Time moves on!

It’s that time of the year when students will be preparing for their major examinations, while others will be looking forward to the long holidays. Teachers will be gearing their students for their examinations and also looking forward to taking a break from teaching. Syllabi will have to be covered, examination papers will have to be set and marked, evaluation reports will have to be done and accounts will have to be closed. But all too soon, the cycle will begin again when the new academic year starts in 2012. While people in temperate countries have seasons that tell them that time is moving on, parents have children, and teachers have the school calendar!

As you sow

Here's something interesting I came across recently and I would like to share it with everyone, especially teachers and tutors.

As you sow, so shall you reap.

If you plant honesty, you will reap trust.

If you plant goodness, you will reap friends.

If you plant humility, you will reap greatness.

If you plant consideration, you will reap harmony.

If you plant hard work, you will reap success.

If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation.

Teaching Experience

Many people look at me in disbelief when I say that I resigned from a government job as a teacher years ago. Many teachers look at me in awe when I tell them that I resigned and not retired as a teacher. I know that I made the right decision then. Even though I settled for half the pay after that, the job gave me more than double the satisfaction and opened new avenues for me.

I have been lucky to have had the choice to opt out from something that would have trapped me and robbed me of the best years of my life. I could have been a headmistress by now, but that was not my goal. Instead of having to go to school everyday, I have had the chance of teaching at colleges and universities. I have conducted courses for personal and professional development, I have written books. I now can teach the English language to all levels of students from young learners to adults whose first language may or may not be English. 

My wide experience has definitely benefitted the students I have had the privilege to teach.

Tutoring

It is undeniable that our classrooms in local schools are overcrowded, that the teachers are overloaded with work and the students are overtaxed by the demands of the curriculum, the syllabus and the system. So how does ‘tutoring’ feature in the madness of the Malaysian education system?

WT decided on a career in Chemistry not because of her Chemistry teacher in school but because of the interest instilled into her by her Chemistry tutor. KH would have been hopeless at Maths if not for the extra tutorial classes which were systematically taught. KV was heading to becoming the school bum while YC would have been the school bully if not for the intervention of the tutor.

These are merely a few examples to show that tuition has a major role to play in the lives of students. When school is a necessity, tuition is an option which should nurture, mould and inspire the student to be better than what he can be in the field that he has chosen to go for tuition classes.

Because classrooms are overcrowded, tuition classes should cater to smaller groups at any one time. It should be interactive, allowing students to ask questions and aspire for knowledge and information that go further than the prescribed textbooks in schools.

Because teachers in schools are overloaded with work, it is the tutor who knows more about the idiosyncrasies of each student under her care, especially in their growing impressionistic years.

Because students are overtaxed with an unending amount of work, tuition classes should be seen as places where they can excel with the minimal demands put on them.

Thus parents should choose wisely a tuition class for the children so that the experienced tutor will be faced with greater challenges!

Because of your absence

Emptiness
Loneliness
A sense of aloneness
A void which will be difficult to fill
Now that you have chosen to be silent
It is a loss that will sometimes seem unbearable
The void that I must learn to fill
With a sense of camaraderie
Friendliness
Fullness

Reaching out ...

Reaching out ...... to the less fortunate
..... to the underprivileged
..... to the marginalised ......

Is what one can do
So that one does not......
...... dwell on situations that could have been
..... regret mistakes of the past
..... wallow in self-pity.

Travelling by bus in Ipoh

The denizens of Ipoh have been pleading for a decent public transport system for years. Parents refuse to allow their children to take the bus because it is slow and rickety, and so very unreliable.

Recently, the Consortium of Bus Companies decided to add a few new buses to ply the different routes in and around Ipoh to appease the Ipohites, but travelling by bus does not seem to have caught on with the younger people.

When I was forced to take the bus the other day, I realized that there are so many reasons why buses are not commuter-friendly. In the first place, one does not know where the bus stop is. Aren’t positions of bus shelters gazetted? Then why don’t the authorities build and maintain them.

The next obstacle was not knowing which bus to hail to get to town. One passed by and said Ipoh but I was informed that it was heading for the bus station and coming back the same way. I wanted to get to Ipoh town! To avoid confusion among intercity buses, inter-town buses and intracity buses, why can’t they be differentiated, maybe by their colour or size?

Why can’t there be proper route maps at the bus shelters? Oops, I forgot, there were no bus shelters in the first place!

The local authorities recently spent RM25,000 erecting one bus shelter in the district of Ulu Kinta. I wonder why they couldn’t have spent RM5000 on five bus shelters at various designated places in Ipoh.

Anyway, something should be done to inform the public about the route and the fare that needs to be paid. The bus that I got on to that day did not even have a conductor. The driver had to stand in as the fare collector!