Teacher's Day 2014

This entry is as obvious as its title. To be perfectly honest, there was nothing much to look forward to, for this year's Teacher's Day. Firstly, Nadia would not be around. Secondly, most of our students have already gone on their own holiday, skipping both Sunday and Monday of school. And thirdly, it is organised in a 'skema' manner with very very little elements of fun. Come on, last year we even had 'boling kelapa' - Coconut Bowling!

Anyhow, I had much lesser responsibilities for this year's celebration and only had to come out with a performance from the teachers. Even so, trying to garner participation from my fellow colleagues is like trying to get a cat to come down from a tree... It was ... hard. In the end, one would find it really hard to believe, but while I was in church, the idea just came really strongly onto me - to get my Asli kids involved in that performance. Not entirely sure whether it was a prompting from God but it was definitely an idea I love and a decision with zero regrets!

These kids were a delight to work with. We had so much laughter, I'm sure my fellow English teachers have too fallen in love with them, and despite the HORRIBLE PA SYSTEM on that very day, we had a blast!

I won't even delve into the many things that went wrong and made me cringe on that day, but just focus on the good parts - the parts I want to remember for years to come ;)

Presenting to you .... *drum rolls*...

OUR TEAM!

The girl power~~~

and the lovable kids~~~~ (I promised them to have the pictures printed out for their own keepsake)

and that lil cheeky one with all the dramatic poses... that's Eddy lol.


Oh, here's a more complete group of us - the English teachers who took the stage ~

any guesses what could the theme colour be?
Hmmmm... Such a tough one...

And when they saw us taking pictures on the stage, some of our senior teachers and admin wanted to be included lol~

So yea....

I know some of my teaching peers received a LOT of gifts from their students, with some filling up the whole car boot and whatnot... and my loot was definitely not as much as them. Then again, I have come to accept the lack of giving culture here and just went through the day with little to no expectations...

And I received two really really pleasant surprises.

The first one was so unexpected, hence adding on to how special it was...

An ex-student of mine, asked his sister (who is still studying) to hand me a gift...

 

Needless to say, I was completely blown away. This boy has always been great artistically and from what I know, he is currently studying graphic design in college... This has easily become one of my most-prized possessions! He even made my nose smaller!!!

Here's the original picture for comparison ;)

 

So talented!!!


The second surprise was this...

a closer look?

Yup. My first response was actually "WTH! Am I a troublemaker or something??? Hahahahaha"

Turns out, 'HAVOC' means 'GEMPAK' here, or in English, probably best described as 'wow, best, sporting, of that sort lol'. One must agree it means very very different from the English definition :p


So yea,

Teaching has always been a humbling experience, and Teacher's Day or Teacher Appreciation Day or whatever one decides to call it, is a nice way of celebrating a teacher's contribution. While I also know the many backlash from media about teachers being 'syok sendiri', unworthy of the tributes and gifts, and experience grief myself seeing many colleagues of mine 'skipping' the celebration and took their own 'day offs'.....I still want to thank many out there who made me feel validated and acknowledged.

Ego-feeding aside, I really love teaching. It is something I want to keep on doing, for the rest of my life.
And I hope, with age progressing and experiences multiplying, I would not be complacent, but develop and improve until I am proud to call myself, an educator :)