Firstly, Selamat Hari Raya to all our Muslim teachers! I hope all of you are having a good day of celebrations with your family and loved ones!
I took home a pack of compositions and I was marking them at my desk earlier. Sad, I know, but such is the life of a teacher, unfortunately. I do my work at home occasionally though, because it's quieter and I have easy access to drinks, snacks and TV should I get tired, oops, hehe.
Importantly though, is that because I'm more relaxed at home, especially on a weekend or holiday, I find myself being able to pay more attention to their work. For example, since I'm marking compositions, I am more able to pick out their mistakes and think of constructive comments to write on their paper.
Then it struck me: Why is it that I'm only able to do this on a public holiday, which is supposedly a day of rest? Why am I not able to even write proper comments during normal workdays?
The answer that came most readily to me was stress. All around my work desk are various reminders of everything I have to do in a limited time. Worksheets I have to mark. Deadlines I have to meet. Parents I have to call. Emails I have to answer. Post-its with To-Do lists written on them. Ironically, while I need these post-its to remind me of what I have to do, it also places an additional layer of subconscious stress. I'm constantly being reminded that I have tons to do. Sometimes, to take a supposed break during marking, I would stop halfway and do some other menial task, like answer a parent's email.
Faced with all the things I have to do, how is it possible to truly focus on your work? Even when I stopped marking for a while, I would be faced with all the glaring reminders to be more productive and accomplish all this before I go home to cook dinner for the family and spend quality time. Is this really possible???
I know there are plenty of people who can thrive like this, who can whizz through their marking, plan next week's lesson plan and still have time to cook 4 dishes for dinner and teach their children their homework. (Oh you people, you make it hard for the rest of us...)
However, it seems research would back me up when I say I'm only human and I can't always keep up with everything. Plenty of articles, including this one by Health.com will attest to the dangers of multitasking. Similarly, even a normal Google search for 'focus on what is important' will give you plenty of reasons on how better focus will lead to better productivity. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People also asks us to make a distinction between 'urgent and not important' and 'not urgent but important'.
That's probably why I find marking at home on a public holiday easier. More focus and a more leisurely environment allowing me to focus on what is truly important, namely my students' development, rather than their parents' worries or my heads' projects.
I wish I could have this everyday that I was at work, but for one, life doesn't always give us what we want, and two, sometimes we have to make the best for ourselves. Like bringing work home and working in a comfortable study. ;)
If you want to read up on some stuff to improve your focus, I can recommend:
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The chapters on priorities in life and the distinction between urgent and important is one that has really stuck with me. You can read a short preview of the 7 Habits here but I would recommend you read the book for more details.
- Psychologies magazine has a good feature on finding your focus in life and work. I like this magazine because it comes with a monthly feature that has good tips on improving your life. I think you can still find the issue on Focus at Kinokuniya bookstores. You can check out their content at their website here.
Showing posts with label workstress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label workstress. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 06, 2016
Monday, April 18, 2016
We are Not Happy... Why? The 1-yr-old BT vs the 10-yr-old Old Maid
I've been going through the blog archives looking for inspiration for new blog posts. When I did so, I realised that some of the old entries dated back to my NIE days! Talk about feeling old!
I read through a couple and I felt even older. The voice that was being projected in the blog archives really sounded younger and more energetic. Compare that to now, when the words I type now seem to crawl across the screen. Ah, youth...
One post that caught my eye was this old one: We are Not Happy... Why? At the time, a number of complaints had appeared in the now-defunct Tomorrow.sg website about the things making them unhappy in the industry. I read through the post and wondered: Had things changed enough in the 10 years since I last wrote that post? Let's compare then:
The 1-yr-old BT vs The 10-yr-old Old Maid
BT:
" it is NOT the children that is causing the dissatisfaction, but all other things like the leadership, the administration, the non-curriculuar activities."
