My week started exhaustively. Got back from a good holiday and my physical body is tired. Yet, my brain does not allow me to sleep or nap for the past two days. Been struggling with insomnia during the night and hence late for school for two days in a row. Totally unacceptable to my own standard, although it was late by minutes only.
Had to invigilate in a school hall for final year exam and hence needed to be super alert. With my tired body, I forced myself to constantly walk through students just to stay awake. With a restless body, I find myself heartbroken to see so many students sleeping through their English paper.
I was at the brim of telling myself: I'm done with all these nonsense. I closed my eyes and said a little prayer: Lord, carry me through the day and let me honour you in everything I do.
I continue to force myself not to sleep through exam hall, being the rajin-teacher that walks around and uphold students to the highest standards of exam rules while other teachers chatting at the back of the hall or manning their own business.
I came back from the hall after all the invigilation, just to find a meeting notice on my table. Both English and History Panel meeting that is happening concurrently. In the past, I've always chose history one to attend as I'm supposed to teach history as my option. But my heart told me, it's my last meeting with the English teachers and they have been my supporters in things that I do.
In the meeting, my new panel head, Miss R, that I admire much on her righteousness through keeping her integrity in this challenging profession, chaired her first panel meeting as a new head. She's strict and follows procedures thus not too much of a liking of most of the teachers, but I love her style. No-nonsense policy sometimes is needed to perform unfavorable tasks like this.
As we went through the meeting, the biggest concern of the panel remains on the teachers that we are lacking in teaching English. As me and my collab from TFM are ending our contract with the school by the end of this year, the school will struggle badly as they will only have 4 English optionist to teach English. I found myself care a lot on how to help the non-optionist teachers to teach better, as many of them express concerns on their capability to be an English teacher. Yes, English, and all languages for that matter, is tough to teach if one is not trained. More so where a school like mine, where student's are struggling way below their form level. The teachers felt helpless, one even shared that his high blood pressure remains high ever since he took on one English class. Stress has been a constant companion to him. Oh, such poor thing.
When my head panel ask everyone in the round table to share anything else as closing of the meeting, me and my collab spoke the most. I shared on how I think we can manage our Human Resource better with or without TFM teachers being around and how I've done some best-practices in my classroom, align to what my head panel was saying regarding the wishes of my principal.
My head panel then suggested one of the best gift I can ever have as a closing of my journey as a teacher in TFM. She suggested we should have a sharing session / farewell party for me and my collab to share with the other teachers what we've done throughout these two years in school. I was elated to hear that and thank God for her support.
Now, my soul is recharged, knowing that I will end my fellowship with imparting my learning takeaways to the people that have seen me bloom as a teacher. My body remains tired but I thank God for carrying me through today and gave me more than I could expect. I thank you Lord for blessing me so much throughout these two years of fellowship, through the good times and the bad.
To Miss R, I pray oh Lord, that He continues to favour you and bless you in everything you undertake for your attitude in serving the Lord and the student is just beautiful.
Like my principal like to say, what is life's most important ingredient? Money? No. Success? No. It's ATTITUDE.
Truly in whatever we undertake, it's bound to be challenging. There will be bad times! But having the right attitude will be the key to success.
In the past two years of my fellowship, I've been working hard to bring my students to greater heights. I felt that I've left my mark. I'll be sharing more the next time, but when you show you truly care for a student, you will touch their lifes and make them believe in themselves again -- faith restoration I call it.
However, I've not done a good job in supporting my fellow teachers around, mainly also it is because the conservative culture that I've been working in believes in seniority. Hence, a young teacher will be offensive if he or she approaches a senior teacher and tells them what they think should be done.
That is why as I end my fellowship, I wanted to do more. Something for the teachers this time. I want to help to impact teachers and thus having the ripple event, impacting more students. As I end my fellowship, I will embark on another role in coaching and consulting teachers and administrators of schools.
If I need to describe my attitude in my fellowship, I would say my attitude is #forthekids. My main priority has always been my clients, the students, and not my employer, the Ministry of Education. But as for my upcoming role, I guess I will reset my attitude to -- help building a support network and community within teaching profession. #supportteachers
I hope I will achieve that. This I pray onto the Lord. Amen!
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