In perspective
Okay. If my life ends at 70 at best, I have 40 more years left. If I leave this job, that cuts down on high blood pressure, heart seizures, headaches, irregular meals, chest pains, eye strain, aching feet in heels. I just may extend my life to 75. Stay on, and there is high chance I might die at 60!
Quit 1 Stay 0
Quality of life is important! So what if i have 2k more but I am forever unhappy within. There is no re-play button on this one life I have!
Reflections of a jaded teacher
I was thinking about how I started off in this profession. My parents had asked me to just go for the interview during my 4th year in University and I just signed up without giving it much thought. Before I knew it, I was accepted and my life’s path was set then onwards.
Did I truly start off with a passion to be in this line? Or was it just the next obvious offer that was on the plate, an easy choice, I needn’t think about job-hunting.
Perhaps I should have started off at another job and then switched to teaching. Would that order of events have been more stable and I would have entered this challenging profession with broader perspectives and perhaps more street-wise-ness? I entered the profession all erm, innocent, but it seems I’ll be leaving it jaded and defeated.
Today, I was watching “Asia’s Leaders” on CNA, and this woman, she was in the business of getting youths off the streets and reformed in school. She said every year she can take in a maximum of 2 500 kids, while every year, there are 1 million kids out there at risk. What kind of change could she possibly make? Then she heard Michelle Obama saying something that struck a chord in her heart and propelled her forward. Don’t recall the exact quote, but it went something like “You can’t change the world, but you can change the world of one person.”
Shucks. That really is true. I may be surrrounded by more bad than good. But does that mean I forsake the good because I’m allowing the bad to get to me? Today an ex-student texted me to say he had bought me gifts from Japan and that he wants to meet me soon for dinner. If I hadn’t entered this profession, I would not have made ‘friends’ with someone as honest and jovial as him. Precious students who have left indelible marks in my life. If I leave now, am I shutting myself off from future happiness? But I am a very absolute person – black is black, white is white. I cannot take grey.
But am I really that noble? No one is irreplaceable. If I leave, there will be a line of bright-eye bushy-tailed teachers passionately waiting to make a difference. If I leave, will I lose MY meaning in life?
My yellow flu tablet is getting to me. Going to sleep now.
Self-babble
It will take a lot of faith and courage and insanity to tender my resignation. My good friends tell me I am a ‘good’ teacher and ask me to remember all the lives I might have helped somehow along the way over the past 5 years. My best bud says I will regret my decision of leaving this job. Everywhere else, I will experience the same sh*t. Work wouldn’t be work otherwise. But but but….at least in another job I do not have to do so many things that conveniently come under the teaching umbrella. I don’t like organizing events or producing publications. I don’t like going into a class full of uninterested students who treat you like you’re invisible and have to teach them for another 8 months! I tried using videos or other things to engage them but they just want the fun without the work. I think I’ve burnt out cos I don’t think I even enjoy rara-ing with students any more. My enthusiasm for rara-things have really died down… is it cos of age and changing needs/perspectives?
I could whine forever but I really am experiencing rock-bottom this time. I think all the negative energy got to me and I caught a virus, even though I didn’t go near anyone who was sick. Being physically and mentally-ill is not a good start to 2010.
I don’t want to stay just for the money but it’s one huge reason why I am still hanging on. (What is the other reason? Too chicken-sh*t scared to quit) But my friends say at least I’m paid to be miserable. If I quit, I might remain miserable but have less cash to fall back on.
Now I know why so many people buy into the whole TOTO thing. Having lots of money would solve lots of problems, and it can buy some good measure of happiness too. What have I become!!!
Today a student shouted at me and used threatening gestures to me in the hallway. I guess this was his way of shifting the attention away from his bullying antics on a classmate to his look-at-me, I’m shouting at a teacher bravado act.
I have zero sympathy for him being on medication for his ‘mild’ case of ADHD because I think he is abusing that diagnosis and trying to bulldoze his way through high school. I have zero sympathy for someone who got transfered here because he was bullied, and now has morphed into a bully himself.
“He has a history lah.” I don’t care.
“His father suppresses him at home.” Unless he does it with a pillow, I don’t care.
“He has anger management problems.” I don’t care.
They say he is but a kid. He is already 15 years old. ‘Kids’ these days are no mere kids. They have developed a vocabulary so foul and shreds of personality so thin, that I really think they need to be treated differently. Either with malice or to be kept in cold storage, away from my sight.
Kindness and patience, forced or otherwise, are wasted on certain people. They always talk about that one starfish that we should save ; you never know how much effect you have on a student. Blah Blah. No one mentioned that devil’s minion that Satan placed right here JUST FOR FUN. There is no purpose or meaning to according respect to certain people. For the past 3 years, he has been rude and awful and no amounts of nice-ness have rubbed off on him. Sure, he is ‘Ok’ to some other colleagues – but hey, I’m not going to lower myself and smile at his every show of aggression and let him have things his way. He will grow up to be a maladjusted human being, who will think nothing of tripping the next old man who crosses his path or robbing the next elderly lady who takes the same lift as he does. There is no hope for some people.. some people just like him.