Old Maid:
10 years on, I don't think this has changed at all! I still find satisfaction in coming to the classroom. However, I still feel like the administrative duties are an interference to my real work with the students. In fact, with experience came added responsibilities that I had to quickly learn how to adapt to. I handled them with mixed results, some I felt turned out all right in the end, some I could not handle well and became disasters bigger than what they began with!
The general feeling I get from other teachers regarding admin work and leadership seems to be the same: Something that came along with the job and that had to be tolerated. People that weren't keen on tolerating them just dropped out and became tuition teachers or left the industry altogether.
What I found frustrating was when all this affected the teaching work. At such times, I was teaching very boring lessons because I didn't have the time to plan my lessons properly. It became easier with time, because I started to collect classroom activities and created some of my own as well. As time went by, I became more familiar with the syllabus and the activities for each topic. So what was said to me as a BT really came true: It really does get easier.
My advice and viewpoint on this: Unfortunately, NIE doesn't train productivity, time management and people skills. Pick them up on your own and spend some precious time reading up and finding a system that works for you because you will need it more the longer you are in teaching. Always spend time brushing up on what you know of the syllabus and any teaching strategies.
BT:
"I feel as if we are expected everyday to do more and more and more for the children, but only for that few extra peanuts. [and not gold-plated ones, to boot]"
Old Maid:
To really see if we are doing more and more for the children, you have to know the changes that have taken place in the system since then.
First, by now all should know that hiring has frozen, especially if you notice the lack of Mrs-Chong-esque TV advertisements. Next, you should also be aware of the grand change in the English syllabus known as Stellar and Peri, otherwise the next paragraph won't make sense to you. Maths has also seen some topics being dropped out though I also see more emphasis on higher order problem solving.
I feel that if you only look at the number of worksheets issued under Stellar and the topics dropped from Maths, you may feel that there's not that much work to do. However, I do feel that more actual teaching is expected. Forget teach-less-learn-more, it seems to be teach-more-learn-more, with holistic assessments all thrown into the mix. The good of all this is that the system has become more student-centric and is a lot more forgiving of each individual child's unique mix of strengths, talents and weaknesses. This is a long way from the system that I grew up under.
Something that has not changed though, I'm still waiting for my gold-plated peanuts, haha. Although the Connect plan comes very close to this, the 3 years waiting for it can sometimes be quite a pain, I admit.
BT:
"I hope our suffering is not caused by our own silence. There is only so much that we can all take to a certain point. Why allow others to put you past that point?"
Old Maid:
Some teachers obviously found dingy solutions to their own suffering, as evidenced by the number of sex-abuse cases that have come up in the news, more and more in recent times. [Thankfully, they make up a small number of the total teacher population]
Social media has changed the game in this arena. We share more stories of what we go through online on Facebook or Twitter (or Blogger!) The more these stories get shared, the more the public has become more aware of what we go through in order to educate our children. I get a lot of sympathy from other people when I tell them I'm a teacher! They usually tell me, "Teachers do a lot, don't they?" Yes, everyone, they do.
And this helps, because then a lot more people become more willing to speak up for us when we feel like we cannot. Take what happened when the news came out that they were willing to charge teachers for using the school carparks. I read through the comments section and was touched to see members of the public expressing outrage at such a move.
As the movie said, though, "with great power comes great responsibility". Now that we have more outlets to express ourselves, another responsibility also falls on us to use that power wisely. The Internet is a great place for FB-scrolling and looking for cute gifs of cats, yes, but it can do that much more for us by giving us a place to speak up. We are no longer just limited to those outlets blessed by MOE, but we can create soapboxes of our own from which to speak from.
However, if we cannot express ourselves well, if all we do is complain in bad English, make fun of our heads or students, then no one will ever take us seriously when we have something serious to complain about. I would tell my BT-self of the past that yes, things will change in the future. We can break out of our own silence, but you will find that by doing so, you have an even greater onus to research your facts, gather your information before speaking up with a viewpoint.
