Another school year

Today's post is nothing fancy just what is going through my mind since today is the last day of the school holidays.

Yes, 7 weeks has gone past just like that and now it's like any ordinary school week Sunday, meaning tomorrow is a school day. In fact in some states school has already started today.

So what to expect when school reopens? Oh, sure the state Pengarahs would expect lessons to start from the moment the bell rings. Such stupidity is to be expected from people who are so out of touch with reality.

They have not sent most schools the full compliment of teachers and they expect lessons to start right from the 1st period. The asked schools to finish last year's exams on the last school day of last year, so how the fuck would student know which class are they assigned to this year?

Since schools finished their exams late, they can't collect books given out on loan. They would first have to collect them and then only could they issue them. Yes, there are some clever people saying why not collect those books during the holidays as if teachers are that stupid as to not have that in mind. The problem is that, pupils are not that enthusiastic about coming back to school during the break to return their books and then come again to collect them for the next year.

Try sanctioning them from getting loans if they did not return their books on time and you have politicians from both sides of the divide screaming and hollering at you as if you have just masturbated on tv.

On the 15th of December we had registration for form 1 students and the response was at best mediocre. Sometimes these parents deserve public canings more than their children. So what happens? There will be a rush at the office to register their children on the first day and the Pengarah expected us to start lessons on the first period itself.

Teachers especially those who are teaching Maths, Science and English would be issued their laptops which happens to be those non-performing machines they got last year and so their old headaches are back.

New teachers would need time to get acclimatise to their new surroundings and new pupils especially those who transferred from rural to urban or the other way round.

Then there would be the matter of new administration. Yes, like in my school we have a new principal. With every new head, we need time to read these people, their likes and dislikes. Oh, yes, teachers are also human, don't forget that, they too size people up. There would be those opportunist types who like to suck up and they are just bidding their time before they get to work of apple polishing or durian smoothing.

Classes would be issued their normal stuffs like brooms, dusters, feather dusters and waste paper baskets which incidentally would last about a month before they either fall apart or go missing.

Form teachers are the unluckiest of the lot. Besides having to start teaching as their pengarahs demanded, they would have to sort so many things out like getting their students particulars which to some could take a year, fill in so many forms, collect report cards or report files from their students, collect photographs, prepare discipline cards, fill in the obsolete 001M cards which no one uses anyway, plead, beg, and threaten for pupils to pay their fees, collect them should their pupils bring the money or else risk not ever getting the money, issue resits and the list go on and on and they say teachers have it easy. Want to trade places?

Form 1 form teachers would then have to open up one very big and heavy book to write their students names and particulars which is a duplication of what they have to write in the registers, and assign their students a registration number from which they would then assign their rumah sukan.

The form ones would go through a few days of 'suaikenal' or orientation while the bigger boys and girls would be at their oldselves.

Afternoon teachers would have to go through the hassle of finding a parking spot since their morning counterparts would already occupy the best lots.

Eager and anxious parents would still crowd the school compound as if they are seeing their children for the last time before being sent to Palestine to fight the Israelies. Mind you this is in the secondary school so imagine the number of worried parents in the primary schools.

I have some more to write but I do not want to get myself down before going to work tomorrow so I would stop here.

Don't get me wrong, it is not that we teachers do not like to go to work, i's just that people have this twisted idea that teachers have it easy. Times have changed. We are as loaded with work as with any of you out there, not to mention climbing up staircase to the top floors from one block to another.