Well, before i knew it, the thirteen days of school attachment have drawn to a close - so long to waking up at five thirty every morning, wearing on a daily basis the type of clothes that this year i have otherwise only worn at wedding dinners, feeling hungry enough to on occasion eat three meals within three hours, and of course having to adopt an entirely different persona so as not to appear as a total goofball in front of the boys.
Yup but in spite of all these minor inconveniences, i've come to appreciate the time that i've spent there - at the start before the first day i was like super sian, yet today as i left the school for the last time i lamented to the others, as we all did to one another too; that this whole thingy passed really fast, and that in the end we're not exactly the happiest of people to have completed our last day there.
Of course it helps that the school was on a whole very hospitable towards us (a few hiccups and arrows shot our way notwithstanding), and that the four of us were similarly able to get along well with one another. A lot of the staff, including many of the higher-ups are extremely friendly folk, and i both respect and have learnt quite a bit from them. While not every experience with them may be a pleasant one, but still overall it was good to get a much better picture as to what teaching is like, and what i have gotten myself into at least from graduation all the way to 2013 (gasp!).
One thing that i also appreciate about this attachment was the fact that it was my first experience in a secular (i.e. non-Christian) formal school environment since primary school, where seriously, i was too young to know what was going on. No chapels once a week, nor any devotions read every morning, or even an identifiable group of Christians meeting together. It reached a stage when i was heartened even to see a teacher wearing a cross pendant, or sticking Bible verses in his or her cubicle.
Yup, this has made me thankful and more appreciative for stuff like that when i was in AC (not to say that the 'Christian' environment there was always an immaculate one - but that's another story for another day...). And it also reminded me of what the message at FOC was talking about - how do we reflect our faith to the glory of God in whatever environment we are placed in? Well, to me the secular school environment is a better representation of the so-called real world of the education system here, especially in this school, where the racial profile of the country was much more accurately represented by the makeup of the student population than in AC or even NUS. So how identifiable are we as Christians when placed in such an environment - especially when as a teacher the chance to influence others is perhaps greater, while having to bear in mind the need to be mindful of the limitations that are in place? While i was in the school, i felt a semblance of a burden especially for some of the pre-believer staff, and even my fellow attached personnel (not so much with the boys because of my limited interactions with them)l - and the Lord was reminding me to pray about how to in any possible way show His love to them (and to do so in love too, and not out of obligation)... In this short period well not much was achieved so to speak, but i'm thankful for the Lord reminding me of this - something to pray about... (and i could go on and on, but of course it would take forever...)
1 comment:
strange that while teaching may be tough and has its ups and downs, there's still this attachment that's formed yeah. n if you're boring, i think i'm way more boring a teacher. my pw class looked totally disinterested in what i had to say! so sad!
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