Teachers' Day celebration today. Haha. For the very first time in my life, I was intimidated by presents. I had to ask my dad to come and fetch me home, because it was impossible to carry all the stuff down and get a cab.

I'm certainly touched by my girls' kind gesture and thoughtful gifts. I really feel that, yes, maybe I did touched lives in one way or another. And I am glad that they begin to enjoy math lessons. I got gifts from students whom I least expect. To my greatest surprise, I received a card saying: *** loves you. And I have many cards from my sec 3 class saying, we love you as much as you love math. So sweet right?


My nice presents, which flooded my entire table in the staff room. I brought some home.

The super cute presents I got. Look at pikachu! My gosh, now everyone thinks I look like pikachu. The ladybird looks cute too! Ahh...


ok, this is the most meaningful gift I got:



My students folded 308 hearts. And inside is a doraemon torch, signifying... I brightened up their lives! ok, I know they don't really really mean it, but still...

And of course, there're lots of chocolates and cookies


and cards....



and photo frames...



and other stuff....



Not forgetting my lucky draw prize. Haha. I'm quite lucky today!



Inside were a stamp collection (which seems decent) and a red bag (that is totally not my style!).

I must say the concert was really entertaining, especially the part when they gave out various awards to the teachers. I've enjoyed myself today!

Ended up spending my whole weekend marking assignments again. Sad. I thought I could finish all by this morning. Underestimation.

I really really need a break.

I think I have no life since the start of the term, and I seriously wonder if I have entered the right profession. Not that I have time to go out often when I was a student, but more importantly, I really enjoyed what I was doing back then. I didn't mind spending afternoons and nights on my math tutorials and research. Much on the contrary, I really enjoyed myself back then.

Now, countless minutes and hours are spent marking. The work is so trivial and I can sense that my brain cells have been hibernating for a long time. Though trivial, they are time consuming, and I am left with extremely little time for myself to do something I enjoy doing.

Sad, isn't it? Of course, the happiest moments in the day is when I'm back home for dinner and when I realize my students appreciated my lessons and me as a teacher. I think life as a teacher will become so meaningless if students have great dislike for me and my lessons.

I have this guilt of turning my teacher down. At times when I'm suffocating under the piles of assignments and feeling somewhat cheated, I really wonder if I've made the wrong choice.

Feeling a bit high now though I was freaking tired due to the long teaching hours. Another student said she likes me on her blog. Yay. ok, that was unexpected, coz I thought she dislikes me. Hmm.

Anyway, it was a good day on the whole, except for the fact that the whole day was packed with lessons, consultations, project presentations and meetings. Really crazy. For many days, I didn't get to have a proper lunch. I had been eating at my desk, my lunch box on top of the piles of assignments.

Sigh. And, don't try to comfort me that things will get better, coz, from friday onwards, I gonna take another sec 3 class, which means another hour of lesson everyday.  By the end of the year, I would have thought a spectrum of students, from sec 1 all the way to sec 3, total of 38 teaching periods per week, exclusive of meetings and so on. Wonderful right. Not forgetting I've 5 classes of assignments to mark. I've yet to call some parents. Argh.

Fireworks on tv for two consecutive nights. Not much excitement when I saw the fireworks. Even when I have 3.5 consecutive rest days, I have not much of holiday mood. Have been marking assignments and preparing assignments for the past two days. And this reminds me, I have yet to complete the online progress reports for my students. Maybe I should really give myself a break tomorrow.

I think the phone's camera is quite good. Better than the old one. Haha. So I'll take more random photos with it in future.

Yet to collect my scroll from NUS. Must find one day to drop by and visit my gohie. Wonder if he has any new honours student. Haha. I still remember the old days when he had more than 10 students approaching him, and he got to turn down majority of them. He is such a nice teacher. 

I wanna stay up late into the night. Coz once I sleep and wake up, it is one day nearer to the end of this long weekend. Sounds sad, isn't it. It is not a good sign that I'm beginning to dread teaching at such an early stage. My classmates were asking if I am depressed to teach Sec 2s, whose work is like damn trivial. Sigh. I guess no matter how bored I am, I still want to make my lessons as interesting to my students as possible. And I still hope that I can help them do well and promote to Sec 3.

