Step On! GTz… Ep 22: The Torture of Marking My Own Class

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 all students are hopeless. 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 ~ ~

Speed Test

51 words

Speedtest

Step On! GTz… Ep 21: The Horror of Paper 1

My new name is ‘Ken’. Soon, I will be ‘Journal’.

Day N (where N is the number of days too scary to be recalled)

I spent 10 hours over 3 days to mark 78 papers, and that was only Section A: Situational Writing. It was now that I realized, that only 2 kinds of writing can cause people to spend extended time on: A deeply profound one, and a deeply shallow one.

The previous episode saw the preview of the type of writing one could get when marking Sec 1 NT papers. It happened, yes. Unlike urban legends, talk of an incorrigible generation is TRUE! When you see this entry, you should do the following:

1) Forward the URL of this entry to at least 10 people

2) Pack up your barang barang and proceed to the nearest foreign embassy

3) Either sign for emigration or sign an agreement NEVER to object to the import of foreign workers.

It’s TRUE! People who never followed (as we shall see in the coming 10 years) will find themselves being marginalized in a society that had degraded under the poor leadership (or the lack thereof) of the future generation, assuming that the import of foreign workers was halted due to the low number of people signing for (3).

Here’s a peek preview of what kind of horror awaits our nation:

p/s: I know I may get trashed/Stomped or even sacked for divulging this important information, but it’s national security that we are talking about!!

T for 'Task fulfillment' meant how many of the required points they included in their letter. L is Language, which I was instructed to be lenient in...

1st thing, notice the great incidents of me putting the ‘P’ and circles? It meant punctuation error. Apparently, the boy only knew the existence of ‘comma’ (although ‘?’ appeared, it was only for once) so note how interesting it was that the ‘full stop’ after the ‘?’ at the end of the 3rd word of the letter only appeared at the end of the letter. By ‘the end’, I really meant ‘The End’.

This is a classic and ultimate example of the kind of error called ‘running sentences’, where students used more than one of a single type of connecting word to write a sentence. Typically, students like to use 2 ‘because’ in a sentence, whereas he could have used ‘due to’ to substitute one of the ‘because’ and eliminate the error.

In this case, cos the sentence was 170 words long, we not only had more than one ‘because’, but ‘and’, ’so’ and ‘that’ were also overused.

This letter was still OK, just as long as I take the opportunity at ‘commas’ to take a breath before I die from lack of oxygen.

Just look at the next letter, and it becomes clearer why teachers are suicidal.

The ‘marking instructions’ had it that incomprehensible writings were to be awarded zero marks, but they told me to give the student 3 marks instead. At least for attempting to copy the phrases in the question paper and an attempt to write something at all.

Who says the sg education system is a harsh environment?

It’s only harsh at the ‘elite’ level, other students had it too easy le…

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More funny sentences:

I will never forget this unforgetable experience

When I was trapped inside the debris, I felt I was very scary and don know wat to do now

There were 10 people around me and I reacted

Before I asked, the building dropped on me!

I was truly happy about this accident

50,000 people were reacted (the students really believed they were atoms liaoz, how~?)

I turned the cigarettes into powder (near-death experience gives people supernatural powers, you see…)

My waist have a tool bag (amazing, considering that my waist only has intestines and a layer of fats)

I tied my right (injured) arm to relive the pain

50,000 people died when the building collapsed to them (when the twin towers of WTC fell, only 5,000 people perished. China must have been developing FAST…)

I used my tool to bang the wall

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I went to invigilate the Baboons half an hour into their paper. At that point of time (45 min before end of paper), 12 Baboons were asleep.

30 min before end of paper: 16 Baboons asleep.

15 min before end of paper: 22 Baboons asleep.

So… 5 min before end of paper?

No one, cos I woke them all up lol So I should have:

5 min before paper: 38 pairs of eyes on me

cos none of them could focus on their paper when freedom was just 300 secs away.

