I can’t begin to express my disappointment. I had only just found out that someone had given my students “tips” for my subject papers which were held yesterday. And the “tips” were surprisingly accurate.

I’m furious. I don’t know if the person has somehow managed to get hold of a copy of the papers prior to the exam to formulate the “tips”. Don’t tell me that they are merely accurate predictions, because how accurate can you predict midyear exam questions set by 2 different teachers, for both Form 4 and Form 5? I’m very upset because first of all, I never gave out any tips to my students for this midyear, and I can safely say that the other Physics teacher didn’t either.

What’s the point in giving out these “tips”? This person doesn’t even teach Physics in this school, although I know this person gives tuition to many of my students. Is it to let the students have a higher chance of getting A’s?

I’m really upset because first of all, I’m the one who had to go through the trouble and had to put in all that effort to prepare the paper, and I am the one who has to do all the damn marking in time before the last day of the semester, but when the students get their A’s. who do they thank? I do all the donkey work, without any thanks. I try so hard to make my students study hard and prepare well in their Physics (not only for mid-year, but for SPM), but someone has to come along and ruin all my efforts.

As for you students who got hold of the tips, I’m even more disappointed in you. I expected so much more of you. Especially the fifth-formers. After 1 1/2 years, I thought you’d have learnt what I’ve come to expect of you, and what I’ve been trying to teach you. I thought I’d taught you that it’s not only about getting an A for Physics, but more of understanding the subject and doing well because you can do it. Not for the sake of getting an A. If all you wanted was an A, you shouldn’t have been in my class. I told you this a long time ago, and for you to have resorted to this speaks volumes about what you really wanted.  So that you can get your A for Mid-Year and you and your tuition teachers can pat yourselves on your backs, at managing to outwit Ms Hoo who thought she was smart enough not to give out any hints as to what was coming out in the exam.

Thanks for this wonderful sending-off present.  Because of this I’m going to mark this paper much more strictly than I usually do. And after this, well, do whatever you want in Trials because I’m not in charge anymore. Thank goodness because I don’t want to deal with your unethical ways of trying to do well in this paper. All I can say is that if the only thing you wanted was merely an A at any cost, even if you didn’t understand the subject, you were in the wrong class.

It’s a David vs David finale at American Idol! Woohooo!!!

Whichever David wins is OK with me… I think they’re both really talented. David Archuleta is a young, talented singer who definitely wins the hearts of many girls… only, he needs to work on his dress sense and his showmanship. David Cook is a mature, talented rocker who knows what he wants and knows what he can do. Love them both!!!

Hey brats… I mean, kids…

I’ve updated the Physics Corner with the latest notes and experiment compilation, as well as the answers from MYE2007 Paper 2 Section A. You need a passphrase to enter; I trust you still remember it…?

Will put up Teacher’s Day Log #2 when I have time… right now am trying to finish marking the PEKA as well as write your progress reports

OK, so my first post on Teacher’s Day will be solely on what happened at school.

Teacher’s Day at Sri KDU was held earlier than the actual 16th May because our Mid-year exams will start on the 9th of May all the way through to the 23rd. We can’t disrupt the mid-year exams in favour of a celebration for the teachers, right? Nosirree!!

So anyway guess what was in store for us. Unlike in the old days (Good God, I sound old) when students would perform for us, we were the entertainment for the students. Fortunately, unlike 2 years ago, we didn’t have to put up any performance or skit or dance. It was just good ol’ telematch.

As much as I complained, I hate to admit it, I was probably a contributing factor to the idea. I won’t take full credit for the idea because… well, I don’t dare. My colleagues will probably kill me if they found out. See, what happened was when Ms Hariet (the deputy principal) to me when Teacher’s Day would be held a few weeks back, I asked her what was planned and she said no plans yet… so I suggested some simple games in the form of a telematch. You know, things like “egg-on-spoon race” and silly things like that.

Guess what was the first game we had to play. Ah, no, they improved on the idea. “Ping pong ball-on-spoon race … with spoon held in mouth”.

Argh, I don’t have any photos of that race.

