Firstly, Selamat Hari Raya to all our Muslim teachers! I hope all of you are having a good day of celebrations with your family and loved ones!
I took home a pack of compositions and I was marking them at my desk earlier. Sad, I know, but such is the life of a teacher, unfortunately. I do my work at home occasionally though, because it's quieter and I have easy access to drinks, snacks and TV should I get tired, oops, hehe.
Importantly though, is that because I'm more relaxed at home, especially on a weekend or holiday, I find myself being able to pay more attention to their work. For example, since I'm marking compositions, I am more able to pick out their mistakes and think of constructive comments to write on their paper.
Then it struck me: Why is it that I'm only able to do this on a public holiday, which is supposedly a day of rest? Why am I not able to even write proper comments during normal workdays?
The answer that came most readily to me was stress. All around my work desk are various reminders of everything I have to do in a limited time. Worksheets I have to mark. Deadlines I have to meet. Parents I have to call. Emails I have to answer. Post-its with To-Do lists written on them. Ironically, while I need these post-its to remind me of what I have to do, it also places an additional layer of subconscious stress. I'm constantly being reminded that I have tons to do. Sometimes, to take a supposed break during marking, I would stop halfway and do some other menial task, like answer a parent's email.
Faced with all the things I have to do, how is it possible to truly focus on your work? Even when I stopped marking for a while, I would be faced with all the glaring reminders to be more productive and accomplish all this before I go home to cook dinner for the family and spend quality time. Is this really possible???
I know there are plenty of people who can thrive like this, who can whizz through their marking, plan next week's lesson plan and still have time to cook 4 dishes for dinner and teach their children their homework. (Oh you people, you make it hard for the rest of us...)
However, it seems research would back me up when I say I'm only human and I can't always keep up with everything. Plenty of articles, including this one by Health.com will attest to the dangers of multitasking. Similarly, even a normal Google search for 'focus on what is important' will give you plenty of reasons on how better focus will lead to better productivity. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People also asks us to make a distinction between 'urgent and not important' and 'not urgent but important'.
That's probably why I find marking at home on a public holiday easier. More focus and a more leisurely environment allowing me to focus on what is truly important, namely my students' development, rather than their parents' worries or my heads' projects.
I wish I could have this everyday that I was at work, but for one, life doesn't always give us what we want, and two, sometimes we have to make the best for ourselves. Like bringing work home and working in a comfortable study. ;)
If you want to read up on some stuff to improve your focus, I can recommend:
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The chapters on priorities in life and the distinction between urgent and important is one that has really stuck with me. You can read a short preview of the 7 Habits here but I would recommend you read the book for more details.
- Psychologies magazine has a good feature on finding your focus in life and work. I like this magazine because it comes with a monthly feature that has good tips on improving your life. I think you can still find the issue on Focus at Kinokuniya bookstores. You can check out their content at their website here.
Showing posts with label iwilldomybest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iwilldomybest. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 06, 2016
Thursday, May 12, 2016
Just do the corrections
Recently, I was talking about the good old days with a friend. She reminded of something I had forgotten and as we talked further, I felt the emotions from long ago rise up again.
Slightly more than 10 years ago, I went for my interview at MOE HQ. I hadn't thought about it much since then, but my friend reminded me how devastated I was after that. "Do you remember," she chuckled, "That you were so sure that you wouldn't be chosen and that you would be unemployed for the rest of your life?"
Then I started to remember. I remembered how all my prepared answers flew out the window as the panel of interviewers shot questions in rapid-fire. I remembered how totally unimpressive my answers were and that I was sure I had screwed it up somehow.
I was pretty upset after the interview, to be sure. I had been unemployed for about a year and I had been giving tuition to support myself. The MOE interview was one of the last bets I had to secure a decent-paying job. I didn't manage to say any of the answers I had rehearsed with my friend and after the interview, I sat with her at McDonald's wailing over a cup of coke, lost about my future and whether I would ever get a full time job.
When I remembered that, other memories then surfaced. I also remembered the first class I ever had as a BT, how I couldn't handle the problem students and how I felt imprisoned because of the bond. All the optimism I felt at NIE was gone and I felt helpless. I couldn't handle the students, I couldn't leave because of the bond and all the other BTs seemed to be doing fine or even better than me.
I wondered whether to leave after my bond.
The years passed again. I remembered a particularly bad observation. The kind that was so bad, I had to have another observation, which was even worse. The kind where the students didn't listen, didn't do the work properly, where I became even more panicked because they were getting out of hand and the fact that my RO was there frowning in the corner made me even more panicked and of course, things rapidly spiralled out of hand.