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Week 32 (25 Sep 2008) Intro

Show Mi Again

Going to leave in 2 hours’ time Seeing sammi out of sg… heehee…

ZZGY Chapter 16, Commentary (Not updated)

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2008/09/20 ZPS Sentosa Outing

2008/09/23 Step On! GTz… Ep 19: The Start of The End

2008/09/25 Step On! GTz… Ep 20: The Stress of Teaching

Updated B+5 Images with:

- - + Mum’s 60th Birthday at Hai Tien Lou

- - + Punggol Jetty

- - + EE2001 Bits n Pieces

- - + Final Year at a Glance

My Cher is Mr Adversary

I had PMS the day before; for God-knows-what reason, I was grumpy and sulky whole day long. If I had a tired day, it would be ‘reasonable’, but it was not. In fact, I should not. English paper 1 and 2 are over, which makes me one of the most relaxed teachers of the school already.

So what if there were still marks to be tabulated? It was time to be cruel and award ZERO for delinquents.

But of cos, I know the reason well and I don’t feel like writing it up here.

Anyways, the story went that I smse-ed KF, who happened to be back in town for the week and asked him out for dinner. I think he was the only friend who would agree to go out in 3 hours time.

I mean, I had on average, asked 3 persons a week out; 3 people rejected me a week. So I should count myself lucky tha KF agreed to go out (not to mention the fact that only one person a week asks me out).

But KF had to go do his hair, which took him 3 full hours. hmmmm… What could I do? He was the only person to appear when I feel stressed out and wanted someone to be by my side or something.

I started grumbling to him about various aspects of my life; about the kind of resistance I face when I go about realizing my business venture; about how people judged me even before they assessed me, through my resume (no class Honours == no employers even wanted to call me up for interviews; go to good schools == don’t know about the real world to do business; studied biz-related modules == only know theories and lack practical experience).

I really could not understand why people just did that (yes, now I’m divulging my stressed nodes). What is it that was written on my face that told people to dimiss me even before they see for themselves my abilities? Yet despite all these, my close friends still tell me they believed I could do something good. I felt so disillusioned, I did not know who to believe.

Whatever.

I was feeling all pent-up while waiting in the restaurant queue for KF. All the negative thoughts, of how his extra activities caused me to have to queue up for restaurants. It made me wonder why it was always me taking the extra time to be punctual when the whole world excused themselves with work, when I too, had to stand and shout for 5 hours a day and go through papers after papers of writings that do not make sense.

What is it that made other people special, that they could afford to treat the sincerity of the people around them like a ragged doll?

While walking around in PS, I went to Times Bookshop (as usual, bookshops are the best places to while time away) and read briefly on a book on how to ‘Get Big’. First, we had to view other people as Big. See the Big side of them, see their positiveness, treat them with respect and see them in their Big ways.

Next, was to also get near people who are Big naturally. It gives us a chance to know what Big means, so that we can go on to see others in a Big perspective and also for the next step:

See ourselves as Big. Only Big people thrive and succeed when they work together; so the last link to Bigness is ourselves.

So how is this related to my Small friends? 1st, I have to Upsize the Small friends by changing my perspectives. Eg my friends are contributing to a better good for the society, in their little, but significant ways. I have to let them know the importance of respecting people, despite the kind of shit they are in, so that thtey would not take advantage of my viewing them Big to belittle me.

Next, of cos, I have to find new friends. I admit I am not one who can see through people, so my selection of friends will be through the fishing net method. Catch Everybody and then sieve through everyone by poking, seeing, touching them. Tough, but applicable. It can be my hobby too, by assessing people one by one, day by day. Searching for a Big friend is a good time to be invested.

Then, I have to Upsize myself (metaphorically, of cos). I do indeed come from a good school, but it does not handicap me.

1st, my academic achievements proved my capability. Studying is the easiest form social of activities (it involves only ONE person) and there were at least 90% of the population who could not do as well as I did, so this is my Big One.

