it's moi again

so just now my brother asked me how my microteaching went.

he knows about it because i got him to be my guinea pig. not the best i could get my hands on (he's JC1, not doing geography anymore), but will do. he managed to fit all the jigsaw puzzles together although i admit the totally green one took him some time too. he also asked me if the words at the back corresponded to the part of the photograph but silly me forgot to deal with that when it came to the real crunch. he also said, some people sure don't know what hydrolysis is if you hadn't taught them first.

thanks specialwatch, for reminding me about this in her blog :)

i must confess i was more stressed about the pedagogy aspect rather than the management aspect, and i had allowed the latter to overwhelm me during the lesson itself. specialwatch was right in pointing out that students might not have been able to present at all if they didn't know what was going on. my intention had been to go round and check on them during their discussion time, give them more clues etc. i thought of letting them think first before i told them what it was about but of course, that didn't happen because i was busy saving the world.

oh back to my brother, when he heard how i had a most difficult time, he just rolled his eyes (ok so maybe this runs in the family) and simply said, "tell you teach JC already what, you don't want".

he then said he didn't think a real class would have gone that far because ultimately there is still some form of respect OR fear of punishment present. i like to think we're just too naive because we've been in nerdy goody-two-shoes schools so we don't really know just how bad things can get.

two things i thought about here...

it's not very fair to non-express students if teachers simply dismiss the whole idea of making lessons interesting like bringing them out to the field because they think the class will be uncontrollable and that teachers are only bringing more trouble upon themselves. but who said the world is fair right? it is sad but i don't think we should see it as them getting what they deserve. it's always a two way street. i've promised myself to TRY to build rapport. that's cos i'm simple-minded enough to think once i have that, i can execute whatever lesson plan i want with the class.

the JC debate. up to this point, i'm still quite confused actually. i know i've said i'm leaving things to fate and that nature will take its course etc....but sometimes you hear so much about battle stories and warzones that it makes you want to run to the nearest JC if you can help it.

i've thought about the pros and cons and i STILL don't know. it's probably not within my jurisdiction in any case, so i really should stop mulling over this.

back to work. on a saturday night. but oh, the inertia! the fort siloso fieldtrip was a good distraction and i did get to play frisbee on siloso beach . my plan to recharge myself before diving headfast into my sharks pool is not going too well because my brain insists on having a 3 day break when i can ill-afford it. bleah.