I better get in touch with some real math before I downgrade my brain cells to those that can only solve trivial pythagoras problems. I'm thinking that, maybe I should pick up nonlinear programming for fun? And maybe some game theory? :) Well well, I need to find time to study. Yawn.

Since I'm pretty motivated now, I shall do a search on the notes.

First time blogging on my school's laptop. In fact, this is the first time I brought it home. Amazingly, I was able to access the school's folders with the VPN connected. Well well, I guess I'll be bringing it home pretty often from now on.

Getting slightly sick of talking about work all the time. I hope I can get a very good rest over this long weekend. Haha, pity my girls, I just gave them assignments to complete over the weekend. Oh yes, provided they are hardworking enough to do my work of course. My girls... sigh.

I'm going to get a new class soon. Really soon. My first encounter with gifted kiddos. According to their form teacher, they are naughty, but it is fun teaching them. Hmm. Well well, they can't possibly be worse than my 7 princesses.

A colleague asked me to provide some inputs on how I used to understand what I was learning. After some amount of reflection, I realized that even though my ability and independence level varied over the years, understanding was the outcome of three important stages, namely, thinking over what we have read, writing down what we have thought, and discussing what we have written. I think I have been fortunate over my years of education since JC as I have met teachers who are willing to guide me.

Spent around an hour typing that email, and then, i had to send a reply for guzheng. Sigh. I still have lots to mark. And lots of girls have not handed in their work. And I wonder, how am I going to survive the next 4 years.

Time to rest. Argh.

Finally back. It was a long tiring week, especially with the CCA EXCO election. I was quite impressed with the kiddos' speeches. It's like, hmm, they can speak well at such a young age.  Of course, the sad thing is, I'm still pretty much distant from the students. And I really wonder how I can bridge the gap. Or rather, whether I should bridge the gap, since I probably will be out of that CCA early next year. Well well, we'll see how.

Of course, the best thing which happened today is that, I can continue taking 308 for math this year. Moreover, I gonna get help for some remedials. And better still, I can co-teach my problematic class with another teacher. Triple good news.  I think I looked super burnt out this morning, because I have a teacher coming to me to tell me to set aside at least two days amd go home early to rest. Sigh. I have been staying past 6pm for every single day this week. Ironically, I have been going to class unprepared these few days. Surprisingly, I managed to come out with intelligent remarks and questions on the spot.

There are times when I feel very depressed, because I am busy, and the people around me are all busy. There is not much point mentioning certain things to the management, because they will think their girls are angels and they are not behaving well in my class because I have not set good routines. That's why most of the time, I'll prefer to pack lunch come to eat, so that I can eat in peace and not be blamed for my own suffering. Sometimes I think, maybe this is a wrong choice afterall, and I could have an easier life elsewhere. Well well, let's see what happens next year.

Sat in for two project interviews. One group had no rehearsal for their presentation. My gosh. I must say, both teams weren't impressive. Be it the presentation or their report. No depth in mathematical content. Hope to see better teams to send for competition.  Wah, imagine if I have project groups next year. I think I'll die. Argh.

Everyday is about work work and more work. I have no time for myself.

Time to sleep. I'm super sleep deprived and my hearing is getting worse. Sigh. Probably I'll change job at the end of four years. Lots of stuff to mark for the weekend.

Spent the past few days marking block test papers. Students are dying to look their results but reluctant to get back the papers. Weird girls.

The sec 3 paper was difficult to score. I wonder how many will cry when they receive the papers next week. I've tried my best to be as generous as possible, given the constraints of the marking scheme. I have hardworking and bright students failing the test. It upsets me, not because I'm disappointed in them. Rather, I feel bad about being the one failing them, for I think it is going to discourage them in one way or another. So much so of my math-and-physics-are-fun-advertisements. I think most probably wish that math and physics never exist.

My students mean much more than the two numbers on their scripts. I still love them.

