I'm trying to write a book for my students here. I've gathered all my stuff in front of my desk already and I'm ready to begin doing. It's been a long time project since a few years ago but I've been dilly-dallying till now. Can't really reveal much on the details because firstly, it's quite confidential and secondly, I don't have much details to sketch out anyway.
I figured that if I don't do this in bits and pieces, I'll probably do not have enough time to sit down and write it in one shot. Divide and conquer, don't they say?
Will keep you posted once I've had significant progress.
Irritating student (I shall call that person from now on) slept in my class again. I've been asking him time and time again to get some form of Ten Year Series (TYS) so that he can do some practice, but he'd been delaying for months. I think at least for 3 months. I'm not sure what he's so busy with.
Irritating student is more alert today, at least he is not openly yawning. He just sleeps while I look through his working. Sometimes it feels like a chore teaching people like that. It's very very draining on my energy level teaching someone who is an energy sucker - it feels like I've finished a 4 hours class at the end of the 2 hours lesson.
If I'm financially free, I will NEVER teach such students. It's a waste of their parent's tuition money and my time. I wonder what good will come out of it in the end.
Enough whining....I noticed that the market do not sell TYS anymore. That's a bit troubling. I thought that perhaps the publishers are a bit late to consolidate the papers for publishing, but in this time period and there's still no signs of TYS - there must be something seriously wrong. Perhaps with the change of the new syllabus for O'lvls, there are not enough years to publish a TYS, hence they stopped publication. But, even if the older syllabus are not entirely relevant, a good part of it (80-90%) are still very useful as extra practice for students sitting for the O'lvls.
With this new move, there are really only two ways to get such practices:
1) From bras brasah complex, look for 2nd hand bookstores. If I'm you, I'll hurry and get a copy before it runs out
2) From 'old-fashioned' tutors like me, who had the foresight to store up before the whole supply runs out. I had 20-30 yrs series even, for certain subjects. I shall take good care of those books, since they are a rare commodity now.
I was bored and tried searching my own name. Hey, guess what - my tutor profile starts to show up. Besides that, I found a website with my name on it from NUS alumini. It was from my batch of Civil engineering class 2003.
Not bad eh, my name is quite prominent, occupying the number 10 slot!
I've know of some independent schools who had very bad teachers. The teachers are plain irresponsible from the stories told to me by my students.
Some of them do teach their students, because the quality of their students intake into the school is high, so they are deemed as 'smart'. Hence, the teachers basically just browse through the contents of the slides and considered their lessons as taught. If teachers just had to read out the slides, we don't even need a human face there - students can just use a software to read out the notes to them. Teaching someone involves a lot more than just reading out the materials.
Another bunch of them assumed that the students have tutors, so they take it that the tutors will share their workload to teach the students. When students have problems and asked their teachers to clarify some points, the teachers blatantly replied, "Go ask your tutors".
What's the point of paying higher premiums to secure a place in such schools when the teacher's quality are so deplorable? I will have some serious thinking to do when next time I have a kid and have to select which schools he/she wants to go to.
But somehow, I have to thank these bad teachers. Without them, my services will not be in such high demands. Sometimes, people have to know what is bad teaching before they appreciate what is good teaching. Ironic isn't it?
I've not been blogging here for a long time. I guess one of the main reasons is that I realised that students who need help in tuition might not be the most motivated to actually want to post questions here to learn more, despite it being free.
Oh well, that is something that is totally unexpected. I thought that if I had an online portal for students to connect with me when I'm not there physically to teach them, it'll be good for them. Never really expected that they won't be come online to post anything, haha! If life is so predictable, we'll are be millionaires, won't we?
I'm also not blogging because I'm not so sure about the direction of this blog. Who am I writing to? What am I writing for? What is my aim of having this blog? All these questions are not so clear to me at this moment, and hence my lack of purposeful marketing and therefore the lack of motivation to carry 'talking' to myself here.
Anyway, I wanted to come here to lament about certain students I've encountered. It really pisses me off because of their attitude towards their own future. In the next few months, they will be sitting for a major milestone exam in their life, but I seem to be more worried than them regarding the lack of preparation. It's not as if I didn't warn them what will happen, since I've basically saw hundreds of students going through the same route as them (not discounting my own personal experience too). Do they think they can handle it without so much as lifting a finger? Do they think they can even pass without putting in even meagre efforts?
WAKE UP! Get real!! The real situation outside is worse than they can imagine, especially those who take A'lvls. The A'lvl is such a brutal examination that I dare say a big majority of those sitting for it (esp in the 2nd/3rd tier JCs) are NOT going to pass well enough to enter university. Good for you if you have your own parents' sponsorship to send you overseas to study, but for those who are not, where are you going after jc? Have you ever seriously thought about it?
I've students telling me they all sorts of excuse for skipping tuition. Some student even gave me this very lame excuse of being sick every other week. Bacteria or viruses love attacking you in a clockwork manner, so precisely making you sick every fortnightly? What are they trying to tell me? I hate students are who not forthcoming. Especially LIARS. I've dealt with enough of them.
Another one is supposed to have tuition twice per week. But that had been reduced to just once per week since last month. Why? Here are the reasons - birthday (need to go party), sick and not feeling well, remedial in school, after exams already etc etc etc. Hey, if you want to have just one tuition per week, don't waste my time slot by giving me lame excuses. You know what, I just fired you - from now on, you'll have your time slot taken by someone else. The most frustrating thing is that I wanted to tell the parents about this sudden turn of events by that student, so I asked for the parent's email. But guess what, they didn't seem to want to give me and ignored my request. GOOD, save me my efforts. I'm not exactly dying to tell you about your child's impending doom in O'lvls anyway.
When had I started to become so short tempered? Ever since I realised that my time on Earth is limited and I will try my best to help those who help themselves. With irritating students who didn't want to help themselves taking up my precious time, I'll have less time to help others. It's just plain irresponsible. I'll do the necessary cut-loss to my students, as I've done in my equity investment.
Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
