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 guess sometimes, teachers are wildlife warriors.

I enjoyed being associated with the word "environmental". When Dr. Noor Aini (previous Dean, Faculty of Bioscience and Bioengineering) first enquired us about our future undertakings during the first lecture of Genetic Engineering, I answered boldly that I would most definitey be involved in environmental conservation. She acknowledged the class that she liked how I knew specifically what I wanted to do.

That was approximately four years ago.

Two years ago, I almost started working for a company in Kuching specializing in environmental conservation. I could have lived my word. But that apparently did not happen.

Teach For Malaysia came along.

Environmental conservation issues came back to haunt me, knowing my insincerity probably, even when I am now teaching. Form 4 is officially moving into the theme of "Environment" this month and I was appalled actually, knowing that I knew so little, and that the passion inside me, burn so scarcely.

However, despite my pessimism, my kids touched my heart today. It had been weeks, probably a month or two after I reminded my students in my Form 4 class to bring their text books during English classes, and I almost never make use of the books in my class.

I got my kids to take out their text books to read about Wildlife Warriors in their textbook today and surprisingly, up to 85% of my students have their books. I was truly impressed when they, who always seem too laid back, too disinterested, too disengaged, too rude, too under-disciplined, too rowdy, etc. to me, actually started reading the text which was super challenging for them obediently.

And when we went through the text, there were approximately 40 words that we needed to jot down in our Word Bank (including words like biggest and crawl). And when I got them to reread the text referring to their Word Bank, they actually did as they were told.

The image was just, well, peculiar. Big, tall, noisy 16 year-olds crammed in their seats, peering over their books and their Word Bank, sweating profusely, looking so hard at their books, deciphering with all their might, what a sight.

And we actually managed to complete the objective of summary writing! Our first formal lesson on summary writing!

I am now a very happy teacher!

After spending aprroximately two years away from labs and biology and experiments, I actually start to miss all that a little. Being a teacher can draw all kinds of funny emotions.

But on the hindsight, I guess teaching is some sort of conservation on its own. Well, on very different subjects anyway.

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.