Teacher Answers Your Questions

Like in any class, the Teacher likes it when students ask questions, or raise [intelligent] comments. Here are the Teacher's responses to some of the comments:

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Petals gives other suggestions, like:

"1] to give them a piece of assignment and tell them tis a test"
~ A variation of this, is to tell them that they MUST hand it in by this period or there will be bloodshed.

"2] threaten to detain them during recess or after school"
~ It can work. There's no thought more dismaying than the one that you have to stay in this hellhole of a school longer than you have to. But newbies be warned: If you detain them during the whole recess, you are depriving them of time to eat, and go to the toilet. If you detail them after school, there is the risk they may not catch the schoolbus in time to go home, and you may face some very angry parent complaints.

However, my experience today showed me that it's quite an effective threat. I sat in front of the class and duly stated that "No one goes home until I'm satisfied you can stay silent for 10 seconds." Most of the class became extremely silent, and even scolded off those errant boys who still wanted to 'strike pose' in front of me. Peer pressure at its most effective.

"3] switching off all the fans in the class to reinstate order if they go crazy but this can get rather unbearable for the RT him/herself "
I agree. :S This one may not be worth the pain to yourself.

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Someone said:
"while there are some useful tips on relief-teaching mentioned, like always be firm, the general approach advocated in this blog seems overly totalitarian. From experience, a warm demeanor from any teacher will certainly bring many happy acknowledgements from students as he/she walks past the schools' corridors. "

And ningx seems to agree:
"I dislike teachers like that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!No offence but as a secondary school student, I like teachers that come in and make small talk with us.About the no permission thing, I once had a teacher who forbidden water drinking.I hated her. "

Erm, can I state for the record first, that I always allow my students to drink water in class? :P Water deprivation seems too close to being an infringement of human rights.

And next is my disclaimer: Everything in this blog is strictly tongue-in-cheek. [If you don't know what that means, go ask your teachers, or ex-teachers.]

I cannot stress or bold that sentence enough. I advocate firmness with students, because there is no way I can teach a class, if everyone ignores me/shouts back at me/defies me/or tries to make small talk with me. Again, in a class, I am outnumbered. I need to make the students respect me, and possibly, fear me. [And I especially believe this, having relieved what was possibly the rowdiest class in all of Neko Primary.]

BUT I am not encouraging others to become a semi-Hitler in their classes. Being firm is fine. Being a total dictator is another. Maybe it was not clear in the tongue-in-cheek way I wrote it [it was supposed to make you laugh. Ha. Ha.] but now I'm stating it clearly in bold.

Once again, I'm just a trainee teacher with about 2.5 weeks of teaching experience, and I write mostly for humourous [and the occassional stress] relief.

Don't take this blog too seriously.

And I'll show that to any principal who claims my blog turns his teachers into sadists.

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From Tomorrow.sg, I've also found a funny entry on Yao guai's blog about Teaching as a Performance Art, and Teaching and Dungeons and Dragons. The one I can't figure out is how a magical elf becomes a teacher.......... ??????

Anyway, check out his blog here.

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Thanks for sharing your comments with the Teacher!