Bad Relief Teaching Experience

Someone asked why I had joined teaching. I did not join because I had some wonderful or memorable relief teaching experience. In fact, I had quite a negative experience while relief teaching.

I ORD-ed in March, so I wasn't able to get any long term relief teaching assignment. I got placed in the reserve list. Only if a teacher was on MC, would I get a call in the morning to go do relief teaching. It was that ad-hoc.

I got called up to do relief teaching at a neighbourhood secondary school in the west. The first class was a Normal (Academic) Sec 2 class. They were supposed to have Arts lesson, so I brought them to the Arts room. A guy and a girl started to quarrel. The guy called the girl a pig and the girl was unhappy. She went to the sink and filled a container with water. She went on to splash the water at the guy. But the water did not hit the guy; instead it landed on me who was trying to break up the fight. I remarked: "So you are happy now?" Then the two of them went back to their seats and the class was quiet for the next two period. Well~ At least they were quiet. Small sacrifice on my part -- my shirt was totally wet.

After that, I went to stand in for a Sec 3 Express class. They were very noisy and I had no way of making them silent. A girl came up to me and asked: "Teacher, can i stamp you?" She was holding a stamp in her hand. You know, the type that teachers used to stamp stars on our assignments when we were young. The ink stamp. Of course, I replied: "No, you can't." Then i went to do my rounds in the class to ask them to lower their volume. The girl followed behind and stamped me on my back.

"What are you doing!"

I was irritated.

"Stamping you lor!" she replied calmly.

I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

Yup~ Just two of the more memorable traumatic experiences I had while relief teaching.