EMBRACING THE TEACHING PROFESSION

Well, here we are, the last weekend - for the next three years at least - that will not be at the mercy of teaching proper.

The last couple of mornings this week have been spent perusing for materials online that I hope to add to my teaching resources. Anything to relieve the stress I expect to face in the near future. My efforts so far have been bleak. Oh well. I'll start on lesson plans later.

It dawned on me as I was reading a teacher's blog on teaching Hyperbole in class, that I will be a teacher soon. In the fullest sense of the word, that it will soon be a label that I wear as a second-skin. There will be no "student-" attached as a prefix to the label, as in student-teacher. Just, Teacher. I don't think I have quite comprehensively embraced that I identity yet. Worn like clothing but not quite skin. Not for long though.

I look back at my posts related to teaching - I don't really say much about teaching, just some about the kids and people I meet. And there is a reason for that - because I am not just a teacher, there is more to be than that job. But perhaps I wonder if it is time for me to identify myself the profession and the responsibilities and stories that come with the turf. It won't be the only piece of clothing to become my skin, it will probably morph with the other identities I have become like christian worker, tentmaker.

And just as I take great pride in reflecting on the work I used to do in Japan as a christian worker, church-planter, so I think I should similarly take pride in the work I do as a teacher and not try to shrug it off so "I won't be identified with (stereotypical) teachers".

My gripe with the teaching community here? Teachers as a community seem to be a whiny lot, both to the insiders and to the outsiders. There is never a dearth of complaints to be heard, we are always hearing how they are overworked, underpaid and under-recognized. All true. :-)

But I also hail from the scientific community. And if the real reason be known, I was completely put-off that scientist are over-worked and pressured in an industry where there is similarly little recognition and reward for the toilsome labours of the little people. It is not unheard of for them to return to their lonesome laboratries at three in the morning to continue with their experiments which have to show results yesterday so that they can make journal publishing before the next other competitive lab across beats them to it. You could easily spend a year or two in research and then have nothing to show for your hardwork if somebody make public their findings before you. I decided then I could not bring myself to sweat over something I may never have anything to show for. And mind you, if you have nothing to show for it, you have no funding, no moolah.

I don't think teachers are in a worse position than this. It's really not that bad if we stopped comparing ourselves. My only anxiousness is that the demands will consume my time away from the things I want as important; friends, relationships, God and Kingdom-building.

So here we are, at a new threshold. Hi World, I am a middle-school Language Arts Teacher in Singapore. :-) I teach 12-13 year olds, English and to the 15-16 year olds, Literature.

LIVING WITH PARENTS

I feel seven years old all over again. Caz seems elated that her mom flew down to be with her. Mom has been on leave the last few days of the week. Its good. The first day I went shopping in town with her - I didn't really intend to go spend money but felt compelled that I should shop since she really want to paint the town red. So I got stuff for work; shoes, dress and a blouse. After that, I really couldn't bear any more shopping so I got Andy to pick me up. Mom got Dad to come by after work to continue. Heh.

Yesterday she spent all of daylight in the East, hanging and shopping with her mates and today she is home gardening.

I walked down ten minutes ago to clock a few miles while the sky was grey and the sun was not going to bake me and she said, "you are not going running. It's raining!" (It's drizzling. Perfect running weather!) So here I sulk at not being allowed to go running. No, I'm not really that upset - I can see her point fully - I don't want to be charred by lightning and miss tonight Planetshakers' concert that Euge scalped tickets for! I'm more bemused that this is how things are.

It must be because for a long long time, I haven't lived with my parents - and definitely not with having my mom not being at work. I don't think that has happened for almost ten years. And I've been back a year now, it hasn't been painful to live with my parents againt to say the least. It's a nice break from having to make mental note of when to pay what bills and be fully responsible for the upkeep and cleaning of the house. But, hopefully, I'll get my own place soon by the end of the year or the start of next year. It will be nice to have my own kitchen and to cook lots of japanese and korean cuisines and to know exactly how my pantry will be organized!

A WARNING FOR PRODUCTIVE SINGLES - Pt.1

** Read at risk, you may not want to become a couple after reading if you are a highly driven productive single. **

It just occured to me why couples seem so busy.

As I stepped out of the loo, too early in the morning, I was half-thinking in my sleep that coupling should be a productive affair. You have two persons doing a solo act. One job, two persons, half the time right? But in reality it wasn't. In the last year, I always seem to find that time flies by whenever I'm with my boyfriend. That's probably largely attributed to that we really like each other and spending time with each other so we don't notice how and when it passes. But it also seems that even though we spend time together doing stuff, there seems to be more things we don't get done than get done.

