For the many students I teach who failed their recent Monthly Test, and are sadly used to it.
For A, who wouldn’t stop singing in my
classes at the start of the year, and who kept testing my patience over and
over again by disrupting the lessons and disturbing the other students. Once,
during an especially difficult day with him, I sent him outside the classroom after
deciding that the class was better off without a major distraction, only to
find him drawing obscenities on a piece of scrap paper. Today, A is my regular
class “Policeman”, a classroom role reserved for the best behaved students. He’s
on-task, gets into his sitting position immediately and is silent as a mouse when I call
for it. In a recent house visit, I learnt that his mother left him early in his childhood – and that behind every disruptive kid is a story.
For the 8 students who braved the heavy downpour on that Tuesday evening to learn English in our makeshift extra tuition class, who jostled for books when they found out they could borrow them. I was dumbfounded by K, who had cycled in the rain to come, but did not see it fit to park his bicycle under the house roof – and left it outside in the rain. I thought of home and the city life; a world only 2 and a half hours away but one that is entirely different from K’s, where mothers run to their children with umbrellas after tuition classes.
For KS, who sleeps through my lessons despite countless warnings, consequences and one-to-one (or ‘man-to-man’) conversations, up till today. I'm at my wits' end with him and will be visiting his mother soon.
For T, who washes cars for 5 hours after
school, and whose mother works 2 jobs - every day - to put food on the table.
For L, who has learnt 190 new English words in these 3 months and achieved 95 correct words in her recent "Word Bank Test" (I need to teach her how to spell "Challenge" now).
FTK is "For the kids"
