Barely working for 2 months, I must say the job scope is pretty close to my expectations. In terms of curriculum, I take about 30+ periods a week from 745 to 1315. One day of CCA till 4. Thats about it. In terms of preparation, not much is needed since I am considered untrained and hence not required to do up a proper lesson plan, just leech other teacher's lesson plan can already. Even if I have to do one myself after ***, its just fluff and jargon. My specialty.
However, in terms of saikang, I must say, I really do get alot since the people my HOD can spam is literally me and another teacher only. Still, it is within my expectations UNTIL end of year comes. In short, everything that has to do with music, my HOD will propose a plan, and throw to me to execute. Holy shit, I took up the workload of 3 people for Prize Giving Ceremony alone and the very next day I took up the workload of 6 people for Arts Festival. Shall not go into details but just a brief version to remind myself to take MC if Arts Festival ever comes again.
Knowledge board, QR Codes
Directional Signs, Informative signs, Toilet signs. 147 signs in total, design + print + putting it up alone.
27 performing groups. Schedule + Rehearsal + Sound check + Collate music + Babysit
A fked up colleague that talks alot and volunteers alot of 天马行空 and 异想天开 ideas, and sabos me into executing them. Cb this mofo deserves one solid post on his own. In short, karma on me for getting carried so hard in NUS. He is an upgraded fked up version of the past me coz even the past me will just keep quiet and do nothing, whereas this fktard talks out of his ass while others wipe it for him.
After a gruesome end to the school term, there comes the stock taking. Fuck, even in NS I absofkinglutely hated to do stores. Furthermore, stock taking is like wiping a gigantic asshole having diarrhoea and its not even my own ass. Everyone just dumps their music resources on my table, music instruments are everywhere, there are like 40 over xylphones, 40 over ukeleles, 20 over drums, 42 angklungs, 200+ other random music accessories thrown all around the school. And I have to label them ONE BY FKING ONE with serial numbers and shit. ALONE. This is madness. The system is horrific, the execution is horrific, saikang I still can take it but laosaikang? Sigh.
Enough of negative stuff. Lets have some positive stuff. Teaching can truly give alot of job satisfaction when one looks past all the laosaikang. I had a group of P5 naughty boys who were ill behaved and had single digit score in Maths, they came up to me and said they wanted to perform for arts festival. Long story short, the naughtiest boy became the leader since only he had some dancing background. The rest of the naughty boys actually learnt how to dance from scratch and they sat in silence while listening to the leader teach them. It was truly enlightening how every single teacher warned me about them and there they were, despite the class hate, despite the teachers prejudice, despite the school's judgement, they managed to come up with a performance that even Minister asked for an encore.
I was shocked, truly shocked. It was the first time in my life I had a jaw dropping experience where my jaw involuntarily dropped. Its not those times where I dropped for the sake of dropping, this was real. I saw a group of naughty boys shuffling, break-dancing, somersaulting, coordinating formations from scratch. Up to the point where they performed for the Minister and they came running to me after their performance, eyes burning with desire, filled with passion, sweat pouring from everywhere, and asked me if they could do it again. The amount of passion and enthusiasm overwhelmed me at that moment and I must admit I teared up a little.
Think about it. Where do we get to see this kind of passion nowadays? You give those boys 10 years, they would become typical fkers like me.
Perform for school?
Imagine asking your friends to perform something they have never done before. This would be the typical response.
Perform an extra item for the Minster?
"Throw face la.. dowan la.. siao malu ourselves in front of minister only."
I am truly humbled by this experience, I have always said "grades are not everything" to sound politically correct. This time I fking mean it. For real.
To end this post, let me tell you all a joke. Within 2 weeks of joining the school, my colleagues during lunch asked me this question:" Would you like to know more about God?"