Conclusion......?
BT: "So by now I guess I'll be in this line a very long time. Is it going to be worth the ride?"
Old Maid: "Put it this way: You will go through a lot of pain. You will struggle through some really bad days and you might even cry on some of them in your cubicle when no one is around. There will be days when you feel like crying in class, there will be days you feel like you will never be a good teacher, there will be days when you feel like you will never finish all the paperwork. There will be days your head will yell at you for the things you didn't know you had to do. There will be days you will feel like you see no end.
But on some days, you will make the children smile and laugh. You will sit next to a crying child and comfort him/her till they feel they can go on with school again. You will have hilarious times in class and if you are really lucky, you will that child who couldn't spell his name correctly in P1 walk up on stage in P6 and you will swell with pride even if you hadn't taught him for the last 4 years.
If you feel that those are worth more than all the other stuff, then you just might make it."
I read through a couple and I felt even older. The voice that was being projected in the blog archives really sounded younger and more energetic. Compare that to now, when the words I type now seem to crawl across the screen. Ah, youth...
One post that caught my eye was this old one: We are Not Happy... Why? At the time, a number of complaints had appeared in the now-defunct Tomorrow.sg website about the things making them unhappy in the industry. I read through the post and wondered: Had things changed enough in the 10 years since I last wrote that post? Let's compare then:
The 1-yr-old BT vs The 10-yr-old Old Maid
BT:
" it is NOT the children that is causing the dissatisfaction, but all other things like the leadership, the administration, the non-curriculuar activities."
Old Maid:
10 years on, I don't think this has changed at all! I still find satisfaction in coming to the classroom. However, I still feel like the administrative duties are an interference to my real work with the students. In fact, with experience came added responsibilities that I had to quickly learn how to adapt to. I handled them with mixed results, some I felt turned out all right in the end, some I could not handle well and became disasters bigger than what they began with!
The general feeling I get from other teachers regarding admin work and leadership seems to be the same: Something that came along with the job and that had to be tolerated. People that weren't keen on tolerating them just dropped out and became tuition teachers or left the industry altogether.
What I found frustrating was when all this affected the teaching work. At such times, I was teaching very boring lessons because I didn't have the time to plan my lessons properly. It became easier with time, because I started to collect classroom activities and created some of my own as well. As time went by, I became more familiar with the syllabus and the activities for each topic. So what was said to me as a BT really came true: It really does get easier.
My advice and viewpoint on this: Unfortunately, NIE doesn't train productivity, time management and people skills. Pick them up on your own and spend some precious time reading up and finding a system that works for you because you will need it more the longer you are in teaching. Always spend time brushing up on what you know of the syllabus and any teaching strategies.
BT:
"I feel as if we are expected everyday to do more and more and more for the children, but only for that few extra peanuts. [and not gold-plated ones, to boot]"
Old Maid:
To really see if we are doing more and more for the children, you have to know the changes that have taken place in the system since then.
First, by now all should know that hiring has frozen, especially if you notice the lack of Mrs-Chong-esque TV advertisements. Next, you should also be aware of the grand change in the English syllabus known as Stellar and Peri, otherwise the next paragraph won't make sense to you. Maths has also seen some topics being dropped out though I also see more emphasis on higher order problem solving.
I feel that if you only look at the number of worksheets issued under Stellar and the topics dropped from Maths, you may feel that there's not that much work to do. However, I do feel that more actual teaching is expected. Forget teach-less-learn-more, it seems to be teach-more-learn-more, with holistic assessments all thrown into the mix. The good of all this is that the system has become more student-centric and is a lot more forgiving of each individual child's unique mix of strengths, talents and weaknesses. This is a long way from the system that I grew up under.
Something that has not changed though, I'm still waiting for my gold-plated peanuts, haha. Although the Connect plan comes very close to this, the 3 years waiting for it can sometimes be quite a pain, I admit.
