Term 1, Week 6 already

Woah, should I be happy or should I be shocked..that 5 weeks of school has passed us by already. Next week is common test week, I sure hope my kids are ready for it. I foresee mass remedials this coming week.

Missed an old friends' dinner yesterday night..haha..because of my sony ericsson phone. When I used to use a nokia phone, I would be able to tell the time that a msg was sent to me, even if I switch off my phone at night. Now with my sony ericsson, if I switch off my phone at night, and someone sends me a msg laaaate at night, when I get the msg the next morning, it would register it as being sent to me at the time that I switched my phone back on. So here I was today, thinking that I had a dinner with my friends tonight (Sat), when they already HAD the dinner last night. Oh well..

Recently read this off Trisha's blog (http://trisha-reloaded.blogspot.com/), and I think it kinda describes how I feel too...... :)

Love/Hate relationship

I have a love/hate relationship with school. I mean, on 2 Jan, I was ready to slash my wrist at the thought of going back to the grindstone. The break was over, I couldn't imagine facing those students, the endless marking, meetings and those noisy juvenile Sec 1 kids.

3 Jan came. The bewildered-looking Sec 1 students amused me considerably. And my seniors, those whom I was in charge of, and who had been undergoing training since Nov 2006 to run the Orientation Program, I don't know how to express my gratitude to them. They were an awkward, diffident and lackadaisical lot when I first met them in Nov. But in the first 3 days of school, they miraculously rose to the occasion, took charge of things and had the Sec 1's eating out of their hands. It was a marvelous sight to behold and I want so much to give each one of them a big hug and say how proud I am of them!

Then I realised the transformation occurred in me too. I had met all my classes, and now I'm all ready to go. Yes, the madness will be there and I'll soon be bitching about the stupid admin work, the mountains of essays that gather under my desk and the students who terrorised me, but somehow, when I step into the class, I'm a different being. I have discovered that with each new year of teaching, I'm more confident, more certain of why I'm doing this and how I can do this better. The students are my fuel and my sustenance and it's a glorious feeling to be in the midst of so much youthful energy.

If I am not a teacher, then 3 Jan would come and go, hardly making a ripple in my working life. But now, I am in one of those few professions in which a new year literally means a new beginning, new class, new timetable, new challenges. So, in a weird, inexplicable and even perverse kind of way, I'll say "Hooray for the start of another new school year!"