Then the reality of the equation hit me.

Singles are really the more productive of the two types of the persons. As a single, you are one person with twenty-four hours to do one person's job. You hook up with someone nice and then you spend a significant amount of time with that person. Say you are not irresponsible and waste away that time completely by looking into each others' eyes, so you two do stuff together. (If you don't that then it simply gets exponentially harder to get stuff done!). When 'two become one', you have one unit with twenty-four hours to get two persons' business done.

Technically, should be able to save time. If both persons need to do X in Y minutes (X = Y mins), and one person does X+X, then the equation should become 2X = Y. If its the same task that both people need to do, and one person does both it should save half the time.

However that equation doesn't always work. With that twenty-four hours, the one unit made up of two persons with only one unit's time has to do two persons' business. The One person of man and wife, has only the same amount of time to do two persons' business. So, when we hook up, we are really removing one productive person from the equation. And that explains why marrieds are so busy and yet don't neccessarily get the job done. Instead of my taking 15 minutes to wash my dinner's dirty dishes (say 2 pcs), the one unit will take 25 minutes to wash dinner's dirty dishes, now 4 pieces, only one can be washing and if the other part of the unit is nice, they will be talking/listening.

Of course, the one unit can behave like two persons and both do two different jobs at the same time, but then what would be the point of coupling if you did diffferent things, at different times and at different places and not to be together?

Stories & Spirituality

Of course, of course. We go to the church, we listen to a man on the podium that tells us from this story there are five bullet points on how to 'live a christian life'. We say that the five little stones that David threw mean five things like faith, trust, love, etc., etc.

God never said anything like that. He just gave us a bunch of stories in the OT about His pursuit of man and then there is the the NT which is Jesus' expression on that in human form. So, why do we need to break down 'Christianity' into bullet points?

If your life was a story, was is the chief conflict? Who is would be the protagonist in your life story? What shape or form would the plot direction take? Would it be a tragedy? A comedy? Would there be a twist? an anti-climax? Or, if it were a movie, would it be a blockbuster? a Hollywood spin-off just like every other movie and every other person? An reflective art-house? How would it change or elucidate to viewers things about our christian life like love and god and stuff? Would it be a classic that would get told down the line because of its impact?

Because what we learn from the good book is because all these take place in the stories we got handed down in the bible. We know of God through stories we are told, so how about knowing and telling about God now through our stories we can share?

Don Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz, Searching For God Knows What, Through Painted Deserts and To Own A Dragon, speaks here at Imago Dei of his insights into these things while editing and working through McKee's stuff (of the movie Adaptation).

Stories by Don Miller.

NO SONNET FROM SHAKESPEARE

Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm.
For love is strong as death,
jealousy, as fierce as the grave.
It's passions burst into flames.

Love cannot be drowned,
by oceans or floods;
it cannot be bought,
no matter what is offered.

- S.O.S. 8:6-7

This is love poetry from the Good Book!

AMAZING

... that I have finally picked a dressmaker for the gown. I'm still 50-50 about the style. I had one in mind but the last one I saw kinda had my name spelled all across it.

... that we started the search for the elusive ideal apartment. Here's how it sounded when I tried to explain it to the friend for the benefit of my foreign self. We don't want to buy a house, we want to rent. But we are too cash-strapped to rent because of something called the Central Provident Fund that takes something like $500 out of our salary. That money still 'belongs' to us although we can use it for anything other than what the Singapore gahmen tells us we can purchase, ie. a house or to use as a retirement fund when you turn 55. So, we are too poor to rent and therefore have to buy a house.

So, buy a house we go, but we are told that we are above the income gap that entitles us a decent house loan and that we may not qualify for the cheapest housing we want. We may have to buy a bigger apartment than we need or want. Even more upsetting and ridiculous is the possibility that we may have to purchase a condominium. So now we may be too 'rich' to qualify for a decent Housing Development Board loan to buy a cheap apartment that we want. They're rationale: "if you buy a 3BR apartment when you can afford to buy a 4BR apartment, you are disadvantaging the pool of buyers who can only afford to buy a 3BR." Isn't this supposed to be a privilege of my citizenship, the subsidies that the gahmen affords to all?

In order to get around this slight problem of "total gross household income ceiling" we have statutorily declared my fiance unemployed since he is in mission school. So now one unemployed young man is buying a house with his fiancee. And, he should remain unemployed in order to buy an apartment! How strange it sounds that he should remain unemployed so that we are entitled to a home loan to buy a house we don't want to buy because we are too poor to rent!

Amazing. This is the logic by which Singapore is run!