Thank God for the Hari Raya holiday! It has been a really hectic week which started last week. Although the time-table's lighter on this odd week, the series of meetings in the afternoons kept me mostly away from my desk, and resulted in a pile of marking to do - 120 books to be exact. For a moment, I wished I had the Saturday still to clear marking. But with the five-day work week, that's kinda impossible.
As I signed out of school today, I realised that I've been in there for 12 hours! I hardly sat on my chair today! Well, as the bell rang to signal that the school was going to be locked up, I gathered as much work as I could and stuffed it into my bag. Armed with my laptop, I left school with twenty other things on my mind I know I need to follow up on besides marking... EL meeting minutes, update of my record book, lesson planning for next three weeks, answer key for comprehension passage and summary, looking through writing drafts, preparing for next week's lessons on project work, the reading circle... and the list goes on. So much for a five-day work week. It seems teach less and learn more is not doing us teachers any good so far!
Anyway, I had fun with my kids this week. I invented a game I call vocabulary survivor. It was a game I devised in 10 minutes cos I was desperate to cover something besides narratives in class that was boring myself, if not the kids I teach! After the lesson, my kids felt so energized competing with each other to give synonym to words that they asked for more... Wow!
Today, I started my Sec 3 class with their reading circles. I regrouped them, much to the displeasure of some. But I explained my rationale and hope they will take to it. My heart warms when I see them interacting with each other. Recommending books to them makes me miss my Literature days back in JC. I remember my Lit tutor, Mr Tan. It was through him that I learnt my first long and hard word (pun intend *tongue in cheek*), aphrodisiac. Suddenly, everything we read had a sexual inuendo to it. And how I loved Practical Criticism cos we didn't have to read any book. We just had to criticize and interpret whatever that was given to us!
Anyway, as I sit in the comforts of my papa-san chair, writing my blog and listening to the serene sounds of Kevin Kern in the background, my eyelids are weighing down over my eyes. Yes, I'm tired... Maybe I should take a break now..
Starfish... out!
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