It's Saturday and it's MARCH!

In comes the black March! Last year around this time, most of the fellows in our first cohort were having a devastating time. I was in a terrible state myself in March last year. I was not eating on regular basis, I was always working well into the evening in school but that did not help at all in raising any sort of efficacy in the classroom, I woke up every morning finding excuses to not go to school, I lost confidence in the mission, sense of possibility running low, well you get the picture.

I coud not believe that it has been one year since that time I was in the death valley. I am still very much in a bad shape with deadlines, programs, syllabus, exercise books etc. wrestling with me for my personal time. I am still an amateur when it comes to being a teacher and every day I fear that something I did or something that I did not do will cause to my kids to kill themselves or to be depressed or be doomed in the future but I have grown so much. At least, I have learned to take things one step at a time, at least I am eating decent meals at least once a day, I can breathe better in the classroom as well as in the staffroom, I lose my temper less, I have the capacity to come up with new ideas and campaigns and programs once in a while.

This year has been so much better.

One of the things that I really fear at the moment is to become compliant of the existing system, the existing classroom culture, and also to be too much into the role of being just-a-teacher-who-dictates.

But, grace is constant in teaching, as in we are showered by grace from time to time, by the children, the parents etc. Yesterday, I totally blew up on two of my kids. One did not complete his work (which was due a week ago) when everyone else in the class has already moved ahead to a second assignment. One was having problem completing his work and was caught copying the answers from the answer sheet.

It was all teary and loud and angry noises and scoldings etc. but today they showed up in school, along with 7 other classmates to help decorate the classroom. They hold no grudge and they were still respectful despite being hammered so hard. One of the boys when asked to design something to put on the wall actually doodled my name in calligraphy (: 

After working hard the whole morning, we had lunch together
in a restaurant outside school.

Posing with their food. Super invested students who made such improvement
in English last year. We will continue to work hard this year.

I forgot to take pictures of the class, AGAIN!? But maybe I will take one after we put up the curtains and is done with the notice board.

One of our fellows shared this video on our Facebook page and I was completely blown away! It is so creative and is such a great opportunity to raise awareness of quality education. Enjoy the video!