Tell You What

Today I went to SK Bukit Gelugor as a ................. teacher! It is originally a special project by my TESOLians buddies from different elective class. I can't wait to do the project next semester! So they go to the school every Friday to unleash the students talents (singing, acting and all that) besides brushing up their English skills. There would be a competition between the 9 groups of the standard 6 students next week and only 5 of them will be chosen to perform at USM (it's 'cruel' I know, but they can't afford to take all of the students to USM, unfortunately). 

I decided to help teaching the 8th group dancing to One Direction's What Makes You Beautiful. Besides, I brought my guitar! There's this head boy who sang Bruno Mars's Count On me and I was supposed to play guitar to that song. I really really love teaching dancing moves. I always get hyped up and excited upon thinking about choreographing and teaching the moves. 

Here's the downside. Let's flashback to my school years. I admit, I often (not ALL of the time haha) be at the top of the game when it comes to studying back then. So I don't know how does it feel to be on the bottom (aka the last class) and being neglected by the teachers. Man, you have no idea how much I loathe exams for the cruel discrimination. How the examination discriminates the smart, average and low. How it results in labeling people with low scores as .......... stupid. Ugh. Nobody's stupid. Everybody is different. Everybody has his or her own incredible ability, only left to be discovered.

The thing is, I just found out that certain fellow TESOLians already set their own target. In other words, they focus on particular groups which they consider has higher potentials and qualification to ace the competition. Whereas the lacking, less-skilled groups are being abandoned. We can relate to our school years where teachers tend to give more attention to 'smart' students. How are you going to succeed as educators if you fail to bring out the potentials in your students? How are you going to succeed as educators if you only want everything to go on your own way by taking the ... shortcut? I'm sorry if this might offend you. I understand, not all of the students possess the quality and ability to cooperate. But still, I just can't digest their so-called logic. Especially after my lecturer told me an inspiring story about how she managed to upgrade the potentials of the weak students despite being neglected by the school. 

That's when I became more persistent when they told me the group I was about to lead was one of the .... abandoned group. Because I wanted to challenge myself. And I hated the feeling of being left out. And thank God I had fun. At least I could see them smiling and enjoying what they're doing. Of course the dance moves were quite hard for them to pick up, but they managed to keep up. I'm glad I managed to brighten up the the performance, a little bit. Alhamdulillah.


p/s: Please pray for me so that I'll become an inspiring, dedicated teacher one day. Insya Allah :)