Anyway, what happened was that Ms Hariet split us into teams of 8 with a colour code to match. We didn’t get to choose our own team, but I think it’s because we were short of time anyway. I was in Group 6 (Yellow). Fortunately I had a few yellow T-shirts to choose from to wear on Friday, because the number of teachers wearing the correct colour T-shirt will gain points for the team. If I was in Green, I’d have lost the team points unless they were willing to look at my pretty green underwear instead of the T-shirt. I have lots of pretty underwear in yellow too, but fortunately no one needed to look at them because the yellow T was sufficient.

The games were organised and planned by the school prefectorial board, held at the Sports Complex. And they are as follows:

Game #1: Ping pong ball-on-spoon

Like I mentioned earlier, the spoon must be held in mouth. The teams are supposed to have 10 people each, but some teams didn’t have enough teachers because some of the teachers were either pregnant or ill (forgiveable); or they chose to not come to school or to skip the games even though they were in school (unforgiveable). Anyway, the teams that didn’t have enough members were filled by students who were willing to play this game.

What they did was they split the teams into 2, placing 5 on one end and the other 5 on the other side about 10 metres away. One team member will start by balancing the ping pong ball on a plastic spoon held in his/her mouth, and has to walk across to the other side and pass the ping pong ball to the next team member, and this will go on until all 10 have completed the race. If any one member drops the ball halfway, he/she has to restart his/her walk (not the entire team). The last member that completes the race then has to run to the end of the field and grab a number pinned up there. Preferably number 1, to show they’re the first team to complete the race.

Don’t wanna sound mean, but our team could probably have been a lot of faster without our student competitor who kept dropping the ball. But we appreciate the effort anyway.

The good thing is, we were last at one point, but Mr Rajanderan managed to overtake Jason Lam and we came out second last. Woohoo! At least we weren’t last!

I think others may have photos of the race, but I don’t for obvious reasons - I had to play. Hehe. I did manage to get a photo of my colleagues getting ready though.

Game #2: Blind feeding the blind

Next, when they announced that it was time to eat, I honestly thought we could go for breakfast (I was really hungry because I bought my breakfast but hadn’t had time to eat it…) so I actually turned to go back to my staffroom. Thevahi had to chide me before I realised that it was actually the next game.Each team was to pick 5 teachers, and I was pretty reluctant but then oh well, what’s there to lose, right? So in my group, Thevahi, Saravanan, Rajanderan, Azhar and myself.

We thought that all of us would have to eat, but it turns out it’s nothing like Fear Factor. This is how the game would work. All the participating teachers will be blindfolded, and will be split up. Four of the teachers will be given a type of food to hold, and they have to look for the teacher who will do the eating. There was a rather big bun, a banana, a bowl of nasi lemak, and a box of chocolate milk. I was holding the chocolate milk, and was going to drink some of it but I wasn’t allowed

So anyway, my team found Azhar pretty quickly. I didn’t cheat. I swear. I can’t speak on behalf of my teammates though <hehehehehe>. Poor Azhar had to work his way through the four foodstuff. We wanted to help him eat, but weren’t allowed. He later told us that he was actually full from breakfast. But still, he gallantly tried to eat everything as quickly as possible.This time we were the second group to finish. Woohoo!
Games #3,4,5,6,7: Obstacle Course

The next game is really five in one. It’s called the obstacle course, because it consists of many obstacles.

Because it consists of many obstacles, they couldn’t get all eight teams to play at once, so they made Groups 1-4 play first. Because we were Group 6, we had the advantage of watching the other teams go first, and we could learn from their mistakes. The bad news is, as we found out later, the first four groups which finished first got to go back to their staffrooms and enjoy the air-condition and have their breakfasts. By this time, many of the student audience had dwindled as they lost interest and went back to the secondary school instead of watching the teachers make a fool of themselves on the field. I still had my camera on me, as I did for the earlier 2 games, but this time I handed it to Genna who followed me around to take photos of me as I made a fool of myself.

