my workplace is now having examinations for the kids, so me and my colleagues will be down for invigilations. when we are not down for invigilations, we will be inside the office marking papers.
examinations are good for us, because that's when we can catch a short breather, as we no need to prepare lessons and teach. but of course the siong part is marking the piles of exam scripts and having to vomit blood when we see horrendous answers.
now comes to wat subject you are teaching. if you are teaching science or maths, marking is relatively easier, as correct means correct, wrong means wrong, no need to argue anything. and then the kids at my workplace always like to leave blank answers, so we just use a red pen and strike out the whole empty space.
if teaching humanities, english or mother tongue, then marking is much more siong. cos the marker has to go through carefully every single word of the script, as these answers involve critical thinking, so the marker must noe how critically the student thinks. but most of the time the marker will still vomit blood, for reasons that i dun see the need to elaborate further. haha.
let me give you a funny example. this was shared among some of us by a english teacher.
[this is truthfully not meant to make fun of my kid. this kid was taught by me previously, and he is a very funny boy, who has a glib tongue and always make teachers happy. i always think he makes a very good salesman. i always enjoy listening to his funny comments during lessons.]
this was roughly cited from his english composition. not exactly word for word, but content is somewhere there.
the title of the composition is Decision.
i went to a bar at 3 am. [blah blah blah] i fought with 3 men. [blah blah blah] 3 policemen came. we were brought to the police station. [blah blah blah] the punishment that we got was 3 months in jail. [blah blah blah]
*hope you can notice a similar pattern
guess wat my colleague wrote at the end of his whole essay?
.
.
my decision: 3 marks
(complete silence, followed by exploding laughter)
haha. damn funny.
actually she din write that lah. although she is very tempted to do so.
so when we mark horrendous scripts, we will get very sian and demoralised. so we go for lunch-out sessions, to have a good meal and also to de-stress. monday i brought some of my colleagues to 老 hk cafe at katong for the steamboat. this time the 料 given to us is lesser, compared to the first time when i went there with the chi dance pple. disappointing.on friday i will be going to chinatown with another bunch of male colleagues to buy toys and eat mussels for lunch. some of my colleagues are very crazy with toys, for example transformers. one of them will buy 2 sets of the similar toy. one set for 收藏 and 摆美 purpose. the other set for him to play with.
nx monday a chinese teacher from 四川 will bring some of us to eat authentic 四川麻辣火锅. haha. damn shiok.
pls dun ever think that we teachers are very slack. its ok for us to take a good break during lunch time after all the mentally-taxing marking, isnt it?
this is one thing i like about my workplace. the staff bonding is very strong. :)
