Jarod Yong

For the past 2 weeks, I've been preoccupied with preparing 2 speeches for the Public Speaking competition & rewriting 2 scripts for the Debate team of my school. Unfortunately, my students are yet to possess the intellectual & linguistic competence to write a high level script on their own. So it's up to the teachers to write the scripts for them & train them to read (no, I mean deliver) the scripts effectively. The best part is... some of the educators are less than competent themselves... which means extra work for me: proof-reading & rephrasing. Call me conceited but the longer I work here, the more I feel that I'm head & shoulders above the rest. Either that or I work too hard. That's what I've been doing day, night & even through the weekends. That's on top of my official duties of preparing for lessons, carrying lessons out, extra classes, marking exercises, co-curricular activities & setting papers for the coming exams. ...

Sometimes I wonder why I work so hard. The more I slave the more apparent I work alone. For many, this is just another job. Just another vocation. Just another way to put food on the table. There’s no spark, no desire, no romance. Do what is required, make sure there is documentation & recognition. Anything extra is not necessary. Why waste time on something outside of your job description? Buat apa mau susah-susah? Itu bukan kerja kamu! Why am I the only one to go ahead & plan an activity-full year for the 2 clubs that I am put in-charge of fully aware that I may have to oversee every activity myself even when others are assigned to it as well? Why not just meet the students once a month, sing a few songs, shout at them a little bit & get the compulsory meetings over & done with like the others? Why do I complete 2 scripts to the best of my abilities for another person’s competition just to receive another 2 when I have already made it clear that I need to w...

Last Saturday, I spent the whole day taking an entrance exam for the post of Pegawai Tadbir & Diplomatik (PTD) M41. The 1st paper was on General Knowledge & I found it quite easy. A majority of the questions were on government policies. There are some questions on specific knowledge. For example, ‘which are movies directed by Yasmin Ahmad’ & ‘who were the founders of Google’. The 2nd paper was a mathematics paper which was easier than my SPM exam. Most of it was situation questions that made use of multiplication, summing, percentage & algebra. I was allowed to use a calculator & I think I will get 99% on that paper. It was that easy. Paper 3 was a simple comprehension paper on both BI & BM. If you got A1 for both subjects in SPM, it shouldn’t be a problem for you. Very simple SPM level questions. They also asked about idioms, proverbs & correct use of words. Papers 4 & 5 were essay papers where you wrote on 1 of 3 questions. Mostly discussio...

In a school, there are certain things that should never be done in full-view of the students. Among all those, the #1 carnal sin of the teaching profession is: Telling another off in front of the students. taken from dailyrant.me Sadly, I was at the receiving end of such an encounter. One evening last week, I decided to get the ball rolling with the school's English Language Society & have our very first meeting EVER . My vision for this society is to form a group of students who will be moulded into leaders to facilitate English language activities in the school. Most schools would have an open-invitation, but for our society, it's strictly invitation only (since not every student can speak & understand the English language). 10 students with the best English language proficiencies & attitudes were selected from Form 1, 2 & 4. I was addressing the students when I noticed that several of them were staring at something behind me. I turned around...