Big Two, cos of the ease of my understanding academic contents, the schools I went to gave me chance to develop my other assets, like Moral, Social Etiquettes, Inter-personal Relationships, Lateral Thinking and Critical Thinking. All these, while 90% of the students were struggling with their work, I learned. Since then, I had the chance to polish the skills acquired; although I can’t claim to be a guru, I score better than most around me.

Big Three, I had access to a decent resource. NUS, though bad, is not the worst.The marketing lecturers may not be World Class, but they make the grade. The knowledge they passed on, I already decided to be better than those by my Engg lecturers, are definitely the best I could get, especially in such a closed-space environment of sg.

Big Four, my teaching experience had taught me to be more patient. I am able to multi-task better than before, make decisions of my feet and learned to not regret on my decisions, but instead, focus on remedying mistakes made on the seconds-limited decisions. The world, after all, has no time for regrets. I have to work on the solutions.

Big Five, my stubborness is my weapon; people may tell me what I do is wrong, but I have my stubborness as a shield. This is all because there is NOTHING in this world that is absolute (even Physics have to change its laws in quantum levels) and therefore there is no wrong in whatever we do. I can’t claim to have led my life if all I did was to follow the ‘advices’ of others.

I have my Big Five to tide me through the adversaries.

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While doing invigilating in the morning, I saw on the noticeboard on what Maturity was. I was glad to see it. It got me thinking (I could do no physical work other than walking around, so I wandered about in my mind) and set me to digest about the Big Me theory.

I was quite amazed to find such a profound piece of writing in a classroom where the minds could not even grasp the dictionary definition of maturity, much less the philosophical aspect of it. However, being very bored, I briefly read it and took a pic of it.

I had long wanted to write a blog entry on Maturity, after experiencing what I defined as immaturity from friends, but I could not really capture the essence of it, which this piece of writing did.

The 1st thing I did was to spot my immaturity; I’m always teetering on the edge of losing my anger. I complain too much; I like to say ‘Told YA~!’; but mainly, my life is a maze filled with former friends and unfinished business (wanted to add the last part, but I realized I never had good intentions).

But I like the last paragraph the best, cos it was the only property that I had fully accomplished. I guess this was the same property that baffled my peers, cos a lot of times, they could not see through the reason why I persisted in doing something that they deemed unnecessary while I was indifferent to issues they felt so strongly against.

It was either them who were ‘wrong’ or me. But if the whole world was ‘right’, it would have been a better place, right?

For those who read this to the end, I think we are ready to be Big in our own ways. The fact that you could endure through the humiliation I hurled (especially for friends) meant that you viewed my friendship more than the superficial pandering of ‘You are good enough already’ pieces of shit. The fact that you also endured through my grumbology meant that you sort of agreed to what I gained and from then, willing to Upsize together with me.

Good friends

Let’s grow big together and make our lives more meaningful.

Taipei 10…3

After the initial rainy days, the sun came out just as the driver who drove us from the airport said. It was one of the few instances when I was happy to see the sun; no more grappling with rainy day plans!!

Day = + -

Our 1st stop was the National Palace Museum. I had wanted to go and take a look, when I read in one the pre-departure research that it had a special Chinese Painting exhibition. And since I was also told that the sprawling compounds would take more than 1 day to cover, I made it a point to set aside a full 3 hours (I only wanted to see the chinese paintings).

To tell the truth, the NPM was the best tourist attraction I went to in the whole of Taipei trip. It was fully air-conditioned, not swarmed with crowds and spanking clean and modern.

The exhibition covered half a floor, but I spent a good 1 hour poring through the paintings (and I did not cover all, cos I was tired of staring at paintings after paintings!). Although most were imitations, they were hailed from about the same era. You see, there was a difference between seeing the paintings on computers and notes and seeing them for real. For one, some were HUGE. Others had hues (though faded) that was not apparent in scans.

I think the calligraphic glass panels were comparable to the glass pyramid of the Louvre

We took their buses. It was more lok-kok than sg's, but reminiscent of my younger days...