Of course, the evaluation I received at the end of that, suffice to say, was not excellent. I didn't want to face my colleagues in the staff room, who would ask me how it went. I just sat alone in the classroom after dismissing the kids for recess, wondering if I was ever cut out for this job and maybe it was all one big horrendous mistake. Even now, thinking about it makes my heart sting, despite all the years that have passed since then.
The funny thing is, it's been 10 years and I'm still here. I've been saying that to myself a lot because to me, it's such a miracle that all these screw-ups happened to me and yet, I'm still here. I've seen people cleverer and more capable than I was leave the service. I've seen others lapse into depression after getting the same bad evaluations that I did. I've also seen less capable people stay on due to well-played politics.
And of course, I've seen classes of children, good and bad, come, study and graduate.
Maybe reaching that 10-year mark was something of a tipping point for me. After reaching this point and experiencing some of the lows that I did, I realised that there was nothing really that could faze me, except myself. Despite all the bad and really terrible times I went through, I still made it, plodding along, slowly but surely. I created a sort of mantra for myself. If it doesn't get it killed or fired, then I would be fine. I would be upset, surely, but I would learn and get through, because I had already gone through so much other worse stuff.
Perhaps that is the advantage that the class failure has. The lesson that if you can get through failure, you learn better how to survive it and thrive from it.
Today, I screwed up again at work, though thankfully on a more minor matter. I felt the same upset feeling again, but this time, compared to the past others, was slightly different. This time, there was also a little voice telling me,
Just do the corrections.
I had to laugh. It was my own voice, the same voice that I told the kids again and again in class. Maybe reminding me of the same encouragement that I would give to any kid struggling with the times table or even to add 2 and 2. The voice I used to tell the kids not to give up on your mistakes, to do the corrections for it and learn from it. Mistakes are ok. If you don't get it now, as long as you try again, you'd get it eventually, and I know you'd get it if you just keep trying.
So to anyone struggling in their career, having a bad time with the kids or even a worse time with the adults, to anyone who's felt that they would never ever finish the marking, who's felt that they would never get through to the kids,
Or to anyone who's ever felt that you're a failure as a teacher and that you'll never make it.
You're not bad, you're not stupid and you're not a failure as a teacher.
Hang in there, do the corrections, learn from your mistakes. You will get there in the end.
Take this lesson, not from the successes around you, but from the account of one who's already failed before and who's still around.
And you know what? One day, you will reach the 10, 20 or even 30 year mark. Maybe, like me, you will also look back and wonder that you made it through after all.
Slightly more than 10 years ago, I went for my interview at MOE HQ. I hadn't thought about it much since then, but my friend reminded me how devastated I was after that. "Do you remember," she chuckled, "That you were so sure that you wouldn't be chosen and that you would be unemployed for the rest of your life?"
Then I started to remember. I remembered how all my prepared answers flew out the window as the panel of interviewers shot questions in rapid-fire. I remembered how totally unimpressive my answers were and that I was sure I had screwed it up somehow.
I was pretty upset after the interview, to be sure. I had been unemployed for about a year and I had been giving tuition to support myself. The MOE interview was one of the last bets I had to secure a decent-paying job. I didn't manage to say any of the answers I had rehearsed with my friend and after the interview, I sat with her at McDonald's wailing over a cup of coke, lost about my future and whether I would ever get a full time job.
When I remembered that, other memories then surfaced. I also remembered the first class I ever had as a BT, how I couldn't handle the problem students and how I felt imprisoned because of the bond. All the optimism I felt at NIE was gone and I felt helpless. I couldn't handle the students, I couldn't leave because of the bond and all the other BTs seemed to be doing fine or even better than me.
I wondered whether to leave after my bond.
The years passed again. I remembered a particularly bad observation. The kind that was so bad, I had to have another observation, which was even worse. The kind where the students didn't listen, didn't do the work properly, where I became even more panicked because they were getting out of hand and the fact that my RO was there frowning in the corner made me even more panicked and of course, things rapidly spiralled out of hand.
Of course, the evaluation I received at the end of that, suffice to say, was not excellent. I didn't want to face my colleagues in the staff room, who would ask me how it went. I just sat alone in the classroom after dismissing the kids for recess, wondering if I was ever cut out for this job and maybe it was all one big horrendous mistake. Even now, thinking about it makes my heart sting, despite all the years that have passed since then.
The funny thing is, it's been 10 years and I'm still here. I've been saying that to myself a lot because to me, it's such a miracle that all these screw-ups happened to me and yet, I'm still here. I've seen people cleverer and more capable than I was leave the service. I've seen others lapse into depression after getting the same bad evaluations that I did. I've also seen less capable people stay on due to well-played politics.
