Back to school

I've been sent back to school again, Grade 2 classes, no less.

As part of a research project, I've been tasked to observe classes this month. I used to cower before teachers, and now they still intimidate me, to some degree. I'm just inherently uncomfortable with figures of authority. Typical dialogue between me and the teachers I observe:

T: What's the purpose of this classroom observation, and by the way, you look very young hah?

Me: Erm, yah. But you know, I'm really older than I look! Ha ha.

T: Oh. (Awkward silence)

Many of them are puzzled that I should be observing them since I look like a kid just out of university and so, who was I to evaluate them? The last teacher who commented on this was informed tersely by me that we're actually of the same age.

I have the utmost respect for all teachers, because they're doing a job that I could never do. But I get miffed because what has age got to do with it? And as explained many times over, I'm not there to evaluate, but to observe though I'm not very good at that because I could never pay full attention in class.

Many a times, I had to stifle yawns (got to be a model of impeccable conduct with all those curious kids staring at me) during the lessons. Sometimes, my mind unknowingly wanders, like this afternoon, when I stared out the window, watched the wind harrassing a tree and the gardener watering the plants with a hose, when I really should be monitoring the going-ons in the classroom. Hard to believe that as I grow older, my attention span actually shortens.

Nowadays, classrooms just lull me into comatose. It could be the whirring of the fans, the background drone in every school, or the constant lecturing of the teacher and chattering of the students.

I wonder how, as a student, I managed to actually stay awake most of the time (though friends tell me I napped openly during chemistry lessons) and survive the whole educational system. I remember nothing but exercises and worksheets and essays and compositions over and over again. The whole sum of my educational experience is represented by the piles and piles of worksheets that I churned out.

Classes nowadays are somewhat better--more hands-on activities like making of posters and games and less worksheets. But a poster I saw in the classroom this afternoon made me think.

The title of the poster was "Our Goals" and I thought to myself that it should be interesting to see what collective ambitions Grade 2 students have. I went closer and it was basically made up of lots of post-it notes, each written by a different student. What they did was to list down the marks they should strive for for English and Maths and the current marks they're getting. Below the marks is a section called something like "My options and what's next" and basically they wrote the same things, everyone of them. Things like, "revise the topics that I'm poor in"; "read more"; "speak good English".

Oh, well.