BT:
"I hope our suffering is not caused by our own silence. There is only so much that we can all take to a certain point. Why allow others to put you past that point?"
Old Maid:
Some teachers obviously found dingy solutions to their own suffering, as evidenced by the number of sex-abuse cases that have come up in the news, more and more in recent times. [Thankfully, they make up a small number of the total teacher population]
Social media has changed the game in this arena. We share more stories of what we go through online on Facebook or Twitter (or Blogger!) The more these stories get shared, the more the public has become more aware of what we go through in order to educate our children. I get a lot of sympathy from other people when I tell them I'm a teacher! They usually tell me, "Teachers do a lot, don't they?" Yes, everyone, they do.
And this helps, because then a lot more people become more willing to speak up for us when we feel like we cannot. Take what happened when the news came out that they were willing to charge teachers for using the school carparks. I read through the comments section and was touched to see members of the public expressing outrage at such a move.
As the movie said, though, "with great power comes great responsibility". Now that we have more outlets to express ourselves, another responsibility also falls on us to use that power wisely. The Internet is a great place for FB-scrolling and looking for cute gifs of cats, yes, but it can do that much more for us by giving us a place to speak up. We are no longer just limited to those outlets blessed by MOE, but we can create soapboxes of our own from which to speak from.
However, if we cannot express ourselves well, if all we do is complain in bad English, make fun of our heads or students, then no one will ever take us seriously when we have something serious to complain about. I would tell my BT-self of the past that yes, things will change in the future. We can break out of our own silence, but you will find that by doing so, you have an even greater onus to research your facts, gather your information before speaking up with a viewpoint.
Conclusion......?
BT: "So by now I guess I'll be in this line a very long time. Is it going to be worth the ride?"
Old Maid: "Put it this way: You will go through a lot of pain. You will struggle through some really bad days and you might even cry on some of them in your cubicle when no one is around. There will be days when you feel like crying in class, there will be days you feel like you will never be a good teacher, there will be days when you feel like you will never finish all the paperwork. There will be days your head will yell at you for the things you didn't know you had to do. There will be days you will feel like you see no end.
But on some days, you will make the children smile and laugh. You will sit next to a crying child and comfort him/her till they feel they can go on with school again. You will have hilarious times in class and if you are really lucky, you will that child who couldn't spell his name correctly in P1 walk up on stage in P6 and you will swell with pride even if you hadn't taught him for the last 4 years.
If you feel that those are worth more than all the other stuff, then you just might make it."
Friday, April 01, 2016
Term 2 is the Best
It's Week 3 of the term and I'm already looking forward to June! How is everybody doing? I find that Term 2 is one of the best terms of the year. It's at a good level of 'busyness' that is manageable for everyone and usually this is the term when I can still carry on my NY resolutions (like sleep 7-8 hours each night and exercise regularly) before everything becomes too chaotic. Here are my reasons why...
Term 2 is the Best
1. Settled-down Students
In Term 1, many students are still reeling from the shock of waking up in the morning at 6. Many of them would also have to get used to a new form teacher's routines. There would be some struggle between handling the new workload and the new teacher. This is also the time when they are most likely to try and 'test' the new teacher to see how much they can get away with. For a teacher, class management would be critical during this period as how you react towards them may determine how smooth your year with this class is!
By the time Term 2 comes around, the students are already settled down to school routines and know the conduct and behaviour that is expected of them. If you have already set your foot down firmly in Term 1, managing the class should be easier in Term 2.
2. Lighter workload
The workload for teachers is still relatively low compared to the mayhem of exam preparation in Terms 3-4. In Term 2, you would be preparing the students for half a year's work to be tested in SA1. Compare this to Term 4, where you may be revising a year's work for SA2. The issue of timing also comes in, which brings me to the next point...
