Scolding

Just scolded my class for being late. 25 minutes to be exact.

But come to think of it, the person to blame should be the teacher.

This is a Secondary 1 class, and because of that, they enforce this rule that no matter which lab or classroom that they are supposed to go to next, they have to wait in their own classroom and wait for the teacher to bring them there. This is to ensure that they do not make too noise when they travel along the corridors, and to make sure that they stay in line.

But this morning, one of the teachers is absent, while the other is late. And because of that, the class stayed in their own classroom, while one of the boys went to look for the other teacher. After searching in vain, the other teacher just suddenly appeared at the computer lab which I'm supposed to teach in.

To make things worse, the lab technical assistant was still not here yet, and thus the teacher had to make another trip to the general office and draw the key to open the lab. I can't draw the key because I'm not a staff of the school, and even if I could I wouldn't be able to open the door because they needed to scan the staff pass before the door opens.

So I shouldn't blame the students for being late. They were just following the school rules, and they also made the effort to go and look for the teacher in order for her to bring the class to the lab.

But the students still got a scolding from me, because they just do not know how pressed for time they are. They are required to do an animation of at least 3 minutes using Macromedia Flash, and it is not going to be easy. It will definitely take up a lot of time, judging on their proficiency in the program.

But instead of immediately settling down and get down to doing their animations, they ran around the lab and each student went to switch off the computer of another student, thus even wasting more time.

I guess they are still young, and are playful.

I understand the rule that the school enforced is to ensure discipline. But if that's the case, shouldn't the teachers know that they should be there early in class, or at least on time, so that they can bring their students to the next class?

Maybe the way of teaching in a secondary school has changed drastically as compared to the days when I was in GreenRidge, 11 years ago.

I still like the old way though. I'm old fashioned lol.