a mouldy moulder

It's now pretty much the end of school for this year ( at least for the students), as even though this upcoming week is only week seven of the last ten week term of the school year, due to the O Level exams everything else in secondary schools is more or less shut down. This has only been the case for the past, what, five years or so, due to those exams having been moved forward to accommodate an earlier release of results. I still remember the (good?) old days when my birthday, while always falling right at the start of the school holidays, would during the O and A level years instead fall smack within the exam period, and i definitely had to plow through a paper or two once or twice.

What this means is a very rushed second semester for the teachers and students, particularly, if like me for lower sec history, your school follows a modular system, where basically you have only one semester (i.e. half the school year) to complete your entire year's syllabus. Couple that with the impeccable timing of the SAF in scheduling my three week reservist during this period (while for good measure, managing to also eat up my Teachers' Day and one week September school break as well), and the uncanny knack of the higher ups for without fail, managing to come up with more and more things that teachers are supposed to do. Add for good measure conditions at the workplace which are, shall we say, evidence of a fallen world and you've got one incredibly crazy semester that i'm frankly still reeling from

It therefore isn't much of a surprise that this semester has also been the one when i've started to entertain thoughts about a life outside of the system, even though, yes, i still have a good two-and-a-half years to go before i can actually enjoy even the possibility of such a life. I feel that there's only so much more of comforting myself by being reminded of the fallen-ness of this world and me as being placed by God in the midst of it for a purpose (and that already had started to wear thin by the time i was at NUS) that i can handle before totally losing a sense of what that really means.

While i'm still in this system though, i think i do need to start to try and get my act together more. Which means for starters screwing up less often, in order to give others as little ammo as possible to (deliberately or otherwise) aim in my direction. I guess i can hopefully use the (somewhat) clean slate of a new school year to try and start over, so to speak. At the same time, there's the need to remind myself constantly that ultimately, teaching would not exist if not for the students, and therefore they are people whom (as terrible as they often can be) i should consider the impact on them for whatever i'm doing as a teacher. (After all, otherwise, i wouldn't be moulding the future of our nation, eh?) And also, for as much as i despise the notion of doing things primarily for the sake of promotions and performance bonuses, to not be so blatant in bringing that across, as i've realised that it can come across as preachy, instead of reflecting well on my values as a Christian in the workplace.

I do wish that i had a good time on vacation to regroup and make sense of things before the new school year. Unfortunately, the aforementioned craziness of the past semester means that i never got around to planning anything, and now air ticket prices are all crazy expensive. Then, scheduling wise i'm not able to be away for any longer than a continuous week, which really kills it for most places that i'm typically interested in going to. Will definitely try to fit something in though. For my sanity.

The Calm Before the Storm

It feels kind of surreal now - me typing this leisurely on a Saturday afternoon - as after being seemingly endlessly busy, all of a sudden i can't really find much to do (ok, actually there are lots of things to do, just that maybe they're not so urgent. Important, yes, but not urgent - i shall start to do them later on - yes, seriously).

The reason for this somewhat eerie calm is of course that exams begin in a few days' time, and so there are no more real lessons to teach (thankfully i was able to finish teaching all that is to be tested soon enough), just revision. And while, as usual there's all the last minute consultations with students, many of whom have showed not even a microscopic degree of interest in my lessons until now (though i prefer this to not being interested throughout, which is the case for many others), by and large it's been a much easier time during these past few days compared to when i first got back to school not more than a week before that. Easy enough for me this morning to actually have the opportunity to go for a run that had nothing to do with either school or the SAF. A rare opportunity indeed, one which i doubt will still avail itself next week when i will have the scripts of 240 students to mark over the weekend (marking while running - now that's a nice bit of multi-tasking that i'd like to see someone do).

Now, one thing that i was able to do today since i'm this free was to read the newspaper without having to rush because i might miss the bus/not get enough sleep. In today's ST Life there's a feature on children "having a bigger say in how they want their rooms to look," with their parents "gladly picking up the tab". I was never given this opportunity by my folks, though just as well, given my indecisiveness (not to mention indifference).

What i thought was appalling was what one mother of a five-year-old girl who chose a pink (surprise surprise) room with drawers "painted with a shimmery sheen of stars" (oh help) said (and by the way the bill came up to $15000). And i quote: "We pamper her a lot and tend to be indulgent. It is important that she feels good about the room, that it is designed to what she likes so she can have a happy childhood." Do we really need more potential spoilt brats who are used to getting whatever they want just so that they can be 'happy'? I suppose that having to deal with some of these on a daily basis has made me even more abhorrent of such (imho) poor parenting practices. You're basically setting your daughter up to become one of the many who believe that she is entitled to have her way practically no matter what, and in the process cause many of those around her (or at least people like me - those who as an occupational hazard work with these young brats) a great deal of misery. You want her to be happy? Well then give her a can of pink paint, a brush, and a some shimmery star stickers from Popular and get her to do it herself (Oh yeah, she is all of five years old eh - then why not do it together with her? A good parent-child bonding moment)