Well all in all a long and exhausting day but fun at times. The sec 4 classes I teach are just next to the staff room so I m there quite fast when the bell rings. Today my lesson was after the break and waited for abt 10 min for all the kids to get back. Abt four kids were already in class. I started the lesson 5 min after the bell. When the rest tried to come I told them to wait outside with an angry look. I continued with the lesson, gave the kids in class some work to do and then went to scold the kids outside. They were late coz they had been waiting for the lift. After that we continued with our lesson. They all complain I am trying to squeeze too much information into their brains in a short time. And after I finish the chapter they ask me “ What is weathering?” Some claimed they don’t understand anything to which I was quite unsympathetic as I felt that if they read the book or listened to me while I was explaining they would understand something and would be more specific about what they don’t understand. Its coz they each want indvl explaining which I simply can’t afford to do.
Then we were doing oxidation and I was talking about the mineral “iron”. They didn’t understand until one of the kids said “iron” emphasizing the “r” sound. So there was this little argument btw me and them on whether the r was silent. Then they said “ Oh only those people that are lazy don’t pronounce their “r”s. And one of them asked “ What do you call those pple that can’t pronounce “r”? And before I knew it , the word was out of my mouth “Chinese”. It took a few seconds for the reaction to come. They looked at each other open-mouthed and went “ But Miss, we are Chinese!” but they were good natured abt it and we continued laughing for quite a bit. ( It was funny as they had to actually look at each other to realize they were Chinese) Was talking abt it to another teacher and she dubbed it “ The Irony of Iron”. Still now that I think back, it wasn’t a nice thing to say. So will probably go back and apologize to the class tomorrow.
Had a marking workshop with the English teachers today – went quite except for the part where the ex-lawyer marked down a kid coz the story the kids wrote was unrealistic. The kid had written abt becoming invisible after taking invisible potion. He said “ Oh I have read a lot of sci fi and this is not realistic”. Its sad how sometimes we impose our perceptions on that of the students. Students go through many steps to get to a particular stage of competency and we as teachers have to recognise and nurture that.