i love the broken ones.

Today was sekolah ganti. We had the Perbitaraan Sains but I had a Form 1 class to teach before recess. As expected, only around half the class found their way to school today.

I had prepared a lesson for teaching Cohesive Markers today but when I looked at their faces, it was clear to me  that they were in no mood whatsoever for learning today. I felt sorry for them. It was a Saturday and most of my kids are from the Asrama. Saturdays and Sundays are supposed to be the fun days not a day when you get cooped up in school and forced to learn. So, I presented to them 8 basic cohesive markers and their functions and had them do an exercise using those markers and then I told them they could do anything they wanted. They actually cheered. Haha..

In my class, there will always be these bunch of boys sitting right at the back trying very hard to pretend to pay attention to what I say. These boys will also be the ones who rarely pass up their books because they say they don't understand the homework. To me, they had always come off as lazy. Plain lazy. I'd always thought that when they were slow in an activity and hardly gave any participation in class it was because they were disinterested and took the subject lightly but that all changed when today, I took a chair and sat down in front of these 4 boys and said I was going to sit there until they completed their cohesive markers exercise. They still did nothing. They were sitting there just reading through the text over and over again possibly hoping that the answers would magically appear.

They were obviously frustrated when it didn't, and so was I. So, together, we read though the text and I translated the whole thing to them. Word-for-word. With my guidance, and a load of time and patience, they were able to complete the worksheet and fill in the blanks with the correct cohesive marker. Then, I went about checking their homework and to no surprise, the worksheet I gave them last Monday was still beautifully pasted in their exercise books uncreased, uninked, untainted, untouched.

They apologized and said they didn't understand that either so I said, "okay, jom buat sama-sama." And so we completed the 10 countable and uncountable nouns homework together. I got pretty proud of them when they started creating (awfully funny) through grammatically correct sentences by themselves and by the time we reached number 6, this boy, Khairul who kept saying to me in nearly every class when he asks what seems like a silly question, "teacher kena paham, saya bodoh bahasa inggeris", he created this sentence using the uncountable noun 'powder':

"I wear powder on my face because my face is black"

That got me roaring with laughter! And then this other boy, Haziq innocently asked me, "teacher, kalau girlfriend tu... countable ke uncountable?" And I was like -_____-". Boys will be boys I guess!

Then, Khairul said, "teacher, teacher ajar macam ni baru ktorg paham. Teacher buat lah tuisyen, confirm saya datang!" But I explained to him why that was likely not possible. Then Amir butted in, "bila teacher ajar kat depan saya tak faham lah. Tolonglah teacher." Then I said, "nanti mak ayah korang ni bagi ke pun?" and Khairul said, "pasal pelarajan mak saya bagi je. Lagi-lagi kalau bahasa inggeris sebab mak saya kata saya bodoh bahasa inggeris."

Now that got me quite upset. It was one thing for him to keep saying that he was stupid in English. But it's another thing to have his mother make him believe it in that way. So I said, okay, if they could come to school maybe half an hour early then I'd help them. It wouldn't be a tuition or anything but I suppose you can call it some sort of extra guidance because yes, they are really weak.

I haven't really decided on it yet. But I told them I'd let them know when I do but they were actually thrilled about the idea. I'm only worried that some students would start complaining that I pilih kasih or anything. I hope they do see that their friends need extra guidance.

Somehow, this event- if I may call it so, reminded me of the times when I used to tutor my youngest sister and her friends for their UPSR. It also reminded me of the time when I taught her to read. Me. Not Mum. No Abah. But me. I remembered how that feeling of being the one responsible for my sister being able to read made me first feel that what I wanted to do for life was to teach. Well, besides the other childhood dream of writing story books for children. I was such a dreamer back then. But oh well, at least one of my dreams has come true. I think. Haha..

Well, I feel very blessed to have these kids as my students. Their antics really do make everything else better when I'm having the worst days of my life. They're polite and smart and respectful and painfully cute. Somehow, they make life fulfilling. Who says a hole in the heart can only be filled by a boy. Having these kids depend on me, needing me the way they do, makes me feel worthy enough. Something I always feel I lacked with other people. With them I feel important. Loved.

Thank you 1 Yakin. Teacher loves you :)