Spider Man

2 questions were raised to my year 3 students during Science lesson today:

Q1: How many legs does a spider have?
A1: Eight! (Aren’t they clever?!)
Q2: How many legs does the spider man have?
A2: Eight………! ( Managed to hold myself from fainting!)

Tribute to Auntie A Moi

Auntie A Moi is the one and only Chinese non-academic staff in our school, she is retiring today. She is a kind and hardworking staff who has been serving in our school for a total of 35 years long. She has been contributing really much in maintaining the cleanness of our school. She worked tremendously hard for the school and seldom on leave.

Each morning, as soon as she reaches school, she will be starting her work by boiling three kettles of water to make three kettles of different drinks: coffee, milo and tea for all the teachers in the staff room. Once we step into the staff room early in the morning, we shall be able to smell the fragrance of the coffee that has always been stimulating our cravings of having a sip of it.

Then, she will start sweeping and cleaning the compound of the school to make sure there isn’t any litter at any corner of the school, trashing the garbage and cleaning the toilets. She is the VIP of the school, her presence is very much important to the school. All of us appreciate her contributions so much, and we have been relying on her so much to get the hot drinks prepared early in the morning.

After her leaving, there will be no more coffee smell, and neither milo nor tea too. The staff room will soon be filled with the smell of all kinds of 3 in 1 instant drinks instead. The most fragrant coffee smell will be gone with auntie A Moi……

We are most grateful to auntie A Moi for everything she has done for us throughout the years, and we would like to express our most heartfelt blessings to her on her retirement, may she be blessed with good health forever, and may the restful days ahead bring a peaceful heart and a contented soul that leads to genuine and a life time of happiness.

Happy retiring, auntie!

Thick-skinned

School has just reopened, the staff room is still in such a mess, it will be parents' day on Friday, but the system that generates the results can't still work properly and correctly. Anyway, we are always good at getting jobs done at the eleventh hour, so, nobody seems worry and panic at all... haven't got my power point slides ready for the talk to be delivered on Friday afternoon too, and is forced to work till late in the night...

I took nasi beriani for lunch today. One of my colleagues treated me nasi beriani, a kind of Malay style rice. He treated only three colleagues in the staff room, I was lucky enough to be one of the three. He is going to finish his service contract at the end of the month, and he was just trying to express his gratitude to us for helping him before, but..... I couldn’t even remember when and what had I been helping him??? I could really hardly remember!!! Anyway, I still gobbled up the nasi beriani, though I didn't know what had I really done to help, ’cause I was too hungry!!!

I am always such thick-skinned!

On The Way We Are!

concentrating...

Yes, we are on the way of the project-based learning!

There are a total of 14 students in two groups that participate in this program. Much grateful to the three facilitators led by Ms Oh that traveled all the way from KL to assist us at the beginning of this program, they are making their most effort to introduce and carry out PBL in the schools all over Malaysia to help to make learning more initiative, livelier and more interesting. Much appreciate to the other three colleagues that had been willingly consented in helping to implement the program in the school. With the assistance from all of them, the program has been running smoothly and the students taking part seemed enjoying the learning really much. Hopefully the program will be going on successfully.

Project-based Learning

Together with some of my colleagues, we attended a two days course in school. It was in connection with project-based learning (PBL); the course was given to us so that we will be able to implement such learning in the classroom in future. It's a unique approach to learning that provides students with the opportunity to gain experience in sifting and sorting data, working collaboratively, and using critical-thinking skills, all to solve real-world problems.

PBL helps make learning relevant and useful to students by establishing connections to life outside the classroom, addressing larger concerns, and developing usable skills. The students are encouraged to use the latest information technologies to conduct their research and present their findings. What differentiates PBL from traditional class lessons is that the teacher acts more like a facilitator than like the sage on the stage.

Our facilitator and her assistants were all from KL, they are much younger than many of us. Though everybody seemed really tired at the end of the day, but we really enjoyed the course. Hopefully we will be able to carry out our tasks excellently when PBL is implemented in our school in future.

Tired!

Feeling tired of teaching!

The enthusiasm of teaching seems completely disappeared within me!

Really feels tired, disappointed and lost in my career...I had really been struggling so hard to regain my interest in teaching in recent years, and trying every way to refresh my mind as well as to uplift my spirit but yet nothing seemed works!

As the school teachers, we teach and teach and teach, just to cover all the syllabuses of various subjects within limited time!

We teach and teach and teach, trying every way to collect tones of homework given back from the students!We teach and teach and teach, hoping that the students will pass or even ace their exam!

I could neither derive any happiness nor contentment from my job, and the most frustrating and depressing fact is I couldn't bring much happiness to the students throughout their learning process other than pushing them really much to have their work done as required and to achieve better result as expected.

In fact, teaching and learning shouldn't be like that, just to fulfill the result requirements and expectations of the school and the education department, but nothing concerns about developing the character, behavior, self-discipline, intelligence, mind and even wisdom of the students besides loading them with tones of homework...

May be it's time for me to review and to make some changes or adjustment either in my emotion or teaching career.... I should really change myself to adapt to the uncomfortable situation facing now, but not manipulated by the situation, right?!

Well, will keep working my way towards the reviving of the inspiration, spirit and vigor lost...
Good luck to me!

Regular Visitors

what on earth were they staring at??

Jookim, Zili and the other boys and girls of my 2001 class were here tonight. They had been gathering here every Lunar New Year since they left school. There used to be quite a big group of them, but the group seemed smaller this year 'cause some of them couldn't stay longer as they had some other things to attend to. I really appreciated their regular visit.

They talked among themselves about their school lives and their friends. Zili was always the focus among them, he used to bring them a lot of funny stories and he really was the bomb of laughter. Some boys were always quiet and timid like chunhow, mingyang, weixiang and chunfan, they used to sit quietly and uttered only a few sentences with the others.

All the boys and girls will be sitting for their SPM at the end of the year, they had always been doing very well in their study, may they succeed in their exams!