I'm not getting along well with some of my sec 2 classes. Seriously, if I knew I've to teach sec 2, I'll probably move on to some other schools. It is really trivial, and I really sympathize with the high ability girls. I think they are going to fall asleep in my class. At least the upper secondary syllabus is slightly more interesting. Some of them are doing AMES, and I get to whack them with mathematical induction and even some simple number theory. The sec 2 syllabus is so .

Was advertising bout the math pull out class for the top 30 students. And it really touched me when my kiddos said stuff like "if you're taking that class, then I'll apply lor" Oh my gosh, maybe I've some hope of grooming future female math researchers. Gohie is going to feel proud of me. :) Oh please, give me some higher level math. I have not been exercising much of my brain for the past few weeks.

I've been busy with school stuff. Blogging is no longer part of my routine. Well well. There are like so many more important things to take care of, and at the end of the day, I rather sleep or read a book. Anyway, in case you're wondering, I've finally graduated from NIE, I've gotten a new handphone, my mum was hospitalized last week and I just met some parents during PTM. Before the block test, I had marathon consultation sessions which stretched from 1130 to 1630. I used up one red pen every week, and I'll drink at least one cup of milo from the beverage machine in school every day. Haha. Other than these, everything else basically remains the same.

Yawn. I need to sleep again.

The long weekend is coming to an end.  Luckily I can skip classes to attend the convocation this Thursday, but all other days are going to be long days with CCA, remedial and curriculum differentiation courses. Gonna be a long week ahead. And the kiddos are going to turn in their homework tomorrow. Oh man, I have just cleared the piles and the new ones are coming in. Save me.

4 long years of bond. I wonder if I can persevere and survive the 4 years of nagging, marking and lesson planning. I devoted so much time to marking and lesson planning that I end up having little time for myself. My comic book was left on the table for the whole month. I couldn't even spare two hours to read it. I have not touched my PSP for the whole month. And obviously, I didn't have time to blog. My lunch was taken under piles of assignments. I had little time to sleep.

Looking on the bright side, it was way better than the past one year. At least, I feel that I'm making a contribution to the school and making a small difference to the students' math education (hopefully it is in the positive sense). More importantly, I need not listen to someone crapping about going deep into the topic when he gave trivial examples in class. Here, it is perfectly alright to be chim, without having people rolling eyes at you. All in all, things are still quite ok, and I have a pleasant feeling on almost everything.

Well well. I still can't recognize many of my students. Hopefully things will get better this week after I've gotten hold of their seating plans. Got to make more effort in knowing them better.

Have to adapt quickly, before I burn out. Lots of things to settle tomorrow. Suffocating.

Gotten my nie results yesterday, which is much of a disaster. There's not much anxiety, because I knew I would graduate with credit, as long as I don't fail any module.  Of course, I was cursing and swearing at my math education grade, which double confirms the fact that I should never ever go and pursue a phd in math education. At least, not in nie. Apart from this, I was more of relieved that I got credit for my practicum. I felt that it wasn't too bad, though I really hoped I could get distinction. I guess what mattered more than anything else is that, my interest in math rekindled in my practicum school. To me, it is really quite amazing, because I thought it has been completely wiped off in nie.

My friend reminded me of how enthusiastic I was during the first few math lessons. It sounded slightly alien to me, because for a long time, I had not relate the word enthusiastic to nie. To me, enthusiasm and passion existed in nus, but were somewhat wiped off in nie.

Anyway, very soon I'll get to stop bitching bout nie. Because of my encounters in nie, I developed a teaching philosophy, which is, even if I'm not able to inspire all my students to love math the way I do, I shall never kill any student's interest in the subject. I may not be able to value add, but at least, I don't "value-subtract". Lol.

Now, I'll bitch about the excursion this afternoon, which did not interest me at all. I heard of this intelligent robot from yenchin, unfortunately, I did not get to play with it during my visit. So sad. I wanted to make it the highlight of the trip.



I got this from yenchin's blog.  He seems kind of cool from yenchin's description.

We reached Boon Lay MRT at around 6.10pm, and the station was flooded with people. Scary. Oh man, if I've a choice, I'll never ever wanna step into Boon Lay again.