⇦ FOLLOW? ⇨

So, this week has been very eventful.

Heart attack #1: The music teacher sent me a whatsapp message at around 3am on Tuesday that she needed me to take over her lessons for the next 2 days

J fell sick and I saw flu-like symptoms the day before I took over her lessons, but she carried on with it and even accompanied the students to Metta home for CIP. Without a doubt, her body crashed and she had to take 2 days' MC.

I had literally no lesson plans because I was only supposed to teach the week after (based on the schedule I arranged with the teachers) and all I had were some Prezi slides on the string quartet and parts of the violin. That could only cover 30mins of the lesson since I planned it that way (I was supposed to take half the lesson that time) and I had absolutely no idea what else I could teach. They were supposed to learn wayang kulit that week which I have zero knowledge on. It would be ridiculous to source the lesson content from Google because it's not fair to give the students information they could have easy access to.

I wanted to teach them something they would be interested in, like the Cup Song from Pitch Perfect or some contrapuntal rhythmic exercise using their hands/water bottles. I planned to buy cups, but I heard that I would not be able to claim money from buying cups so I decided to do away with the idea. Using water bottles wasn't ideal because the teacher was really niao about water/food spillage in the room.

So I improvised, I brought my violin to tie-in with the slides on the parts of the violin and I played a piece for them. I also sourced for behind-the-scenes footage of Frozen among other videos to make up for the remaining time until the lesson ended.

In the end the students were enjoying the lesson so that was a relief.

Heart attack #2: I nearly cried in front of my students

I've been managing rowdy classes that talk alot but there was just one class that I took over that was really beyond my control. They were standing up, spinning around at the back near where the bass drum and entire drum set was. Some were talking really loudly, some were lying down on the floor playing/rolling around or I just don't know what they're up to. There were students who tried to help but the girls just ended up shouting at each other so it didn't really help. Before the lesson ended their behaviour really took a toll on me and I yelled at them. I scolded them for messing around with expensive equipment that went up to tens of thousands of dollars and I screamed that their behaviour was unacceptable. By then I had run of energy and I was panting with tears in my eyes because although that class, which was a normal acad class, had discipline problems with all of their teachers, I did not think they deserved more berating. The class went dead silent and the school bell saved my life and I waved my hand and dismissed them.

While I was packing up some students saw that my eyes were partially red and they went up to me, telling me that I could report the class to the form teacher and that they were really sorry. When one told me not to cry I was trying so hard to stop my eyes from burning and the last thing I wanted was for them to see a teacher cry. I said thank you and told them to go back to class and not worry about me.

When they left I switched off the lights, locked the doors and just packed my stuff in the music room.

A few hours later I received these handwritten apology letters from some of the students in that class, handed to me by their form teacher.



Apparently the students thought I was so pissed that I didn't want to see them anymore (because I had locked the doors and didn't let anyone come in after the lesson), which wasn't the case at all. I was really touched, especially when I saw this in one of the letters:

"Please don't give up teaching."

It made me think a lot about what I would have to face as a teacher, and whether that was the path I wanted to take. Needless to say, I forgave this class immediately.

On the side note, teaching math was a lot easier compared to music, nothing dramatic happened otherwise.