Monday, February 06, 2006
0 + 8 = 8

am rather tired. got home from the mcyc a while ago. i rather like comm serve, hmm. almost got lost trying to look for the block, but found it eventually. mari has terrible map reading skills. and she doesn't read signboards. when we got to the student care centre, she was assigned this little boy, and i was told to help a little girl with her english. when we were done, we took turns colouring the fish on her worksheet. haha lame but who cares, i haven't coloured in years and she insisted we take turns. i looked up after a while and noticed mari struggling to teach the little boy math. well she'd been struggling for the last hour, but she looked murderous then, so i decided to go over and ask if she needed help. turned out the boy is quite weak in math, and has some sort of problem concentrating to boot. i made him sit on the other side of the table, facing the wall, so he wouldn't get distracted by the kids playing on the floor, and tried to get him to come to the conclusion that [blank] + 8 = 8. at first i thought he had an eyesight problem. really. doesn't 8 look like 8? but i wanted him to think of the answer himself so i didn't ask if the two figures looked alike. finally i handed him 8 pens and asked him to count them for me. at least he can count. he said there were eight. so i told him i was going to add the magic number of pens, and made him cover his eyes while i pretended to shuffle around with more pens. when he opened his eyes again, i handed him the same pens and asked him to count them again. he had to recount them because he couldn't believe it was the same number.

yup the highlight of my day was getting a 7-year-old boy to calculate that 0 + 8 = 8. when i related the event to my mother just now, she laughed and said i have the makings of a teacher. i know no one believes it, but trust me when i say that i am more patient with kids. it's the bigoted, coarse and intellectually-deficient people my age who try my patience. for some reason, it's harder to tolerate people who look like they should function the way you do. bad mel, bad. love thy enemies as thyself; love is patient, love is kind..

i guess i prefer teaching the slower kids. there's more personal satisfaction in helping someone who does need your help. i mean chatty kids are fine, but my chattiness kinda fades away when i have to explain myself all the time. i have to learn how to simplify my teaching language. apparently 9-year-olds don't know the meaning of 'definite', 'context', 'absolute' etc. which reminds me, i have to start preparing for the bible story on sunday.. it's unnerving teaching the class when one of the assistants is a middle-aged woman and i'm only seventeen!

school is great, school is fine, it's anything but my life.
8:46 PM ; 2 comments