relief teaching

and finally the 3 weeks of relief teaching ended. it was a fun and enjoyable experience. i have learned a lot during this period. handling a class of about 30 students is totally different from what i have been doing previously, tutoring kids 1 to 1 @ yishun student service centre (CDAC supervised homework programme) and teaching the children @ student care centre in marsiling which are still going on at the present.

i still can remember my 1st day at the primary sch. it was a long wait from 11+am to my 1st lesson which starts at 2pm. took the time to look through the textbook, workbook and the teaching guide book. planned what to finish by the end of the 1st week. weeks before 18apr, which was the 1st day of the relief teaching, i requested to understudy the teacher one afternoon. that was when i met the two classes, p4 and p1, for the very 1st time. went back to the school on 15apr afternoon so that the chinese teacher can hand over everything to me clearly. i must say it's not easy being a chinese teacher. 课文、习字、 活动本、 课文练习、 听写、 作文、 测验等等. essay marking was one of the toughest. during my days as a student, i always like to read comments written by the teacher about my essays. to me, i feel that having comments for the student would be beneficial to them. and so after marking each of the every essay, i wrote my 2cents worth of advice to the students.

looking at the p1 students who never fail to ask me for permission to go toilet or drink water, i always find them extremely cute and sometimes just 舍不得 scold them. hahaha. their lessons were easy to teach, but getting them to listen to you is a little difficult as they have rather short attention span. so from times to times, i drew pictures, played games (听写比赛）with them in order to get them to absorb what they need to learn. my p4 students are very active too,walking around and engaging in discussions. but i must say they are able to listen to me when i am teaching. as long as they respect the teacher, able to listen and learn what they need to know, i find no problem in teaching them. you cant force the children to listen to you talk all the time. everyone wants to have a say too. i hopefully i have helped them in any way during the 3 weeks.

my last day of relief teaching was a little rushed. went to sch earlier than usual to mark the p4 活动本 as i wanted to return the books to them to study during this long weekend. brought home half of the pile to mark on thursday night and finished the remaining when i reached sch on friday afternoon. stayed back until about 7pm to finish marking everything and wrote notes to mdm hoh to update her about the two classes. told the p1 towards the end of the lesson that it was my last day here with them. one of them like going to cry. they made some noise here and there and i brought them down for recess. one of the students suddenly asked, "卓老师,我可以抱你吗?" before i could answer, he came forward to hug me. awww. sweet little boy. and so the rest did the same. hahaha. like teletubbies. as for the p4, they let out a loud 'huh' and asked me if i going to hawaii like mdm hoh. -.- i doubt she went hawaii. few questions they asked were my full name and if i have fb account. i missed those 热情的 students. they never fail to greet me (even if they had to shout across the canteen) when they see me around and some of them arent even in my classes. i think they know me because i have eleven fingers. hahaha.

lastly, i want to thanks the teachers in the chinese department who have helped me in many ways during my 3 weeks there, be it answering my questions or helping me to cope with the students. a big thank you to all of you. i wont forget all of you, teachers and students and if there's a chance, i'll definitely be back again to teach!