A weeks worth of blog

As I mentioned, I was having difficulties over the week accessing my blog hence when things happen or when I feel like blogging, cant. Just tried my luck and now its working.

Long Week

Had another long long week. Why is it any different from other long weeks that I had. This is different becos I had to relief all the periods of 2 form teacher from Monday straight to Friday. Which is obviously different from just relieving just a few periods. Such extended relief would mean that filler (time-wasting) activities would be quickly exhausted. And also it would be preferable if can teach something so that the class doesnt lag behind the syllabus.

What is the problem then? well obviously I am not familiar with the bloody syllabus... dun even have time to look through the books cos when I kena relief, its when I am already in the hall for assembly. So within 5-10mins, have to decide upon the things to cover for each subject for that day. Then another problem is pitching the lesson to that level. I am used to teaching upper pri yet I have to teach lower pri. Hence have to consciously pitch things lower and not incorporate too cheem words or even concepts into the lessons. Of course when work is given, I have to do the marking. So its a common sight to see me lugging a huge pile workbooks into the staff room and plop it onto my table. The irony is that I am marking more of other classes workbooks than my own assigned class.

Okay then if I have to relief only 1 day. So one full day is still considerably easier than doing the same for close to a week. When u have to relief for a week, its like time comes to a standstill. Endless deja vu. Not to mention the same crap by the few heavenly kings in class. More work, more marking, more lessons, more scolding.

I complained to my ex-mentor about having to take full day relief classes for the entire week. At first he replied that its normal cos I am considered extra staff... so its expected. But I pointed out to him that I am not complaining about that aspect cos i know that but about the perceived unfair distribution of relief duties between the few contract untrained educators. There are 2 others besides me. One wont kena so much cos she is doing parallel but the other is like me doing co-teaching. Then why dun I see her kena so many days of full day relief like me? He pointed out that its cos I am viewed very favourably by mgt hence they trust me with the classes. He continued that mgt doesnt trust the other two as much. (I was like SO they trust me and give me all the SHIT while the other can just do little. Then I rather be unreliable.)
So I asked him how can I undermine my reliability in the mgt eyes. His answer was if I want to remain in this industry, dun. (huh? dun... then i may just end up with more shit. Maybe its time for me to take more MCs esp when i am really unwell instead of piahing on)

One more thing about this. This full-day relief special request was started by one fellow collegue. Months ago somewhere in early january, a P5 collegue requested to mgt and asked for me to take over her class for 2 days. (Becos the year before, I was attached to a P5 class) Then she came to me and explained where she put her things and what lessons for each subject to take blah blah... Okay so I took the class. Later on there was one whole series of reliefing for the P1. That was fair cos all the untrained kena. Then after the March holidays, got a special request from a collegue to take P2 class for six school days. Besides all these special requests, when a collegue is on medical for a few days, I also kena. To top it off, my ex-mentor tells me that he would be sent out for 3 days in may and has already booked me... I was like GO N DIE!!!

I dun even want to go into the details of how I deal with some of the heavenly kings in class. The class that i was there for 4 out of 5 days had a especially notorious one. Even the form teacher had problem controlling him. Then there are space-cases who are only physically there. The attention-seekers who always interupts before I finish and ask questions about the instructions that I had just finished telling the class a second ago. Those who dun do the classwork but walks around... many many more

If this is any consolation to GTT, this relief shit dun happens to form teachers of class. But if there is not enough excess teachers, then the form teachers have to chip in for the relief. They have to take relief during their free period slots.