It’s only Week 3 and I’m already questioning my overdue stay in this school. Can I reconcile the issues and be at peace with myself before I lose my mind?
Debriefing
Just returned from a school camp. 3 days away from school was great. I got to wake up later than usual, and not feel compelled to check my work e-mail because I had no means of doing so there without using my colleague’s personal laptop. I decided to shut down and just be in ‘camp mode’.
What I liked:
- Not being in school.
- Doing the “Everybody Dance Now” Table-Rapping Cheer
- Eating Snow Ice at Railway Mall
- Chatting with colleagues in the Teachers’ Lounge.
What I didn’t like:
- Sleeping on the upper deck of a double-deck bed. The ladder bars are painfully awful. The bed is so near the ceiling I kicked the flourescent lights while stretching my legs.
- Having to bear with one arrogant, unthankful, self-absorbed and emotionally-unstable student in my class.
- Washing my own plate and cutlery after each meal.
- Having to constantly dust off the idea that I’d have to return to work very soon.
Once you list it out, it looks worse
During this weekend’s diet cheat, I ate
- at a BBQ (1 sausage, 7 marshmellows, 2 bites of chili stingray, 1 chicken joint)
- a Filet O Fish meal
- 5 seeds of durian
- 3 prawns
- 1/2 can of diet coke and 1/2 can of green tea, 1 cup of ice milo, 4 cups of Meiji milk
- Yong Tau Hu with vermicelli and slops of sweet sauce.
- 2 slices of toast
- 7 crinklecut fries
- 1 mouthful of pork chop
That’s TOO MUCH CHEATING!!!!! Tomorrow I go back to my no carb diet.
O crap
In a dazed state. Don’t know how I am feeling, really.
I am, irritated that some colleagues went to disclose students’ O level grades, citing the lousy lame no-good excuse that “..but they were waiting so anxiously for their results!” My other colleague who was the victim of such horrid judgement calls aptly put it by saying, “In what position are they to disclose the results.” Shit man. That is a privilege the form teachers are entitled to. You want to be the bearer of any form of news, you jolly well work your way and earn that right.
Also, I am pissed that at the initial meeting, they’d honour my student who scored 17 points with 3 distinctions. They honoured 2 others with 16 points and ONE distinction. Yes, whatever it is, let’s just continue to perpetuate the fact that only those in the first class should be honoured.
This school sucks.
Off to meet my kids for dinner now. May their spirits be lifted as they decide how to move on from here. Fyi, they did badly.
First Day @ School
Today marked the 1st day of a new school year. It was a little …strange… because for the past 3 years, I have been happily (mostly) going into a classroom full of students I know and can recognise just by their voices alone (very useful when writing on the whiteboard). 2010 – new form class. 33 fresh (not really) faces greeted me this morning. I miss my Sec 5N class dearly.
Last night, one of the boys messaged me to say I shouldn’t miss the class and how it was great his holiday was starting while mine was hours away from coming to a disgusting halt. Yes, I miss that. He even came by to say ‘Hi’ at the staff room while collecting his Edusave cheque today. How long will I take to build such a bond with my new class? Sigh. Personalities that I will never be able to ‘replace’.
Today, 3 other ex-students messaged to ask how was my day and how was my new class.. how sweet is that! I miss them!! One of them even said he woke up this morning and put on his school uniform as per normal, thinking he had to report to school. Funny boy. Don’t know if he was pulling a fast one!
Having whined, I do need to be adult about it and move forward. It will do my new class no use if I hang on to the past and keep thinking they will never replace the “hole” in me heart left by my ex-class. Time will make things better, I hope. After all, it’s only Day One today.
It’s the most fattening time of the year
I heard this twisted version over Gold90.5 the other afternoon …. and loved it!
You have to sing it to the tune of “It’s the most wonderful time of the year”.
It’s the most fattening time of the year With that pumpkin pie filling and everyone swilling down eggnog and beer It’s the most fattening time of the year It’s the lip smackingest season of all while your shopping you’re cheating impulsively eating that junk at the mall It’s the heav-heaviest season of all There’ll be turkeys for basting and stuffing for tasting and giblets and gravy will flow there’ll be cookies that mom baked and leftover fruit cake from a christmas a long time ago it’s the scale flattening time of the year while your diet you’re blowing there’s calories going straight down to your rear it’s the scale flattening time of the year there’ll be after meal dosing and arteries closing cholesterol levels will grow it’s too cold to go jogging to brisk for tobogganing so pass me a hot buttered roll It’s the most fattening time of the year All those gingerbread shingles and chocolate Chris Kringle’s will tremble in fear It’s the most fattening time, it’s the belt loosening time, it’s the most fattening time of the year Bob Rivers More Twisted Christmas 1997
