sometimes I look at my friends and wonder...
Last night, my cooperating teacher (CT) - NIE parlance for supervisor - told me she was going to be on MC today so she drove down to my place to pass me teaching materials for me to use to take over her classes today. Before she left she warned me about class 1L, saying something to the effect of, "This is the gifted class, they sometimes say funny things, like they tell me I look like a giraffe, but really, they aren't being rude! They're just.. gifted lah, so a bit strange." I start laughing and shake my head and say, "Yeah, I know, I know. I'll be ok with them, don't worry." She suddenly looks embarrassed and goes, "Oh no! I'm sorry, are you gifted? I don't mean WEIRD weird..." And I go, "Oh no no goodness I'm not gifted, but my boyfriend is!" and she smiles and winks and goes, "Ah, then CONFIRM can handle lah, I don't have to worry."
Fast forward to 12.15pm today. I am teaching class 1L map-reading (specifically scales).
ARGH.
You see - RJ and university had slowly but surely disabused me of my prior (dunman high days) conception of all Geppers (Gifted Education Programme people) as weird and obnoxious and often unwashed. Some of my best friends today are ex-Geppers. But I knew them only AFTER secondary school days, when their EQs had caught up with their IQs so they'd learnt how to handle their intelligence and they finally became fit for consumption by the mainstream :P Not so much this bunch of 13 year olds.
I looked at them today and had this sudden vision of little kenneth's and lisheng's and jerold's and jianlong's and diana's and lui's and liying's and ruby's peering up at me through thick plastic frames, little noses scrunched up in eloquent contempt - we know you're waffling, Miss Aw.
(MAN, you guys must have been absolute terrors.)
Laughing at your poor dumb arts chick of a teacher because she converts centimetres to kilometres slower than you maths genuises is NOT acceptable, little monsters! Like Tym says, one fine day they will realise that there are many more, shall we say, important things to learn to do in life than CONVERTING SCALES. (And so being the highly mature and disciplined being I am I hurled big words at them for laughing at my lousy maths and got to laugh at their poor vocab, HMPH. What?)
But I have to say they're quite cute, and I do feel a bit sorry for them - they're obviously very bright, but because my CT teaches TEN classes geography (across two levels) she has no time to create different lesson resources for them, and I can imagine them finding some of the material excruciatingly boring. Well, another good lifeskill to have is being able to look reasonably attentive when one is getting one's shit bored out of one *shrug*. They will have to learn.
Also, the way I speak is rapidly coming under scrutiny:
"Miss Aw, you from RGS is it?"
"You don't speak like a Dunmanian."
"Did you attend a British university?"
WELL, let's see. I DO speak in complete sentences, I DO try to enunciate as clearly as I can, and I DO tend to sound all clipped and prissy when you piss me off but the way I speak seriously hasn't changed all that much since Dunman days... Don't all your teachers, particularly English teachers, speak grammatically? They should!
Oh also, the kids asked me how long I was going to be teaching them, and when I said 10 weeks, they asked:
"Cher how did you do for your A levels?"
"Passable, thank you."
"Results just came out right? Tell us how you did leh!"
"Dude. I'm 24. Do I look like I got retained for five years in JC?"
(But I am of course secretly very happy, haha.)
Fast forward to 12.15pm today. I am teaching class 1L map-reading (specifically scales).
ARGH.
You see - RJ and university had slowly but surely disabused me of my prior (dunman high days) conception of all Geppers (Gifted Education Programme people) as weird and obnoxious and often unwashed. Some of my best friends today are ex-Geppers. But I knew them only AFTER secondary school days, when their EQs had caught up with their IQs so they'd learnt how to handle their intelligence and they finally became fit for consumption by the mainstream :P Not so much this bunch of 13 year olds.
I looked at them today and had this sudden vision of little kenneth's and lisheng's and jerold's and jianlong's and diana's and lui's and liying's and ruby's peering up at me through thick plastic frames, little noses scrunched up in eloquent contempt - we know you're waffling, Miss Aw.
(MAN, you guys must have been absolute terrors.)
Laughing at your poor dumb arts chick of a teacher because she converts centimetres to kilometres slower than you maths genuises is NOT acceptable, little monsters! Like Tym says, one fine day they will realise that there are many more, shall we say, important things to learn to do in life than CONVERTING SCALES. (And so being the highly mature and disciplined being I am I hurled big words at them for laughing at my lousy maths and got to laugh at their poor vocab, HMPH. What?)
But I have to say they're quite cute, and I do feel a bit sorry for them - they're obviously very bright, but because my CT teaches TEN classes geography (across two levels) she has no time to create different lesson resources for them, and I can imagine them finding some of the material excruciatingly boring. Well, another good lifeskill to have is being able to look reasonably attentive when one is getting one's shit bored out of one *shrug*. They will have to learn.
Also, the way I speak is rapidly coming under scrutiny:
"Miss Aw, you from RGS is it?"
"You don't speak like a Dunmanian."
"Did you attend a British university?"
WELL, let's see. I DO speak in complete sentences, I DO try to enunciate as clearly as I can, and I DO tend to sound all clipped and prissy when you piss me off but the way I speak seriously hasn't changed all that much since Dunman days... Don't all your teachers, particularly English teachers, speak grammatically? They should!
Oh also, the kids asked me how long I was going to be teaching them, and when I said 10 weeks, they asked:
"Cher how did you do for your A levels?"
"Passable, thank you."
"Results just came out right? Tell us how you did leh!"
"Dude. I'm 24. Do I look like I got retained for five years in JC?"
(But I am of course secretly very happy, haha.)
posted by leah | 8:38 PM
3 Comments:
1) Yes, I'm sure on the *few* occasions you spoke English in Dunman High, you would've sounded about the same as now.. words like "is" and "a" and the numbers 1 through 9 are not too hard (except maybe #3, but perhaps dunman high has tree-hugging class between 2 and 4, so it might be understandable)
2) there's nothing worse than being labelled a Gepper, except not being labelled a Gepper when you are one!
=)
oh hilarious! i am none of those little monsters! i'm the class chairman sitting in the back with the "attitude" jock-types, and i actually know the answer but i'm afraid to say it out in case the class thinks i'm a huge nerd. but if you call on me, i'll help you! (that is, if i'm awake) i'm having a great time at bbss man. i really hope they keep me. :)
GEPers rock ok? (But I'm sure you know that, having spent all this time with me.)
We made our teachers leave the classroom crying. Once, it was because we used the same trick that you used on your kids -- big words that she didn't understand. (Note the role reversal. Also she was our Geog teacher. The selfsame hapless creature was also suspected to be a transexual, or perhaps still a hermaphrodite. We even laughed as we tried to make out a tiny little wiener through her long skirts. Very disgusting and puerile. We know.)
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