Yours truly wants to announce that she heard herself being discussed by some students this morning, and that it was an interesting experience.

I was in the staff toilet figuring which way I should do my hair today, and had just settled on the French knot when I heard the words “relief teacher” over and over again. And my brain perked up. Like how cool is that right. Hundreds of boys pass by the toilet = thousands of words rattling around but my brain sieves through all of them without me even thinking consciously about it, and picks up what’s relevant. I am so awed by my brain. So yes, they were talking about this “relief teacher who’s only twenty”. And they repeated it amongst themselves at least three times, as if repetition makes something true- which Guildenstern would quite wearily agree with, I think. I love how he made a unicorn into a horse with an arrow out of its head, and his theory about how reality spreads thinner and thinner the more witnesses there are.

And a big shout to everyone out there: How do you keep a class quiet? I’m almost at the end of my second week, and thus far there’s this one class I’m really having problems with. At least half the class refuses to stop talking throughout the entire lesson. I keep having to stop and stare and subsequently, repeat the same incompleted first half of a sentence simply because they do not stop talking long enough for me to finish it! I sound like a broken gramophone with half a sentence put on repeat and it doesn’t sound musical in any sense!

If you refer to response B, you see that the writer has-
-pause-
Ready?
If you refer to response B, you see that the writer has-
-stop-
If you refer to response B,-
Will you just let me finish this sentence?

I don’t want to lose my temper multiple times in forty minutes. But this class gets out of hand otherwise, it seems.

Why do I bother about that class? Why do I bother that all of them [or as many as I can] grasp the concept and skill?

That, my dear class of such-and-such, was madam waxing lyrical about rhetoric- of sorts.

Dear class,

What would it take so that the guilty ones would turn around from your self-absorbed stupidity and begin to take pleasure in using your brains? Do you know the satisfaction that comes after you complete your last sentence, rest your pen and sit back to survey your efforts? Do you know what it feels like to know that the essay you hold in your hand was created from honest labour, and that it is a good work done?




No wonder some teachers used to give up on the naughtier classes. But you see. the ones we looked up to were those who stuck on and persevered in spite of it all so that when we had grown up and were thoroughly more sensible, we'd look back and speak of them with respect. There must be a way. I'll try, for the sake of the ones who do want to learn. oh drama drama. heh. But it's true.