a day in the life of a relief teacher.
it is a bright and sunny morning. you awake to the unfortunate sound of birds squawking, drag yourself to the bathroom and bang your head against the door while your brother takes his own sweet time showering. after an abnormally cold shower, if you could count the tiny drips that emerge from the shower-head as a shower, you stagger back to your room, still half asleep, and put on the same kind of thing you are obliged to put on every day. after running your comb through your hair a couple of times, being too lazy to make sure you look presentable, you make your way downstairs.
once downstairs, you are greeted by the fragrant aroma of... absolutely nothing! it is surely far too early for anyone to be up to make breakfast for you! thus, you grab the hand of your younger sister, who is half-asleep as well, and proceed out the front door towards the school. when you arrive, you are greeted by a cacophony of screams, shrieks, shouts, and the pitter-patter of little, and NOT SO LITTLE, feet as the little ones scamper towards their classrooms in a frenzy to get there first, for some strange reason. you go into the office, declare your attendance, and then make your way upstairs to the relative safety and security of the staff room.
this is followed by a long period of administrative details that do not form very interesting blog entries.
your usual classes are of course, fairly tolerable and sometimes even amusing, because after all, you've seen these kids many, MANY times in the past couple of weeks and you have grown to love them. the usual crying fits, water attacks and choruses of "miss chong, she took my pencil and won't give it back!!" ensue, but are made tolerable by the adorable little letters they seem to write to you every single day.
you depart from your classroom and return to the staff room, only to find, HORROR OF HORRORS, that there is a piece of paper saying, "relief teaching of class *** at *** time". you look at the classes. primary four, primary five... oh blast! primary six. relieving primary fours aren't that bad. they generally stay quiet, and are not quite trained enough in interpersonal duplicity to make up excuses to leave the classroom. they do their own reading and drawing, and in the corner, a few little choir girls are singing "hotaru koi!" very softly. it's quite sweet, in a sense, watching them. gives one hope for the future.
you move on to the primary five class, and OH NO. someone neglected to tell you that they were supposed to be having music. so you bring them to the music room, and then sit there, not quite knowing what to do. so you assign them groups and begin an impromptu singing competition. you hear groans across the room. "but teacher, i don't know what to sing! you should have given us a day to prepare!" evidently, they don't realise that they have been sprung on you like a surprise. so you tell them, "girls, music is supposed to be fun!" halfway through the lesson you realise what works on j1 girls usually works on primary five girls as well. playing the star wars theme on the piano with the sustain pedal depressed works wonders for making people pay attention and keep quiet. :) and so the lesson goes, fairly smoothly.
then comes the p-sixers. don't get me wrong, i have nothing against p-sixers. some of them are pretty sweet. one of them draws a picture of you. it's adorable. you are temporarily pacified. you tell the class to keep quiet and allow them to talk softly, as long as the noise level stays down. i mean, what else can you do with p-sixers. small pockets of noise cost you a few glares and a bit of patience. after a while, you realise that planting yourself in the middle of their discussion usually lessens the noise substantially. you feel fairly pleased with yourself, even if you know you haven't really kept them completely quiet, because, i mean, you can't expect them to be COMPLETELY quiet.
then you go for lunch and your colleague, an infinitely more experienced teacher, tells you that six girls from that primary six class you were relieving were wandering about the corridor, getting into trouble, while you were in class.
you decide that they're gonna fire you.
you ALSO decide that you'd rather lecture at a university where everyone sleeps when you speak then at a primary school when you actually have to CARE.
and so the story goes.
once downstairs, you are greeted by the fragrant aroma of... absolutely nothing! it is surely far too early for anyone to be up to make breakfast for you! thus, you grab the hand of your younger sister, who is half-asleep as well, and proceed out the front door towards the school. when you arrive, you are greeted by a cacophony of screams, shrieks, shouts, and the pitter-patter of little, and NOT SO LITTLE, feet as the little ones scamper towards their classrooms in a frenzy to get there first, for some strange reason. you go into the office, declare your attendance, and then make your way upstairs to the relative safety and security of the staff room.
this is followed by a long period of administrative details that do not form very interesting blog entries.
your usual classes are of course, fairly tolerable and sometimes even amusing, because after all, you've seen these kids many, MANY times in the past couple of weeks and you have grown to love them. the usual crying fits, water attacks and choruses of "miss chong, she took my pencil and won't give it back!!" ensue, but are made tolerable by the adorable little letters they seem to write to you every single day.
you depart from your classroom and return to the staff room, only to find, HORROR OF HORRORS, that there is a piece of paper saying, "relief teaching of class *** at *** time". you look at the classes. primary four, primary five... oh blast! primary six. relieving primary fours aren't that bad. they generally stay quiet, and are not quite trained enough in interpersonal duplicity to make up excuses to leave the classroom. they do their own reading and drawing, and in the corner, a few little choir girls are singing "hotaru koi!" very softly. it's quite sweet, in a sense, watching them. gives one hope for the future.
you move on to the primary five class, and OH NO. someone neglected to tell you that they were supposed to be having music. so you bring them to the music room, and then sit there, not quite knowing what to do. so you assign them groups and begin an impromptu singing competition. you hear groans across the room. "but teacher, i don't know what to sing! you should have given us a day to prepare!" evidently, they don't realise that they have been sprung on you like a surprise. so you tell them, "girls, music is supposed to be fun!" halfway through the lesson you realise what works on j1 girls usually works on primary five girls as well. playing the star wars theme on the piano with the sustain pedal depressed works wonders for making people pay attention and keep quiet. :) and so the lesson goes, fairly smoothly.
then comes the p-sixers. don't get me wrong, i have nothing against p-sixers. some of them are pretty sweet. one of them draws a picture of you. it's adorable. you are temporarily pacified. you tell the class to keep quiet and allow them to talk softly, as long as the noise level stays down. i mean, what else can you do with p-sixers. small pockets of noise cost you a few glares and a bit of patience. after a while, you realise that planting yourself in the middle of their discussion usually lessens the noise substantially. you feel fairly pleased with yourself, even if you know you haven't really kept them completely quiet, because, i mean, you can't expect them to be COMPLETELY quiet.
then you go for lunch and your colleague, an infinitely more experienced teacher, tells you that six girls from that primary six class you were relieving were wandering about the corridor, getting into trouble, while you were in class.
you decide that they're gonna fire you.
you ALSO decide that you'd rather lecture at a university where everyone sleeps when you speak then at a primary school when you actually have to CARE.
and so the story goes.
posted by jo at 15:54
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