3. Less school days in Semester 2
Many teachers feel very harried during Semester 2 and this is also the period where you see everyone deep in piles of marking. Why does it feel so? That's because there are significantly less days to cover work in Semester 2 than in Semester 1 and a simple calculation illustrates this.
Assume that School A carries out CA2 in Week 9. If we assume that English is on a Monday followed by the other subjects, that leaves 8 weeks to prepare. Factor in the National Day holiday, which loses one day due to public holiday, the day before, because that's a half day and the day after, which is a school holiday. Now we have 3 days potentially lost from the school calendar. Subtract 1 more day for Youth day and that's almost a whole week gone! So we are left with 7 weeks for CA2!
Then in Term 4, again assume that School A carries out SA2 in week 8. Assuming English is on Monday, that leaves 7 weeks for preparation. Subtract 1 week for PSLE marking and you now have 6 weeks. Subtract another 3 days average for public holidays, you now have 5.5 weeks for SA2! That's 5.5 weeks to cover Term 4 topics and revise the past year's work! Has the panic set in yet??
Most schools would be aware of this shortfall in days and this should be covered in their SOW in various ways. Some may start Term 3's work right after SA1 in Term 2 and Term 4's work in Term 3. The SOW should also be planned to take into account of this.
Teachers may handle this by... Going into fervent and frantic marking sprees. :D Well, whatever works. Keep your spirits by remembering that after all that, the December holidays beckon after that. And to prepare, keep yourself healthy now in Term 2 by sleeping well and exercising and eating well. I cannot guarantee you would be able to do that after June!
Term 2 is the Best
1. Settled-down Students
In Term 1, many students are still reeling from the shock of waking up in the morning at 6. Many of them would also have to get used to a new form teacher's routines. There would be some struggle between handling the new workload and the new teacher. This is also the time when they are most likely to try and 'test' the new teacher to see how much they can get away with. For a teacher, class management would be critical during this period as how you react towards them may determine how smooth your year with this class is!
By the time Term 2 comes around, the students are already settled down to school routines and know the conduct and behaviour that is expected of them. If you have already set your foot down firmly in Term 1, managing the class should be easier in Term 2.
2. Lighter workload
The workload for teachers is still relatively low compared to the mayhem of exam preparation in Terms 3-4. In Term 2, you would be preparing the students for half a year's work to be tested in SA1. Compare this to Term 4, where you may be revising a year's work for SA2. The issue of timing also comes in, which brings me to the next point...
3. Less school days in Semester 2
Many teachers feel very harried during Semester 2 and this is also the period where you see everyone deep in piles of marking. Why does it feel so? That's because there are significantly less days to cover work in Semester 2 than in Semester 1 and a simple calculation illustrates this.
Assume that School A carries out CA2 in Week 9. If we assume that English is on a Monday followed by the other subjects, that leaves 8 weeks to prepare. Factor in the National Day holiday, which loses one day due to public holiday, the day before, because that's a half day and the day after, which is a school holiday. Now we have 3 days potentially lost from the school calendar. Subtract 1 more day for Youth day and that's almost a whole week gone! So we are left with 7 weeks for CA2!
Then in Term 4, again assume that School A carries out SA2 in week 8. Assuming English is on Monday, that leaves 7 weeks for preparation. Subtract 1 week for PSLE marking and you now have 6 weeks. Subtract another 3 days average for public holidays, you now have 5.5 weeks for SA2! That's 5.5 weeks to cover Term 4 topics and revise the past year's work! Has the panic set in yet??
Most schools would be aware of this shortfall in days and this should be covered in their SOW in various ways. Some may start Term 3's work right after SA1 in Term 2 and Term 4's work in Term 3. The SOW should also be planned to take into account of this.
Teachers may handle this by... Going into fervent and frantic marking sprees. :D Well, whatever works. Keep your spirits by remembering that after all that, the December holidays beckon after that. And to prepare, keep yourself healthy now in Term 2 by sleeping well and exercising and eating well. I cannot guarantee you would be able to do that after June!
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