My colleague is thinking of quitting the profession. It gives her more grief than joy. I can understand where she is coming from – being dumped with (extra) duties you aren’t particularly interested in is a pain. And sometimes these (extra) non-teaching duties can become so overwhelming, your actual teaching duties end up taking a back-seat. Or all this leaks into your teaching duties and you can no longer find joy in teaching anymore. Let’s not forget the stress involved as well.
Of course, these aren’t actually extra duties. According to our job profile, we are expected to be involved in research, community work, projects to boost the school’s image and organising national examinations among others. You know, no one told me all these when I first started teaching. I don’t think they tell the new teachers now either which would explain why some are so shell-shocked at the amount of work when they finally qualify as a full-fledged teacher. In fact, there are a lot of things NIE never tells you. So if you are a new or soon-to-be new teacher, these are probably some things you should know about teaching in Singapore.
(a) Teaching is painful and full of disappointment.
You may see those wonderful ads that MOE put out to recruit teachers – cherubic, cute, earnest kids with their eyes brimming with curiosity wanting to learn from you. Or the one above in which they talk about how you will impact students forever. I wouldn’t say they are lies but really, out of the 100+ students you have every year, how many of them will be these students? And how many teachers make this sort of impact?
More often than not, you’ll find yourself struggling into the night planning lessons you hope will engage your students – only to go to school the next day and find that your intricately planned lesson didn’t go as you hoped. On a bad day, it might even completely flop and you will need to think up some lesson on the spot. Or you fight and fight for a student you believe has potential but is hampered by poor family background – only to have the student give up on himself and drop out of the system. Or maybe a student decides to mock you in class, or they swear at you, or after all your hard work and countless remedial sessions and motivational talks with them, they still fail to study and do badly in their examinations. Or there’s a student who works so very hard but you just know s/he’s never going to make it despite all that hard work.
All these situations hurt and they happen more often than you think.
(b) Teaching doesn’t just involve teaching.
Teaching involves being a baby-sitter, being a mother, being an ATM, being an entertainer, being a director, being a coach, being a listening ear, being a counsellor, being a social worker, being a printer, being a copywriter and so on. In my 7 years of teaching, I’ve been a director for two public performances, organised a funfair to raise funds and coached students for debates. I’ve managed websites for the school, written scripts, edited videos, done PR duties, conducted talks for parents (?!), organised workshops for teachers and soon I’m going to have to make a presentation at a conference. I never actually asked to do these things – they just sort-of fell into my lap. And if you ask, they’ll tell you that it is in your duties – which it is. It’s just that no one tells you before you enter.
This doesn’t even include the mountains of administrative work that you have to do.
(c) No one realises how much work teaching involves.
Teachers work very hard. We may not stay in the school for very long hours but I can assure you that most teachers end up working at home during the night and weekends. Then there are compulsory remedials, enrichment outings after school, “holidays” with the students – all of which tend to take place outside school hours. And lessons don’t prepare themselves, worksheets don’t miraculously get completed and let’s say you want to do something more exciting and thus need to cut strips of paper. Guess who needs to sit at the table for an hour cutting paper?
8 comments
takchek says:
February 7, 2010 at 2:43 pm (UTC 8)
How about becoming a private tutor? Will life be better and you can focus on the teaching aspects?
Piper says:
February 7, 2010 at 4:22 pm (UTC 8)
Well, I don’t know about others. For me, the reason I have not decided to move into private tution is that there is a significant difference between teaching in a classroom and giving tuition.
And to be honest, all the things I mentioned above, they make teaching teaching. While I don’t like everything I have to do, I do enjoy some of the experiences teaching has given me.
Adam says:
February 8, 2010 at 12:02 pm (UTC 8)
Only private tutors “teach”, MOE teachers slave away for boh liao stuff that schools are forced to do. As a parent, I try not to bother my kids teachers, I know a lot does so. Is is a mockery of the system when parents still have to spend a bomb sending their kids for private tuition, do not trust those stupid ads. If your calling is to teach as in the academic sense, switch to private tuition. I believe you will feel more gratification seeing yr students improve. After all, a teacher is to teach and not be a part time/surrogate parent. Lessons in life is best left to parents, it’s their responsibilty after all.
mer says:
February 11, 2010 at 9:38 pm (UTC 8)
Teaching in a classroom is certainly different from being a tutor. I believe the former can potentially be more interesting and fun, with lots of room for creative interactive lessons that tuition sessions can seldom bring. However, you need good enough kids in the class. With a class like you-know-what-in-you-know-where, being a tutor rocks!
The Singapore Daily » Blog Archive » Weekly Roundup: Week 07 says:
February 13, 2010 at 12:54 pm (UTC 8)
[...] Re education – Kelvin Teo Writes: About time to rethink about our scholar selection mechanisms – Flying Low: Thoughts about teaching [...]
contrarian says:
February 14, 2010 at 3:12 pm (UTC 8)
Teaching in not unique among different occupations – most have their own unfavourable characteristics, including pain, disappointment, and administrative duties. As you correctly point out, these are part of being a teacher.
If your colleague has set her own wrong expectations and is disppointed with her outcome, or cannot fit her role within the expected role and duties of a teacher, then it would only be right for her to find herself a different destiny.
yellowbrickroad says:
June 11, 2010 at 11:30 pm (UTC 8)
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.
Piper says:
June 12, 2010 at 10:32 pm (UTC 8)
I do since I’m still here. :) I’ll probably do a more detailed reply when I’m no longer depending on mcdonald for my Internet access.