Technically, it was my second day of work this year. However, because my Year 2 students didn’t have to report to school on the first day, it was the first day of school for them (and for me as their form teacher).

Yup, our educational system is merciful in this regard. Only first-year students in elementary and middle schools need to attend school on the first day. We free up all hands and concentrate our resources so that we can ease new students and their parents into their new environment. My second-year students just needed to check in with me via Google Meet for an hour that day.

I explain this background context because it’s crucial to understanding the first thing I addressed with my first class.

Guess how many students didn’t show up for the Google Meet meeting? 10.

Out of 27 students. That’s a third of the class.

Of course, I am not gonna let it slide. Showing up shows that you respect others and want to be respected. If they don’t internalise this habit, then I gotta drum it into their skulls during their schooling years.

Last year, I would have worked myself into a frenzy, blasted them at the top of my lungs and impressed upon them that their action has consequences. Case in point: my vice-principal showed up in the middle of the meeting yesterday. Lucky for them that I am thick-skinned and didn’t let their absence affect my morale. I’m sure a lesser teacher would have preached about dying of embarrassment and stuff like that.

I would also have gotten them to stay back after school for detention. I wanna cause them pain even if I am inconvenienced in the process.

Since it was the start of a new school year, I thought I would try out something different. I asked the absentees to come together and decide on their punishment.

Subsequently, they suggested that they would do 20 squats while pulling their ears.

Sure, I said. Take it away.

The act of them struggling to synchronise their actions together made me and their classmates burst into laughter. My Co-Form Teacher even took a video of their attempt.

And that was that. I moved on to other stuff. I had a lot of administrative matters to settle with them.

You know, I don’t know if I should be harsher on them, but here’s my train of thought: they are teenagers and ought to know better the expected behaviours. If they blatantly flout the expectations, then detention isn’t going to work for them. I can only nudge them to grow in the right direction. Maybe doing it with humour will work for some of them.

That’s why teaching is tough. No teacher ever signed up to teach values, but at a certain point in time, he realises that letting his students catch values in a non-threatening environment might just be the most important thing he can do for them.

Anyway, not going to let this be too serious a blog post. After dismissal, I left school immediately to sing karaoke with my junior college friend. Approaching 30 years of friendship. Yet, we holed ourselves in a room that was second nature to us in our 20s and 30s and sang our repertoire of songs - unchanged from those days because who has time to catch up on the music scene. I felt good. Nothing like living in the present and taking a trip down memory lane.

Hopefully more days can be like this such that I will feel compelled to rename my blog Fighting the Daily Grind, haha.