The first obstacle was “pass the water balloons” game. (In case you were wondering, all the names of the games here were made up by me for the purpose of this blog entry.) We had to get 10 team members in a row (if insufficient, again get student fillers) and pass a water balloon from one end to the other. We watched the teams toss balloons along the row, and almost all teams broke their balloons. So obviously we learnt how to keep the balloons intact - in my team we used our T-shirts to catch the balloon, and/or carefully pass them from hand to hand (we REALLY stretched for this one). As our filler this time we got Charles, who was a real good sport.

We only get 5 balloons, so break or not, upon using 5 balloons, we had to move on to the next game. We managed to pass over 3 intact balloons, but one burst as Jaya placed it on the ground.

The next game was called the “Newspaper Walk” (named by the prefects). Basically each team was given a set of newspapers (I don’t know how many pages) and we had to use the newspapers to walk from one end to another (about 20 metres away). So what all teams did was one team member would tear up the papers and lay the steps for the rest of the team.

The next game was a simple one that kids usually play. Pass a hula hoop through a human chain. Accomplished easily enough. The fourth obstacle isn’t so easy. A pail on one side, and a bottle less than 10 metres away… the aim is to get the water from the pail into the bottle (up to a level marked in red) without carrying the pail. Jaya whipped off his shirt and soaked it in the water, whereas Pn Ramlah took her shoe off and offered it as a water vessel, as did Anpa. The rest of us merely used our hands to carry the water.

We made the mark!

The last game was… well, odd. The prefects had tied rafia string into obstacles of squares and placed eggs randomly into the squares. They made us get into pairs and had each pair bind one foot to each other - with one facing the front and one facing the back, and had to cross through the rafia string obstacles by avoiding the squares with the eggs. Weird, eh? It sounds kinky but it’s not. After making it through, we had to run through a line where we were timed.I kept asking my teammates if the prizes were worth all the trouble. Someone told me the prize was soft drinks… Ugh!!!

Anyway Ms Hariet announced the winners after the staff lunch. Red got 3rd place and black got 2nd place… and much to our surprise, we got 1st place!!! We totally didn’t expect it. When she announced it, there was silence for a few moments before it finally dawned on us…

I don’t have the team photo, but Mr Pang has it and I assume he will give it to me later. Of course sometimes I make wrong assumptions (like how I assume the students in my class will do their homework) but anyway I can always twist his arm to give it to me.

When I saw the box, my friends and I guessed it must be an electrical item due to the “Jusco” wrapper. We made all sorts of guesses - blender/kettle/iron - except the correct one… Turns out to be a toaster =D At least it’s not just soft drinks.

Well at least that’s something, since I didn’t win any of the lucky draw prizes

Oh, and I also received the prize for being the champion of the staff club badminton mixed double games. Lest I sound great, I will confess now that I’m not. I totally suck at badminton. I’m just lucky that my partner was really good. Hehehe.

We each got… a TOWEL!!! Well besides the telematch, I did play a game of netball and my team lost badly. Partly my fault, because I hadn’t wanted to play and suggested Pn Eda (who’s a fantastic shooter), but then I got dragged in by the other team to play anyway. Hahaha.

I don’t have photos, but Richard Teo took some photos you can view here.

I camwhored a lot too. My camwhoring skills are improving a little Unfortunately I couldn’t take a photo with everyone. Too many people, too little time, and too little battery Photos available here.

Tune in for the next instalment of the Teacher’s Day Log. I will be blogging about all my lovely pressies from my students!

Sri KDU celebrated Teacher’s Day today. The teachers were forced to play in telematch games but fortunately were treated to a nice lunch thereafter. There were gifts given to us by the school, the PTA, and Mrs Chan herself.

I’m gonna write more about it but right now, I’m opening my presents. This year is the first year I’ve received this many gifts, and I know it will be my last. I couldn’t help it. Halfway through I started crying.

I’d like to give a very premature Thank you to all of you students. It makes me sad to know that I’m leaving halfway through the year where students really appreciate me, for once. Thank you thank you thank you.

I’m taking photos of all my gifts as I’m opening them. I will be postin a blog entry when I’m done and I’ve tidied up the photos.

Thank you!!!