all in a day's work

hey dong, i bet this traumatic workday rivals yours.

it had been such a long time since i relief taught.. about a year perhaps? strangely, i was much more nervous about it today than i was before.. perhaps cos i now know what's in store for me? nevertheless, nothing.. i repeat NOTHING.. could have prepared me for the class i took today. i could almost hear and feel my heart drop a whole one metre to the ground when i received my timetable for the day and saw the words '6 CHARITY' right at the top in bold.

Here are 10 reasons why i SHOULD NOT be a teacher.

1) i couldn't deal with a class that only had 16 boys and 2 girls

2) there was this boy who was extremely disruptive and rude and violent and i absolutely couldn't tolerate him for one more second. thus, i told him to get out of my class.
me: GET OUT OF MY CLASS NOWWWWW!!!
boy: ok loh. you want me to get out of the school also can. i take my bag first
i was afraid that he'd really walk out of school and thus i took his bag away and kept it behind me.
me: you leave your bag here and just get out. You shall only get it back at the end of my lesson (which was to be at the end of the day)
and then the boy attempted to hit/whack/beat me.

3) the same boy crushed 2 pieces of paper into balls and dropped it into his shirt
boy: my breasts is (wrong grammar may i add) bigger than yours
i was totally stunned/horrified/speechless/furious, please dont laugh!

4) recently, there's a 'decorate your toilet' competition among the classes. basically each class has to adopt a toilet as their own, come out with a theme and decorate the toilet according to the theme as well as keep it clean. anyway, this class hasn't been doing ANYTHING for the competition but somehow they all decided to do so today, bringing the materials that they needed to class and then, insisting that i allow them to work on it during my lesson. so cos i didn't allow them to do so, they decided to make full use of their materials anyway. they tore up their papers into tiny pieces which was strewn all over the floor. A chaotic mess is an understatement

5) next they proceeded to use their penknives to threaten each other and scrape their desks. i saw with my own eyes, one boy using his penknife to almost touch the cheek of another boy. i immediately went forward to confiscate it and he tried to slash my hand.

6) the other boys then decided to have some fun with the whiteboard markers. instead of harmless drawing on the board as one would expect, they went on to draw on each others' backs. one boy started. the victim tried to take revenge. the rest of the boys formed alliances to back each boy and grabbed more markers. you get the overall picture.

7) there were metal wire strips for some reason i dont know, lying around in the classroom. i noticed some of the boys twisted it into various stuff and then throwing it at others. to avoid causing any accidents, i walked towards them and demanded all of it to be passed to me. one unhappy boy threw the metal wire at my face.

8) they kept asking me for permission to go to the toilet or to refill their water bottles. i may be naive but i'm not an idiot. i let them go the first time cos i believed that it might be urgent. but seriously, how is it possible that one needs to pee every 10 min? even if one gulps down a whole bottle of water, i'm sure it takes a while to go thru the entire complex inner system of their bodies. so after a while, i refused to let them go to the loo and they said i was mean and bad.

9) the boys threw chairs at each other and kicked tables

10) the boy i mentioned at the beginning went round the class trying to punch people's stomachs. one boy cried.

there are more. but these are the more important ones. i tried everything i could think of, from simply staring them down to shouting very fiercely (i know this is unbelievable to many of you. but when i need to be fierce, i am fierce),from taking away their PE lesson, to keeping them in for recess until i heard complete silence, from turning off the fan (they're more inclined to listen when they want me to turn on the fan quickly), to just simply sitting on my chair and waiting.

If i had it my way, i would have given them 2 tight slaps and then walked right out. this class is notorious for their terrible attitude and nonchalance to discipline, authority and respect.

ahhhhh!!!