I enjoy seeing my kids learning.

I am rediscovering the joy of teaching 16-year-olds! Thank you Lord!

My 16-year-olds never fail to surprise me.

Three months ago, they were so ill-behaved in the class that I had to resort to punishing everyone in the class, including the girls.

Two months ago, I think I told the class ten times, "A new teacher is coming. I will only be teaching until the end of this month."

Last month, all of the students failed in their English monthly assessment. And I think I told them another couple of times that "A new teacher is coming. I will only be teaching until the end of this month."

Last week, they surprised me by being ready to learn and being willing to learn.

Last week, they surprised me when they spelt "English" as "inglish" when they wrote in their essay "... Miss Sharon is my inglish teacher".

Today, they surprised me participating so eagerly in class. And that means we have accomplished our first skill under summary writing, which is categorizing!

This boy named A surprised me the most. He has a super bad reputation in school for being a disruptive and under-disciplined student. He behaved that way in my class when I first got into class as well.

He would smirk now and then. He would have a million reasons for not being ready, being late for class, being tardy, being forgetful. More often than other, he would skip my class entirely. He fits the description pretty well.

Maybe I did not know him well enough. Maybe there was more to than what it seems.

He gradually changed my perception towards him. And my heart warmed towards him.

He started showing up for class. Each time earlier than the last time.

He started to copy necessary notes from the board. He started doing work in the class.

He started trying to understand what is going on in the classroom.

He started doing his homework.

And today, he started participating in class. It was a tough objective, we are learning to summarize sentences using categorizing skills. This was the first lesson.

All the students shy away from question number 3 during GP. He stood up. Not entirely realizing what he was trying to do, I tried to coax another boy to attempt question 3.

A went all the way to the front of the classroom, took the marker, and asked me. "Can I try teacher?"

Later, during IP he was among the first to finish his work. And he raised his hands again and again to answer the questions on the board. I did not call upon him and he was so frustrated but he raised his hands for every question after that.

What a day for A! And what a day for me.

Thank you Lord.

I wanna be intelligent!

This is the second year I am in Juasseh and this is my second year training my students for the choral speaking competition. These students in the choral speaking team enjoyed choral speaking more than I have ever imagined. Probably it is the sense of achievement when they managed to remember the script. Probably because they can stand up proudly before their peers speaking in English. I don't know.

On Wednesday, I bumped into F on our way to the school hall for our practice later that afternoon. He was a shy boy when it comes to teachers and he barely said anything to me the whole year last year.

Therefore, I was delighted when he chatted up with me (He was nervous still but he was trying!. He told me about his concerns regarding memorizing the choral speaking script, which is twice the length of last year's script.

So I asked him if it was easier remembering lyrics of a song? And f he could do that, there should be no problem for our script as well.

He thought for a moment and agreed with me. But then he rebutted, saying that he never really listened to any English songs though. I was surprised.

"Oh wait, there is one English song that I know, it's "I wanna be a billionaire" by Bruno Mars! But that's about the only English song I listened to."

I almost melted. Because it was the only song that I taught the class last year. But we changed the lyrics from "I wanna be a billionaire" to "I wanna be intelligent" (copy & paste from Oga and Hawa's lyrics).

It's the little things sometimes.

Miss Sharon is slowly regaining fuel.

I am having super peculiar sleeping patterns lately. And I am guessing that it is drawn from the pressure of going into classes and the additional work I get on top of that in school. There are a few things on my mind now:

1. Running the school-wide, weekly Spell-It-Right competition more effectively (we lack student participation and to be frank, it is so boring and if I were a students, I would not want to be seen as a part of it! Butt thanks to JK, things are not too pathetic at the moment, but still, something has to be done. Any ideas on how to do that?)
2. Assembling a "perancangan strategik" (strategic planning) for the English panel for the next 5 years.
3. Trying to win a losing battle with 3UPM. 
4.  My reading project!

In that particular class today I prepared two games, a fly-swatter game for the opening of the class and a BINGO game for the guided practice. We are revisiting concord (SVA) today and students are still having trouble mastering the objective. I need to carry out another assessment on Monday I guess. A quickfire challenge!

I am prepared for them today, but the two little heartaches of mine did not show up today ): Maybe we can continue to try to like each other next week. But it has been another pretty good day, so no complains here.

We laughed, and we had fun. In one class, we even get to play Mafia together to help students develop their problem-solving skills! Super happy!

Thank you Lord Jesus, for the good day.

Amen!

Maybe, things would get better.

Of course, I did not expect it to be a perfect class. At least, not yet. I was just taken by surprise, that's all. Which makes me lose my footing a little. I did not expect them to be in the class. I did not expect them to stay in the class all the way until  I leave the class.

I am grateful all the same. I am grateful that (for whatever reason possible they were there in the class, and came back to the class after I gave them permission to leave the room to get something) and that they sat in their seats throughout the entire 40 minutes, and they came to the front when I asked them to, and despite their sniggering they listened to me when I tried to help them catch up, and the fact that we laughed (of course indirectly, we were laughing at different things).

But their expressions like they could not care less still bleeds my heart. The statement Juin made saying "I don't know why they hate English so much, but they REALLY hate English" over dinner is so painful as well. Their body movement that tells that they are not comfortable, they are not pleased, happy etc, makes me flinch.

I do not understand how I can be so weak and vulnerable. I just have to keep forcing myself to believe that they hate me because they hate English. And that time would tell, that I am a good teacher, one who really cares, and goes her way to make sure her students learn something.

But, it is a good day still. It would be the day that my boys who hate me sat through my 40-minute class, without cursing me or causing me any physical harm.

It is a good day then.

Thank you Lord.

Prepare me to brave tomorrow.

Celebrating Small Successes

Yesterday I did a sharing session with my kids on the things that I did during the school holiday. The objective was to get my students to listen and then to speak and write about their holiday as well. I used the same material in Form 1, Form 3, Form 4 and Form 5 but of course, emphasizing on different things (sentence structure for F1, tenses for F3, paragraph building for F4 and F5)

I showed them pictures of the UUM, Japanese food and pictures I took in the Trick Art Museum in iCity (thanks Angeline!). I was surprised some of my kids know UUM and even clarify with me whether UUM is in Sintok instead of ChowKit! But the rest are most amazed by the Japanese food I showed them and most expressed that they have never had Japanese food before.

*Mental note: My kids like to pore over teachers' private photos!*

So the delivery is pretty simple:

1. Let students understand the objective of the day: they need to write about the teacher's holiday and they need to share about their holiday
2. Show pictures and share about the events that lead to the picture
3. Get students to share in class according to the demonstration given by the teacher (do not pick students immediately for speaking assignments, using think, pair, share will lessen the stress)
4. Hand out worksheet for students to write about their holiday (draw a picture and write  few sentences about the picture)
5. Hand out worksheet for students to write about the teacher's holiday

Yesterday was such an amazing day because even in the class that I face most resistance in seems to be in a pretty good mood (probably from the one week holiday) and participated respctfully in classroom activities. They did not even complain  when they were cold-called to share in front of the class. Everyone tried their best to write good sentences in this particular class according to the sentence structure I emphasized in the class as well as the tenses used. I CFU extensively and most of the kids knew exactly where they were and were willing to help their friends who were not on task.

I can't wait to read their worksheet tomorrow morning!

*Happy teacher dance*