6 posts tagged “teaching”

Fuck you VPN! Fucking CUNTivity client of motherfucking hell!! I haul my ancient brick laptop home, try to do my work, TRY to be efficient and what do I get?

So you know what? Just-
Now that my rage spasm has passed, it is obviously a very stressful time for me. I failed to appreciate how my teachers used to handle this examination mark (grades) entry before the COCKpit (an aptly named knowledge management system for the education system) era. Technology doesn't help make our lives easier. Not yet and not always. When it comes to knowledge managements systems for something as massive as the Singapore Education System, we still know too little about human information processing for us to make the system a help more than a hinderance. The intentions are good, believe me, and I'm sure it speeds up data collation. The problem is that it is often an extremely roundabout process to even enter the data in the first place.

It takes me about 10 minutes to even login to the system to access the intranet. 10 minutes! Do you know how long that is in Internet Years? 10 minutes can get me 5 songs off the web - 10 minutes can load a 30 minute video off Youtube - 10 minutes, at 100mbps, should transfer up to 60,000mbs of data. Why do I have to wait 10 minutes to send probably 100b of data just get into a system to spend 5 minutes updating 1 absent pupil's attendance record EVERY DAY? It just doesn't make sense - and now I have to haul home bricktop to key in marks because I refuse to learn the HIGHLY complicated method of downloading the Excel file that will allow me to key in marks without logging into the system; because, considering the economy of time, the amount of time spent LEARNING how to download, use, and upload that file's data, could have been spent typing shit into the system immediately. 

Then you get fuck-ups like this that just negate any benefit of using the system because you can't. fucking. use. the system.

So you know what? Fuck it. Fuck it all. I will play Prince of Persia and I don't care.

I am so tired. So tired. Kid in school made me so angry. I have never railed at a kid so bad before. Today I have experienced literary cliches. I hear about how this idiot in my class beat up some other kid. "Her mouth pursed into a straight line." I called the victim and perpetrator (P) over and enquired about the incident. I heard said perpetrator's shallow drivel of a reason why he pushed a boy down, hit him on the head with a water bottle and kicked him on the arse. Apparently, victim has tripped over P's leg. I felt my eyes narrow slightly as I viewed the impending death of P. "Her eyes hardened." Wow! Literature becomes real! I'll bet my secondary 2 lit teacher never saw me learning the lesson this way.

Twice I'd gone to search for the big-voiced, grandfatherly and frankly drill-sergeantish old man who was the "Stick" to all the little kiddies still to immature to understand "principal" - they all knew the terror that was Drill Sergeant. However, twice I'd gone looking, and twice said Sergeant was not at his desk. That was it. I had to deal with this little pest myself. I took the pest to the third floor and screamed at him for a quarter hour. I was so angry even my grammar went down the drain. I came back in the foulest of moods and even my class shut the hell up.

Talking to P's mom, I realised that I had finally admitted that I had reached the end of my rope. This kid... This kid... I'm giving up on him. How can I help someone who doesn't want to be helped? I feel like Jesus at the garden of Gethsemane in Jesus Christ Superstar, singing the line "After all, I tried for three years... seems like thirty, seems like thirty... could you ask as much of any other man?"It might not have been three years, more like a year and a half; but it fucking feels like thirty regardless. I keep feeling that I shouldn't give up on P. He's just a kid (like Chucky is just a doll), and he doesn't realize the implications of his actions (like a rabid wolf doesn't realize the implications of biting people). Then again... I hate him.

Is it wrong for me to hate him? I tried so hard. I really did. For the past year and a half, I tried. I begged his classmates to give him another chance when they couldn't stand him anymore. I asked them to be friends with him and help him remember to be good. I did that twice, not wanting him to be ostracized from his peers. He refuses to listen when they tell him to do things and kicks their bags in. Little dumb ass got himself ostracized. I get so many complaints about him everyday, and I honestly hate... hate the sight of him. Why?

Because he makes me so angry. He doesn't think before doing something stupid. He doesn't believe that what he is doing is wrong. He will promise to be good and try his best only to fuck up five minutes later. I've never been so angry with a kid in my life than today. In the beginning, I believed that he could be helped. I tried and tried to get him focused on his studies and settle down, to think before he did some stupid fuck up thing. His stupidity has only continued to this year, and I cannot take it anymore.

He's 8... I'm 25. I should hang in there and try again and help him. But I'm only human. I hate him. I don't want to talk to him. This got personal today when I realized he just wouldn't - refused to think. He wanted to be naughty plain and simple. There was no problem, no health issue. There's no family problem that causes this despite what he says - how can I believe him when he lies even to the school counsellor about how I see way he behaves and plays in class.

He just wants to be an unruly little beast. How many times must I cram the "Think before you act' routine down his throat? How many times must I grit my teeth and explain things to him with mock calm? All the love, patience and effort I put into helping him and it's come to nothing. What a waste of my fucking time. I may be wrong, but right now, I don't care. All my efforts are wasted. I cannot help him if he cannot help himself. If God gave this little blighter to me to teach me something, I'm damned if I know what the lesson fucking is. Don't give up? Control your temper? Help the ones you hate? If that is the case, God, you'd better show me what the hell I should do because I've tried everything short of killing him to put me out of my misery. Tell me what the hell I should do for P  before I change my mind.

Because I can only take so much time marking without distractions (and Brightside, my favourite RP distraction is AFK), I decided to google for random things. The first thing that came to mind was "Teacher Marking". I found some pics that spoke the truth, but some were just downright lies - like those hair products or bust augments that promise RESULTS GUARANTEED.

Lies:

People could qualify as a teacher in England in six months rather than the usual year, under new government plans.

Schools Minister Jim Knight announced proposals aimed at tempting more outstanding people to teach.

Two hundred people seen as future head teachers will also be able to move into school leadership within four years via an accelerated headship programme.

Education unions have reacted with alarm and scepticism about the need for the schemes or their practicability.

Bull.

"...When Chicken saw the chicken rice, she said, "It's not good, it's not nice! How I hate that chicken rice!" And she ran away."

And that's how the story ends. Not a very good ending for esteemed writer Joy Cowley. So my assignment to the kids was: Write what you think happened to chicken and monkey in the end.

I got back:

"The chicken never come (sic) back again. Three year ago (sic) the chicken was make (sic) into soup so the chicken REALLY never come (sic) back again.

The End."

I love a kid with a sense of humour XD

A teacher's desk. Note the worksheets half marked and the telltale red pen right in the middle along with the stack of workbooks to the right. Beside the worksheets, a big pencil case with all the social allure of a smelly bag lady. Also, you will see in the very center of the desk a cup of the Pedagogist's Elexir of Life - sweet tea. You can also tell that this is a classroom from the unidentified piles of paper to the far corner as well as the lost and found water bottles that said teacher would not touch with a ten-foot stick. But, the big green one is hers.