Last Days...

...before school starts! Yup! These are the last days of the hols and also 2010. But I've gone back to work. Schools don't start on a new year these days. A new school year actually starts on the old school year for students also.

For teachers there is the Staff Meeting to attend. We had it in a hotel this year. I guess the school meeting room was not 'corporate' enough. LOL! I can never get it why the teaching fraternity wants to be seen as corporate. Don't they dig it??? We're teachers! Anyway, we go back to school this week to register students. We had a session to register the ponteng students yesterday. Tomorrow we 'register' all the students. The thing is they tell us they want classes to begin on the first day itself; no waste of time. But the point is, we waste time all through out the year on lots of lost causes.

Other Half asked me whether we'd throw out students who don't go register themselves tomorrow. The answer is no! We still have to take them in on Sunday when school reopens proper. In fact, these days, we don't throw out any student from the system. If a school expels a student, the Education Office has to find them another school. One school's problem then become another school's.

I saw 2 students of mine working at TESCO recently. They were really recalcitrant students, right up to Form 5. Got totally hopeless grades too in their SPM if I'm not wrong. Well, they thought they could easily get any job; even tried to get into the Armed Forces. At school, one would be really dirty and smelly most of the time despite advice to spruce up. And suffice to say, both were constant discipline problems as well. Guess what, I saw them looking really smart and neat at TESCO. I almost laughed out aloud when I saw them. What our schools couldn't do, the school of life did. Sometimes I feel that by not allowing them to experience the consequences of their actions produce people do not know the value of hard work or that life is no bed of roses or even we need to learn to toe the lines.

And one more... we are reminded to be professional in our work. One no-no this year. If parents come see us while we are in class we are to tell them we cannot talk to them. We are also not allowed to collect fees from the students in class. They have to see us in the Staff Room during recess. For those of us unfortunate enough to get the last few classes, collecting fees is like a cat-and-mouse game. It's a constant chase. I think I'll try remind them to see me during recess and see if it works. If it doesn't I might just send memos to my boss to inform her of each reminder I send out to my students. And at the end of the year, the collection of fees not done becomes their problem. We can say we did what we were supposed to do but the students refused to pay. LOL!

As it is we face difficulty in fee collection. It's not that parents don't give the money to their kids. It's just that their kids don't pay. And parents also don't seem to be asking receipts of payment from their children (I'll leave that rambling about parents for another day). So, the administrators think we waste time if we collect fees in class. But the thing is most of us are experienced enough to know that a class idle would be noisy. So most of us collect fees after work has been given out in class. There are also lessons to be taught in this process after all... don't pay you get hauled up!! Public reminder, or call it whatever you want. LOL!

We make attempts to be more professional but our attempts very often show us to be pea-brained. And very often our focus turns to those things which make us to be seen as doing something that everyone can see when in reality, there are many things important done which cannot be seen. Aiya! We are a very outward appearance people. Siao! Is it no wonder that our schools are rotting??? I brace myself for yet another year.... they'll definitely be fodder for ramblings.