute them to the teachers in charge of different classes!

In my previous school, we had a class pigeon hole which the printing lady would place the printed worksheets, individually in the classes' pigeon holes. The teachers or monitors could collect them and go.

Worse still, in this school, you have to sort out the number of worksheets yourself as the printing lady does not print according to the number of students in the classes. I could spend one hour just sorting out the worksheets for distribution!

b) Printers

We have only 1 black-and-white printer and 1 colour printer serving the whole staffroom of about sixty teachers.

The default setting for the printers is 'Letter' for paper type. Each time you want to send jobs for printing, you have to change the setting on your laptop so that the printing do not have to be 'press the button one time to get one piece of paper printed', especially the colour printer. In the end, everybody uses the black-and-white printer.

Some selfish idiots would put used papers as printing papers so that when you clicked 'print' on your laptop and walk a mile to the printer, you find your jobs printed on used papers and you have to reprint the jobs. It's simply frustrating!

We only have one photocopying machine serving the whole strength as well.

When it breaks down and the admin manager has to call in a technician, she gets very upset because she feels that teachers vandalise the photocopying machine on purpose - because the technician says that the breakdown was due to human faults!

Hello! It's 1 pathetic photocopying machine! If one person photocopies one sheet of paper every day which is pathetically ridiculous, the copier would have been used 60 times a day, 300 times a week, 1,200 times a month! You think the machine is a teacher ah? No need to rest.

And if the machine had been user-friendly, why would anyone need to pull the handle so hard to put papers in?

c) Doing meaningless work

Why should 5 or 6 teachers sit together to look at a test paper for hours when it should be the middle managers who do just that?

And the worse thing is, the person who did the paper had to do a major overhaul because every single question and MCQ option is being edited!

We might as well sit together and create the paper from scratch!

We are often sent for workshops. I don't even get to choose to attend the courses I want. I am just asked to go. And the workshops often run for weeks, after school, till 5.30pm.

It's no wonder no teacher wants to stay back in school further. Even if students from my class need help at the general office and I am about to leave, I don't want to ask them what the matter is, simply because I don't want to have to stay back for a minute more.

4) The suffer-in-silence culture

The teachers here are nice. Too nice sometimes.

The culture is such that we take what we are given - the work, I mean.

Whether it makes sense doing it - doesn't matter. The boss says - I do.

We did up lesson plans after lesson plans for the whole level of teachers. Who follow the lesson plans? God knows! Even we ourselves don't!

We have meetings after meetings, and type minutes after minutes, and endeavour to rack our brain to fill up at least one A4 sized of paper for the minutes!

Then we file the soft copies of lesson plans and minutes in different folders. After that, we print out the hard copies of lesson plans and minutes to file them up in files that only one or two persons would check - all for the sake of looking like we are doing our work.

One word ... STUPID.

Something that pushed me towards applying for a transfer happened yesterday. A teacher-aid said that she was asked to attend a rehearsal.

I asked her,"For what? We are in charge of the decoration. How would being at the rehearsal help us decorate?"

She was shocked and said,"The middle manager asked me to attend the rehearsal! I am not going to ask him for what!"

I was ... stunned on the inside - isn't this how we are like in this school? 'I am not going to ask why I have to do this! The managers ask me to do, so I do!'

I want to get out of such a culture.

5) I am sick of feeling lousy.

A parent was extremely upset when she was asked to fetch her daughter from school earlier than the stated time at 9.20pm after the NE Show.

Despite being surrounded by 7 teachers who listened to her ranting quietly, she said this,"I know that this school is the lousiest school in this area."

I have always thought that parents don't know the lousiness of the school and that's why they send their children here, but I was shocked to know that the parents were aware, and yet still send their children here. I can't help but feel that the parent seem to think that she has the right to abuse us just because we are teachers - in a lousy school at that.

And why is the school lousy?

Would your child have performed well if the school set high-standard or difficult papers?

Would your child have been able to learn anything at all if she were taught at a higher-level?

I feel my self-worth depreciating the longer I stay in this school.

On my mind

I am worried, and afraid, that the new environment would not be as kind.

I am worried about the workload. I don't know if it really could be worse.

I am worried about the distance I have to travel.

But I need to take the risk. If not, I would despise myself even more for not even having the courage to leave a place I feel trapped in.