Update on student A
He went home and got an earful from his mum about how why he cried in school. He was angry with me as he thought I had betrayed him. His anger lasted about 4 hours before he stopped trying to scowl in class as he wanted to participate and because he was in a bad mood nobody wanted to talk to him. By friday things were back to normal until I gave them homework for the holidays. Some of the students complained that their parents would make them finish all their homework in one day which I found very bad as they would do it fast and then they would make careless mistakes. So i wrote notes to their parents and student A was so thrilled. He wanted me to call and scold his mum as well. Of course i told him I couldnt do that.

The holidays have already started for me for a week. Yesterday was sports day and it was ok quite fun. It was so hot - the kind that makes you squint as u can hardly see. We were at the grandstand which faces the morning so hence the problem. Another colleague of mine and me were the announcers for the event. And it was quite frustrating during the event as the prizewinners would not sit still. After they had been told their places, they would disappear and when we announced their names they were nowhere to be found. Had to announce about 3 times before we got any response. At the end we were announcing the relay winners. They were all seated in the field and they would take about 10 seconds to get and walk to collect their medals.
Will prob be back for a few days next week but as usual have a lot of errands to run. So don't blame me i dont get a chance to meet up.
I hv been trying to get in touch with Gow but seems like I have the wrong phone number coz i don't get any replies. I only put it down in the hope that she gets in touch.

One of the class boy's parents came to see me today. I was surprised as I was actually thinking of calling them. This boy A was crying before his Maths test during Assembly and I thought he had been in a fight and didnt ask anything. At the end of the day I asked him about what was the matter and he said it was a fight. Later on after further probing he said it was because his mum had told him - If you don't get 100 for your test don't call me mum" He was crying so hard that he made a few careless mistakes in his test. He got 90 marks. Till today he has not told his parents he got back the paper. Well anyway today I told them about his crying but not what he told me. The father turned around and scolded the mum for putting too much pressure on the boy. The boy's mother was defensive as well. She told me how she read her son's diary and he was quite playful all the time. Then she told me that A had told her to buy a diary with a lock and told her "Only Mrs VJ can read this , you cannot". I could see she was quite angry about that. After she calmed down I told her that at least he told her he wanted the money for the diary. He could have lied about it but he didn't. He probably was telling her that he didnt like her reading his diary. I told her that at this age, most kids want to be trusted to do things their own way. So I asked her to let him be for a week or two and see how his grades go. In that not to keep on bugging him.....If they improve good, if they dont then she can tell him they did try it his way first. And about what he writes in the diary - let him do it - it would help release his bottled up feeling. The parents agreed to try so lets see how that goes.

Today I walked into class thinking it was thursday. I happily went down to my class and found out they were having Maths instead. And there I discovered that my class had been changing places when I was not around for some time. I was quite angry but didnt show it then. I felt like this because I had asked them to submit seating plans they wanted and they had voted for the arrangement they wanted for next term. So I was hurt that they had been doing this for some time without my knowledge. I went to class and was so choked with emotion that I did not want to speak to them. So I told them to do what they liked and then I did my work for a while. They were really quiet and took out their books and were flipping their pages not knowing what to do.
Then I wrote the word defiance on the board and asked them what it meant. And I told my class how disappointed I was with them and that I felt that they had betrayed my trust in them. How by doing that they had shown disrespect. At the end of the day I had English again and we had a normal class. The class gave me apology letters and I think they really meant. But really now they have to show that they can be trusted.
On a lighter note, I finished Paper 2 of the Geog paper yesterday. Still have 2 more exam papers multiplied by 52 students to mark by Monday.

Has been some time - been a bit busy with what else but work. Had the eye of the storm sensation in work last week when everything was calm but this week started and ended so fast that wonder how it passed so fast. Was sick on wednesday and went home early - was very proud of my class - they didnt need a teacher to look after them - they were too busy doing the worksheets i gave them. before i left we had a short exercise on practising their memory skills. I pasted 8 sentences in groups around the room. There were 5 groups and they had to come up individually and memorise one sentence and go back and recite to their group the sentence, Then another member would come and recite another sentence . Collectively the sentences made a puzzle that they had to solve. The exercise was from a colleague's book and the book warned that it would be very quiet as one group didnt want another group to find out. IT WAS TRUE! one of the rare times when a class had fun while keeping quiet! Oh they had a ball of a time and the class had finally started bonding leaving aside petty quarrels that they had. The kid who solved it was one of the laziest in class. I found out he was actually quite intelligent. An inspiring moment indeed.
Today decided to build on that energy and read them out a short story which goes something like this - "A man and a lady were travelling in a train. The lady took off her gloves and the man was arrested. After 24 hours the police were forced to let him go." The kids had to ask me questions and I had to answer yes or no. The hands shot up and they kept asking questions after questions. As the story developed they started imagining things and some of them actually got scared and this girl curled up her legs under her on the chair. All because this coz one kid said fingerprint and i said shorten it and they were like Fingers? oh it was really very very fun as I could see them thinking and the questions kept coming as they were really trying very hard to solve the mystery. One guy who the class really doesnt like as he is the laziest kid and always gets the class into trouble also put up his hand to ask a question - he got caught up and the class laughed at his question but they had started working as a class - comments ranged from "This is really interesting" and " oh i m stressed" and they figured it out - all by themselves! Oh i was so pleased with them. Of coz after that they had to write out the story at which they all groaned.