the Force is weak

hello my fellow Jedi knights...

in JC, my Star Wars-mad geography tutor (he named his son Luke) called us his young padawans. he also told me that by embarking on the path of teaching, i would be a Jedi knight myself...

haven't been blogging as much because the strain of school is starting to show. the problem with me is i always take notice of deadlines when it's much too late. since i haven't quite acquainted myself with the Blackboard, i am naturally ignorant of many important announcements, assignments and deadlines etc.

many before me have told me that "useful, the courses in the Jedi Temple are not".

apparently what you learn here does not necessarily equip you with the necessary knowledge of the Force! how depressing is that...so i am to learn nothing from my time here? but i must agree valuable experience and insights can only be picked up through battles with the Dark Side....

ok enough Star Wars-speak.

this sudden bout of madness comes from reading swallowapple's post on her experiences during contract teaching. i thought her advice does make a lot of sense....my previous two stints were much too short to really provide me with hands on experience in terms of classroom management. which explains why i lost my voice for three whole days during my very first foray into the classroom as a teacher.

the most important lesson/tip i took away from that same first long stint is: beware of practising favouristism.

i think it's only natural we shower more attention on the students who respond most to us, we talk to them more both in and outside class so much so it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. i was very guilty of that. i think it was especially more so because i was not even past my twenties then. being of almost the same age meant the girls could relate to me better than they could with other teachers.

and of course there were a handful who liked me a lot, enough to pay rapt attention during class and put in extra effort for their term project, which also meant i thought they deserved a higher mark and that only resulted in them liking me more.

i think the important thing is to be aware of that, i feel some teachers are guilty but yet remain blissfully unaware. looking back, i should have been more firm with that mini fan club of mine but like all human beings, i succumbed to revelling in all that attention they gave me. sigh.