One of the fatal abyss that a teacher could fall into, was to turn into a paternalistic teacher. This does not only mean shielding the children in every way, but also worrying about their performance all the time.
Day N, N+1, N+2… N+n
Counting the number of days is getting meangless, but whatever!
I started marking my class’s Paper 2 today (yes, on a WEEKEND). /* Speaking of this, all relief teachers will be excused from school next Friday (which means no money) cos it was Marking Day. eh… Relief teachers don’t need to mark scripts one meh?? */ It was then I realized how much I cared about their performance. After all, how well they performed was an indicator of how well I imparted my knowledge to them, no?
As I marked, I grew increasingly relieved that I am not a perm teacher who depends on my atoms’ performance for bonus. 10 scripts into marking and I concluded that none of the atoms absorbed my teaching. Even the class usual top scorer only scored 15/25 for her comprehension, which was daunting, considering that she scored 20/25 (though only level average, but highest in class) in the previous test.
My hoped pinned on my 2nd best, an atom from an English speaking family background and reads sufficiently enough (let’s call him Fluorine-T). I was also hoping that his gang who sat right in the front of the class and asked me lotsa questions would also fare better than the others.
Another hopeful was one atom I had high expectations of cos 1) he proved his worth with consistently diligent and good CA despite his lower PSLE English score 2) he had the same surname as your highness me (people with my surname are shrewd and clever, k?).
There was especially this question on explaining the ‘tip of the iceberg’ that had me boiling; none of the atoms could explain that it refered to ‘a small part of a big problem’, but kept telling me that it meant the environmental problems would cause more melting of the iceberg than we could see.
Very creative, but utter nonsense.
So I was secretly hoping that F-T would answer that correctly, since I was confident his wide scope of reading (good, sensible books unlike ‘Mr Midnight’) would empower him with the knowledge of the phrase.
Correct, I was, cos he was the only one in the whole class who got the answer correct; that was also the only tick on that page of the answers.
~ s W e A T z ! ! ~
After my 1st hopeful, he actually failed me too! Fortunately enough, he scored as ‘well’ as Hopeful 1.
The black horse was actually another silent boy (Hopeful 3 was a super-silent boy. haiz… I hope he won’t grow up to be like me…) who also went on MC for such a long time, that I only married the name, work and his face on the 2nd last lesson. He actually scored 18/25 (highest Fluorine scorer), while floundering in the definition section that EVERYONE also screwed up.
ya… After him was another Bad Boy (never paid attention in class, acted like an Ah Beng) at 16/25. My hopefuls actually all scored 15/25!! haiz…
So I was like cursing and swearing, wondering why they COULD NOT remember my instructions that questions that required rephrasing or defining should only consist of NOT MORE THAN SEVEN words, or that they should never repeat any of the keywords in those definition questions.
I think they were trying to be rebels, but in a wrong, disappointing way.
As of now, I am halfway into marking another class’s comprehension. Surprisingly, the students committed the same mistakes despite them being a better class than my Fluorines. It confirmed my postulation that sg’s future is bleak. ya…
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2 days have passed since I 1st marked my 1st class. After settling the Sec 1 NT (shudderz~) classes’ scripts (I just realized that I controlled their fate, cos I marked both their Paper 1 and 2), I embarked on marking my 2nd Exp class (Xenon).
You see, Paper 2 was split into 3 parts, the 1st being comprehension and the next 2 lit-based. Mr S and I marked the Paper 2 for Exp classes (hence explaining why I won’t be marking my Carbons), where I am tasked to mark the comprehension part. We took half the stack and exchanged after the weekend.
So when I marked Xenon, they had their lit portions marked and graded.
Thing is, looking at the lit portion made me feel so sadded. (Let’s not mention even about the comparing with the top Exp classes) Most straddled at borderline, in fact, 15% (6 of them) failed their lit sections.
The lit portion was further divided into Set Text (which I had gone through in class) and Unseen Text (which was new to them). My only consolation was that more than half (25/36) scored at least the same, if not better, for the Set Text and the Unseen Text.
In other words, they were able to execute what I taught them and gave them in class. Their problem lay with applying the lit-review techniques in the Unseen Text.
So how?
I don’t know.
The Bad Atoms who did not listen to classes were scoring better (in fact, they were the tops) and those who listened to me in class faltered, though they did not fail. This made me wonder if my education was intoxicating rather than enriching. hmmmm…
Actually, I do not know what to make of the data at hand, except for the characteristics I pointed out just now. I was wondering whether I should start looking at the failures and decide whether to plead for them, since the criteria was to pass them.
hmmm…
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As marking advance into full steam, a lot of teachers are in the office crazily marking away when they are not invigilating. The stress level is rather high, which is evident from the incessant chatting of things (some are more like grumbles) that can be left unsaid, or people like me who like to walk around to de-stress (so we can see a lot of ‘lost souls’ around the compounds).
So Stressed ~ ~
