I thought I would put down some quotes I like from today’s conference for my own reference:

“Excellence without equity is simply not excellence; it is privilege. Equity without excellence is not equity, it is tokenism and leads to a mediocrity that is good for no one’s kids.” – Dr Linda Darling-Hammond

“Teach the student, not the subject.” –  Mr Brendon Nutt

There is one thing I know though – I need to get better at making analogies. All my course mates come up with them easily to explain certain things. I just draw a blank. :/

I found this really interesting, because I’m about to step into teaching, and even after practicum, you get a glimpse that teaching life isn’t all that it’s purported to be. I mean, even when we were just in schools for the school experience, you already got the feeling that all the advertisements on the buses rang hollow. Practicum made me realise the amount of extra work a teacher could end up doing. So I’m just wondering — amidst all this, despite the fact that teaching takes a backseat, do you still enjoy it? Is it still the reason you went into it? 7 years is not a short time.

A comment I received many moons ago. I wonder how this person is doing in school now.

A student from my very first year of teaching came back to school yesterday and told me that I had made a huge difference in her life all those years ago. She asked me if I remembered how I paid attention to her in class and how I chose her to represent the class in a public speaking competition. It seemed that just by doing that, I made her feel like she was worth something. At that point in time, she was feeling bad about herself because she had just moved from N(T) stream to N(A) stream and by choosing her to enter the competition, I made her feel special.

Sometimes, you do so much for some students and they couldn’t care less. Then other times, your decisions and your actions affect them so deeply.

A lot of the time, I get the impulse to quit teaching. If it is not the insane hours during the school term, it’s the administrative work or the difficult students or simply the frustration that nothing you do works. And you start to think that maybe a job that isn’t teaching would be so much better. It doesn’t help when you see people around you getting burnt out and leaving the profession.

And then, once a year, teachers’ day comes around. For me at least, it reminds me why I’m still here – as a teacher and as a teacher in my school. It’s nice to think that you have played a part, no matter how small, in someone’s life – providing them with the  means to move on in life and the opportunity to succeed. Of course, not all my students go on to bigger and better things, but many do go on to have decent lives and when they come back to say hi, I’m happy to have seen them grow. And sometimes this overshadows all the pain and exhaustion the job brings.

That said, I wouldn’t mind being paid more.

Merlin is supposed to make me happy. Please don’t write stories that will make me sad. The spoilers are not helping! :(

Piper

There’s been some conflict between a teacher and a class in school recently. Having heard the teacher’s side of the story, I’m more inclined to believe her because (a) I know the class and it does not surprise me that they act that way and (b) I trust the teacher isn’t lying, being a teacher myself. Of course, I could be wrong so I’m not going to talk about the conflict here. I will, however, talk about what has resulted from it.

I guess I should be thankful that the teacher in question is rarely active on facebook because one of the students has decided to put up status messages calling the teacher derogatory names and generally insulting the teacher. Although the teacher is not named in the posts, it is quite obvious to me and to the students of that level who the teacher is. And it upsets me that some of the students in my form class are “liking” those posts.

I never ever hated any of my teachers before. I might have found some of them boring. I might have found some of them naggy. But I’ve never hated them enough to go out of my way to hurt them. Yet a number of our students do. They take pride in getting the teacher to lose their temper or to break down in class. Then they mock the teacher in person, online, behind the teachers’ backs. And with things like facebook, one status message and you get the whole school dog-piling on the teacher.

Then when you tell them that teachers are humans and have feelings too, the standard response is to go pfft and say “I also have feelings what”.

Teaching sucks.

It is true that I have generally been coasting along in life, allowing myself to be taken wherever life takes me – and frankly, it hasn’t been bad. I have a job I generally enjoy, I live a fairly comfortable life and am quite happy with how things are going.

And then, suddenly, I have to grow up.

Right now, I am an ordinary teacher in a ordinary school. Countless work reviews with my reporting officer (RO) have led to several discussions on my career path and for years I have indicated that (a) I have no idea and (b) I’m quite happy where I am. However, in recent times, the management has been nudging me towards considering the Senior Teacher position. As a result, I’ve been urged to attend various talks and tea parties with other aspiring Senior Teachers. Thus far, I’ve been quite apathetic towards the whole thing. Recently, a talk I went to on taking up the Senior Teacher post has made me reconsider my position since I realised that it is possibly a position that I am more than qualified for. But I am still in two minds about it all. I don’t know if I want or can cope with the extra responsibilities and also how this would impact on the other big decision I have to make.

I have also realised that should I want to have children, I probably need to get started soon since I’m not getting any younger. The problem is I am not sure if I want children yet I don’t actually have all that much time to decide. And if I do have children, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to do what some of my colleagues do, which is to leave their child with the nanny/grandparents for the whole week and only take them back on weekends. Yet should I decide I want to take up more responsibilities, I don’t see how I am going to have time for a child.

So I don’t know. I keep having serious thoughts in my head these few weeks when all I want to think about is how excited I am that Smallville and Merlin are coming back to TV.

Still, I am hoping the food is good at the very least.

I think I will monitor Gamecast on Soccernet tonight.