Work wasn’t too bad today. Not time-pressurising like other days. That’s because my Reporting Officer, who is my direct boss, informed me that she would take over some of the work she had previously assigned to me. So, I felt a load off my shoulders.

If I were younger, I would protest and insist that I didn’t need her help. But part of having a high EQ is acknowledging that I need help sometimes. Not passive-aggressively stating that I am a man of high emotional quotient, just saying that I’m definitely less stubborn than in my 20s and 30s. So, growing old is good. It mellows me down and humbles me. I cannot do everything; I can only do a few small things with great love.

If you recognised Mother Theresa’s quote, power to you!

So what did I do with the extra time afforded to me? Gave lesson planning some due diligence, of course. For my students with dyslexia, I used the reading text that comprises all 220 sight words from the Dolch list to come up with literal questions to test their reading comprehension skills.

As expected, some of them couldn’t even finish reading the first paragraph without tripping over some of the words. But what was unexpected was that for other students who managed to read the first paragraph with relative ease, they couldn’t answer the literal questions at all. We are talking about basic Who When Where What questions.

I have a newfound respect for the difficulty inherent in reading - and just how we take it for granted.

Thankfully, the students in my dorm class have higher literacy levels. It’s just that they have low attention spans, as is the case with teenagers raised on too much screen time and visual stimulation these days. Still, they try their best to follow my instructions, even if some of them are prone to angry outbursts haha.

Anyway, the most emotionally volatile kid in my class put his leg on the chair. Now I have a habit of asking errant students to put down their “fat leg”. Obviously, I only do this for those who aren’t plus-sized so that I don’t hurt their feelings. Anyway, this kid protested that he is skinny. Then, something interesting happened.

He’s Malay. I’m Chinese. The Malay kids in my class proceeded to teach me how to say “fat leg” in Malay. Now I am a visual learner, so I attempted to decide what I heard. Turned out that I only missed out on the spelling by one letter! I then said the Malay word aloud.

I’m documenting this down because I’m sure I will use this anecdote to remind my kids of the importance of having good phonemic awareness.

Anyway, we all had a good laugh at my clumsy attempt to learn their language. I wrote down the word after the lesson on my teacher’s guide so that I won’t forget it lol. It’s nice to have this shared moment.

And I guess this is precisely the reason why many teachers stick at their jobs in spite of overwhelming responsibilities. The feeling of having bonded with a class and learnt something together, that euphoric moment of human connection. Once you taste that, it’s hard to make a transition to other less people-oriented careers.

Today, I enjoyed my struggle. Hope your fiat mining went well too.

Signing off to pick up my kids,