And of course, I've seen classes of children, good and bad, come, study and graduate.
Maybe reaching that 10-year mark was something of a tipping point for me. After reaching this point and experiencing some of the lows that I did, I realised that there was nothing really that could faze me, except myself. Despite all the bad and really terrible times I went through, I still made it, plodding along, slowly but surely. I created a sort of mantra for myself. If it doesn't get it killed or fired, then I would be fine. I would be upset, surely, but I would learn and get through, because I had already gone through so much other worse stuff.
Perhaps that is the advantage that the class failure has. The lesson that if you can get through failure, you learn better how to survive it and thrive from it.
Today, I screwed up again at work, though thankfully on a more minor matter. I felt the same upset feeling again, but this time, compared to the past others, was slightly different. This time, there was also a little voice telling me,
Just do the corrections.
I had to laugh. It was my own voice, the same voice that I told the kids again and again in class. Maybe reminding me of the same encouragement that I would give to any kid struggling with the times table or even to add 2 and 2. The voice I used to tell the kids not to give up on your mistakes, to do the corrections for it and learn from it. Mistakes are ok. If you don't get it now, as long as you try again, you'd get it eventually, and I know you'd get it if you just keep trying.
So to anyone struggling in their career, having a bad time with the kids or even a worse time with the adults, to anyone who's felt that they would never ever finish the marking, who's felt that they would never get through to the kids,
Or to anyone who's ever felt that you're a failure as a teacher and that you'll never make it.
You're not bad, you're not stupid and you're not a failure as a teacher.
Hang in there, do the corrections, learn from your mistakes. You will get there in the end.
Take this lesson, not from the successes around you, but from the account of one who's already failed before and who's still around.
And you know what? One day, you will reach the 10, 20 or even 30 year mark. Maybe, like me, you will also look back and wonder that you made it through after all.
Thursday, March 10, 2016
It's been a while...
One day, I logged into Blogger remembering a dusty old blog that I used to keep. I wrote a bit about the education industry in Singapore, about the tuition industry and some little ideas about teaching.
Then one day, I stopped. Or rather, I did not suddenly stop one day, but work caught up, the marking went up, the workload went up and then the blog was laid one side. Every now and then, a thought occurred to me about something and I would think about blogging about it but then other work intruded and the thought flew away.
Nothing spectacular, just what happens to a lot of people, I guess.
The funny thing is, while I was neglecting my blog, the Internet certainly wasn't. I would receive an email once in a while telling me someone had commented on something I blogged years back. I thought it was strange and then during the Dec holiday I decided to log into Blogger and see what was going on.
The statistics told me: People were still reading parts of the blog, even after I had neglected it! The Internet and the spiders at Google were still surfacing parts of my blog and most touchingly, people were still interested in reading parts of it. Thank you very much if you were doing so. :)
This year, I'm going to make another attempt at keeping this blog dust-free. There have been changes to the industry since my last blog post. There are big ideas I want people to think about. There are teaching practices that I want to share. I've found great resources and websites that have helped me in my teaching. I think there are things tuition teachers can use as well, so that they can be a great support to their students' learning, even if they have not been trained by NIE. There are things happening in local education that I want to voice an opinion about.
And I know there are others out there who are interested too.
Thank you for keeping this alive and I will do my best not to disappoint.
Then one day, I stopped. Or rather, I did not suddenly stop one day, but work caught up, the marking went up, the workload went up and then the blog was laid one side. Every now and then, a thought occurred to me about something and I would think about blogging about it but then other work intruded and the thought flew away.
Nothing spectacular, just what happens to a lot of people, I guess.
The funny thing is, while I was neglecting my blog, the Internet certainly wasn't. I would receive an email once in a while telling me someone had commented on something I blogged years back. I thought it was strange and then during the Dec holiday I decided to log into Blogger and see what was going on.
The statistics told me: People were still reading parts of the blog, even after I had neglected it! The Internet and the spiders at Google were still surfacing parts of my blog and most touchingly, people were still interested in reading parts of it. Thank you very much if you were doing so. :)
This year, I'm going to make another attempt at keeping this blog dust-free. There have been changes to the industry since my last blog post. There are big ideas I want people to think about. There are teaching practices that I want to share. I've found great resources and websites that have helped me in my teaching. I think there are things tuition teachers can use as well, so that they can be a great support to their students' learning, even if they have not been trained by NIE. There are things happening in local education that I want to voice an opinion about.
And I know there are others out there who are interested too.
Thank you for keeping this alive and I will do my best not to disappoint.
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