Sunday, February 17, 2008
|Letter to Ex Teacher|
Dear Mdm Jean Tan,
Hi, you may have forgotten me. I am Jun Wei. How have you been? Is teaching in different schools the same? Time flies. You had thought me in secondary 1 and now I am in secondary 4, taking the role of leadership. There are many things happening in the beginning of the year and I am going to share with you some of the changes that happened in our school.
In the first week of school, we had the opportunity to sit at the gallery, the seats which are located at the second level of the hall. We were able to see the movements of the lower secondary from the top. Teachers recognized us as seniors of the school and this meant that we were supposed to set a good example for the lower secondary, and expected to be responsible and more mature in thinking. When we went to our new class, we were briefed by our new form teacher about how strict that all of our teachers are going to be less lenient. We were then given a week’s grace to adapt to the pace of their lecture as we are having extra classes in the afternoon, starting from the second week onwards to catch up with last’s year work. There is also a change in school time table eon Thursdays as teachers will be having their meetings in the morning. It also meant that we could go school later than normal school time and I could sleep longer.
In the mid-January, we had to stay back almost everyday to have our extra lessons for most of the subjects we are taking. We had different subjects for alternate weeks. Teachers taught new topics and they are going at a faster pace then last as we were applying around during the previous year. On the first day of February, we had a CIP [Community Involvement Project] Day, when the whole of our school used the school hours to do CIP. Different CIP were allocated to different level. For my level, we had to visit some of the elderly house and clean their house. We cooperated and managed to make their house much more cleaner.
Everyone had different changes and happenings everday. If you are willing to, share with me about the changes in your school and I will be more willing to hear the news from you. Hope you will reply to me soon.
Yours sincerely,
Junwei
|1ST DAY OF SCHOOL WHEN I WAS IN SECONDARY 1|
Before beginning the first day in the secondary school, I kept wondering what life in secondary was going to be like and would I be able to cope with the increase of the subjects as the number of the subject in secondary one is double that of primary school.
When it finally came to the first day of school, I thought that this might be the first day of the year experiencing the crowd the bus as there was only one bus heading towards the school from my house. When I was in primary school, I was able to find a seat settle down in the bus as there were more buses to the primary school compared to the secondary’s. From a distance, the bus-stop was filled with many students with the same inform as me. As a result of missing the previous bus, I had to wait for at least 10 minutes for the next bus to come. When the bus arrived at the bus-stop, everyone walked towards the front of the bus to board it. I did a glance of the people sitting down, trying to look for familiar faces, but to no avail. The passengers who were standing and I tried to balance ourselves by holding the handle of the seat as the bus swerved left and then right. When the bus travel from one bus-stop to another, there was no passenger alighting but more people boarding the bus and we had to move to the rear to avoid peers getting late for school. After reaching the bus-stop that was opposite the school, the bus emptied and I could get back to the comfort for not being squeezed at the back of the bus.
I was not sure where to assemble in school so I followed the crowd. When I reached outside the hall, I saw some of my primary school classmates and they were talking to each other. I joined the conversation for a while and a student wearing grey long pants, know to be councilor guided us to our respective class. We had flag-raising ceremony as usual and the teachers led us to our classrooms.
We settled down in class, sitting down with each of our own friends and the teacher had introduces herself to us. We were then told that there were activities planned for us this week. We were then brought to tour the school to allow us to know which specific rooms we were going to use for lessons, after the tour , we played games that requires cooperation and teamwork such as ‘dog-and-bone’ to familiarize with each other. We slowly began to recognize one another’s faces and even called each other by our names.
When it was recess time, we had to walk up the staircase to the third level where the canteen is located. We patronized some of the food stalls and settled down in the same table. We ate and talked at the same time although we are not supposed to as it was not appropriate. After the last bell rang, we packed our bags and some of us walked to the bus-stop to wait for buses to get back home and get ready for the next day.
