3rd week. Ahhh~ Feels like I have been teaching since forever. That human nature of adapting to new surrounding is amazing. To be honest, I did not feel like I could assimilate myself amongst experienced teachers in the school at first yet they made me feel like a part of the family. They make me feel at home. I am really blessed to have found caring and wonderful senior teachers.
My seat is rather lucky I would say. It used to belong to another teacher who moved away recently so I was placed there next to Madam Martita who teaches BM. She gives me gifts most of the time. Yes, she is an angel in disguise. I swear to God she is. Not only that, Madam Shanty is another angel. She sits opposite Mdm. Martita and they are both really sweet and lovely. Not just them of course, the rest of the teachers as well.
It was not a great start during my first week there as I was down with food poisoning on the fourth day of teaching. It was not due to food from the school mind you but it was something that I had the night before. Anyway, I had this really terrible diarrhoea and vomiting the moment I woke up that morning. I went to school thinking that I could at least pull through the day and I managed to relieve one class. *beams* However, the teachers saw that I was seriously pale and weak so they managed to convince me to take the remaining of the day off. So I went to see the doctor and got myself a medical certificate. I definitely did not like the feeling of not being in control especially towards my own body.
During the first week, I managed to enter a few relief classes and as usual, students like 'fresh meat'. *laughs* To me, trainee teachers are like a pop of fresh colours to their otherwise mundane and dull school life. So when they saw Alia and I, they were very excited and kept asking questions such as, "Miss, where are you from?", "How old are you?", "Do you have a boyfriend?" and so forth. Seeing those students reminded me of my secondary years. They are the epitome of youth and innocence.
Anyway my assigned classes for English are 4 Science 2 and 4 Arts 2. Oh how they differ! *grins* The science stream students are leaning towards the textbooks style of learning and the arts stream students are very boisterous. Hence I schemed for their activities. I know I must break away from their comfort zone yet at the same time utilizing their strengths. I wanted to make a change in my students. Hence, I did a debating style with my 4S2 girls and I brought them out of the classroom. The topic was on 'Future Shopping' and boy oh boy, they loved it to bits! Even when my double period ended, they were still debating on the topic. On the other hand, I made use of the extra energy by my 4A2 girls by injecting the fun element (eg, charades) into my lesson plan. They are the type who love to move about in class so I did an activity which maximizes movements especially running around and learning at the same time. Guess they will never see English lessons the same way ever again. *laughs*
I have also discovered that one of my Arts stream students is suffering from dyslexia. This means she cannot really read and spell properly so I pay attention to this problem by focusing on slowing down my teaching and one on one tutoring. It is important to realise the differences in your students before commencing future lessons because if you do not find the cause of the problem, it is hard for you to solve it. Just like pulling weed out of the ground to stop them from growing, same concept applies to teaching. Apparently some teachers have told me that some of the students do not usually hand in their homework but I am the type who prefer to conduct the tried-and-tested method so I delivered my first homework to them and true enough, some did not hand in their essays.
What I did was to punish them by making them literally PAY for their laziness. Mind you I do not use their money for personal purposes, I keep them aside. I just want them to realise that they cannot get away with their laziness and even if I give them demerit points, they would not be afraid because their term is ending and when the school year begins next year, their personal point system is of clean slate. Hence I tried this method of imposing fines on them and it worked! Oh my goodness I did not believe how effective that was. I told them that if they do not hand in their essay on the designated date, they are required to pay me RM2 and RM1 for every subsequent day. If the next time they decided to be lazy again, the fine will be twice as the original which makes it RM4 per essay. I mean imagine this, how much longer can the student pay the fine without going broke? I know it may sound mean to some of you but I like to use reverse psychology method. Lo and behold, they diligently handed in their essays on time and so far I have only collected RM4 which means only 2 students did not hand in (but at this time of writing they have already handed in their work). I have no plans on spending the money but to return them on the last day of my teaching but of course they do not know that. It is just a little lesson to teach them the effectiveness of imposing fines.
On the other hand, 2 days ago, my supervisor Dr. Dorothy came to observe me in school and I must admit, I was super nervous hours before she observed me. After getting feedbacks from her, I know I will always have room for improvement and I appreciate all the positive feedbacks she gave. *smiles*
All in all, I have a very good relationship with my students. Class control is not a problem as this school is not known to be famous for its disciplinary problem but famous for academics. All the students are polite and helpful as well as united. This is something which is rare for most people and I am really proud of the girls for being able to look past each other's differences despite the differing race and religion. A united society begins with a united generation. Last but not least, I am enjoying myself in Assunta very much! =)
Warmest regards,
Winnie Nelson
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