We next went to the Taipei Main Station. Actually, it was not part of the plan. My intention was to go to the CKS Memorial Hall before going for lunch. But seeing that my mum was tired from all the walking, I thought we had better replenish our energy. So we stopped halfway at TMS to look for some food.

My lunch was a simple bowl of noodles. They weren't fantastic, but not bad. And the serving was... WOW!!

There was a furore over naming an MRT station positioned right outside Hwa Chong ‘Hwa Chong’ back here in sg. While it may be logical and of pure common sense to name an MRT station to the nearest landmark, Taipei took it even further.

CKS Memorial Hall is NOT anywhere near CKS MH MRT station.

NO ! ! !

The square was a good 10 minutes walk from the nearest exit (don’t forget we had to walk to the exit) and the building proper was another 15 minutes away from the perimeter of the square.

If a landmark so ‘near’ to a station can be used to name the station, I can’t see why there should be a dispute in sg.

The arch that created controversy...

Thepurpose of these 2 pix were to show how I regretted at wishing for the sun...

There was an exihibition on mammoths, but I decided it was too ex...

Due to the atrocious distance the MRT station was from the Hall, I decided to take a cab to SYS MH on the other end of the road.

And the trip took a good 10 minutes (I thought they were rather near).

View of our next destination

It was interesting to see a (Chinese) building with its main entrance confronting the stretch of busy road. In fengshui, it was a taboo!!

We walked to Taipei 101. haiz… I did not want to spend more money on cabs… Taipei 101 is also another must-see tourist trap. haha… It was the epitome of Chinese marvel. In fact, it was interesting to note how most (once) tallest buildings were build to worship the culture of the main population who built it.

Like the Petronas Twin Towers with its islamic emblem, and Taipei 101 with its Chinese bamboo and dragon symbol. I think most people would have known that the building was built to resemble the bamboo and that the coins fronting each facade represented Chinese coins, but how many people knew it was a dragon?

If one was to walk inside the mall and look up, he could see a mega-truss spanning across the entire diagonal of the mall. The truss was made to look like the backbone of a dragon (I guess the inspiration was that of a dinosaur). The spine led to the base of the tower, which of cos rose into the sky. Whether the head of the dragon was at the spire of the tower or at the end of the mall structure, I don’t know lol Anyone can enlighten me?

Knowing that Dubai had a world’s tallest building near completion and the fact that China is the only one other country that had the ability to challenge that, I was hoping that China would step on its act to take over Dubai!! haha…

I’m not being racist, ok? Dubai could build such mega structure due to the fact that it was rich in the 1st place. It had the oil, remember? But China did not have such resources and actually had to pick up the pieces left behind by its turbulent history of the past century. It would be as significant as the Beijing Olympics if China were to be able to build that.

I am actually totally bowled over by the Damper Babies!! They may be plain, simple but I simply loved them! I don’t know why! I was also tickled at the designer’s ability to use the lol (which was Taipei 101’s symbol) as the DB’s face. haha! Cute ~ In fact, I bought a lot of stuff related to them…

I chose the red baby (Lucky Red) for a reason lol

Doesn't this look satanic? lol

We ended our day with a dinner at the food court at Taipei 101. Ok, we had KFC. The funny thing was that it was like a pilgrimage for me to go taste the KFC in a new country. People used Mac’s, but I used KFC.

I planned to go Gong Guan one, but given my bad experience in Shilin, and the fact that we were both worn out, I decided to go back to rest in the hotel. Nice good rest!!

The only things I bought for the day. See, I bought the Lucky Red :)

Fillers: Videos

For those who are looking forward to my original update on my life, but are sadly disappointed by the lack of it, here’s another replacement: YOUTUBE!! I know xx would like to have more ‘inspirations’ to look for videos. haha…

All are animations, cos I am looking for references to which I can tell my friend what kind of animations I wanted for my advertisement. lol

The 1st one is a very nice one… Though one must have the patience to go through the whole 3 minutes of it. The 2nd one is just plain hilarous. I love the infectious-sounding laughter from those chicks!