Lesson 5: You get back what you give! No kidding

Been a while since i last updated this blog. Realised that it wasn't so much of being busy, but more of laziness. Writing this would probably take me an hour, which i could better spend on napping. Always craving for more sleep recently, for the past week, i have been sleeping at 10pm. Which for me is very early. Normally wouldn't head to bed before 12am. Anyway, enough about my sleeping habits. Back to relief teaching.

Just like humans, my workload has evolved into something more complicated. For the past 2 weeks, i have been relieving the same teacher who kept extending her MC. Well without her, i wouldn't have any assignment. So in some way i am thankful. At the same time however, i am getting pretty worried about the schoolwork of the children. While i try my very best to ensure that they do not just waste their time away, there is only this much i can do for them. I cannot be a substitute of their teacher, WHICH the school is trying to make me, while paying me at half the rate.

One fine day last week, while i was reading my german magazine in the staffroom during a break, a colleague came over to me and asked how was the marking. Stunned, i could only reply with a blank look on my face "What marking?" So she continued as if it was nothing surprising," Oh the principal asked about you just now and how is it going for the school work. Have you been marking their work?" So there it is, my workload has evolved. All those worksheets and testpapers which i have happily distributed are coming back to haunt me. The feeling of giving out worksheets, knowing that you never need to see them again is distinctly different from those , knowing that you will volunteer to mark them. Frankly speaking, they didn't force me. But seeing the rising pile of worksheets on her table, i felt the responsibility to do something. Furthermore, their exams are coming, i couldn't bear to see these children falling back since they are from the best classes. Oh have i already mentioned that?

Since then, my 5.5 hours mutated into an 8 hours assignment. Overtime pay you say? I wish. Purely volunteer, they say. Put it simply, my 13 dollars per hour job became a 9 dollars an hour job. =( What makes it worse is that it is eating into my study time. So thats one reason which i haven't been updating my blog. Anyway, took me 3 days of 3 hours to finish marking the composition of one class. Instead of grading them, i wrote down better phrases and corrected their grammar and included some pointers on how to improve their composition. Isn't that better?! Sometimes i really wondered what keeps me working so hard without added benefits.

Oh yes, grammar worksheets. Stumped by primary 5 grammar questions. 18 exercises, 10 questions in each exercise, 2 classes of 40 students each. Simple math, 14400 questions. Of course i wasn't so stupid to mark every single one. It would take me a month. So i just flashed the answer on the board, asked the kids to mark themselves. Took no more than half an hour. =) To flash the answer key, i need an answer key. Stupidly, the creator didn't come up with an ans key, so i had to come up with mine. Came across this particular question as i was doing the paper. Given 2 options, both seemed grammatically right, couldn't decide and justify. That spells trouble when you can't explain a question to 40 brainy kids. Like mentioned previously, they will pounce on every weakness you show, and leave you feeling dumb at the end of the day. So I consulted a couple of friends who clearly speak better English than me. Unfortunately they didn't convince me of any answer. So i thought i might as well as the english teachers, thinking that they would know better. And guess what! Out of 5 teachers i asked, 2 gave me one option, the other 3 another. Both with their own reasoning. To be fair, the 2 camps were able to justify using the nitty gritty grammar rules. In the end, we all agreed that the best answer wasn't among the options. So its the question setter's fault.

Walked into a class of cheers today. Its a bad thing. I am now the mascot for "End of oppression". Everytime i am in their class, it provides an opportunity for the kids to release all their toilet pleas, changing of place requests, the chatterings oppressed by the other teachers. Somehow i can't bring myself to shout angrily at the children. You need to sound fierce as mentioned in my earlier post, something which i found difficult. In anycase, i think the days are going to be harder. Even the best classes are starting to rebel.