Chicken Soup for the Teaching Soul

To me, Teacher's Day is like Chicken Soup for the teaching soul - the one time a year, that teachers don't get spit on (as often), and are actually appreciated. :) It is also that time of the year where we get to do some reflection (hey, my other colleague received more gifts than I did! Why is that so?!) of our teaching, or otherwise.

And this being my first year celebrating teacher's day as an educator is of course somewhat special too. Well, I wasn't really expecting any gifts, having been around for only 2 months, so I was pleasantly surprised to receive a few cards, and gifts of food (and I must say it gives me a nice fuzzy feeling to receive gifts that have been made by the students themselves, whether it's a simple handmade card, or cookies).

Teacher's Day also came at a time when I needed a break the most, i.e. right after the chaos of the Common Tests - though I think it can be somewhat disruptive to have it on Tuesday - if only 1 Sep was on a Monday, then we'd have a super long weekend. Not that I'm complaining. ;p

Anyhow, fantasies are just fantasies. It's back to the harsh reality once more! 2 more days to the September holidays! :)

Judgement Day

It's been a couple of cold mornings in a row now. Riding to school in the morning can be a really cool (read: COLD) experience - imagine standing in front of the air conditioner, with the wind blowing against you at 60km/h. Now I know why motorcycles are more of a tropical kind of transport.

In any case, today also marks the 2nd day since the stand down of the H1N1 precautionary measures. It's nice to come into school without the barricades, and visual screening, reminiscent of some 1984 (George Orwell) scene. Hurray to no more temperature taking exercises! Away with the thermometers!

This week, being the Common Test week, is also a sort of "judgement day" for the teachers. I'm hoping that all my students will do well for their common tests! (not just for Physics of course... ;p)

Bat bat...

A couple of weeks ago, a bat flew into the Maths hub, got hit by the ceiling fan, and fell to the ground with a broken wing. It's possibly one of the most serious animal injuries that I've seen - not that I've seen a lot, but it had a bone jutting out from the broken wing, and was squealing in pain, presumably (who wouldn't, if you had a bone sticking out of you).

But anyway, there wasn't much we could do to the bat, since we were not vets, and I've not sure what a vet could have done in this case either. In the end, the cleaner helped to bring the injured bat to the tree in the garden, where I think must have been its final resting ground.

One thing that struck me, as I was handling the bat, was the wing structure of the bat. A bat being a mammal, would have followed a path of evolution similar to humans, and you can see up-close that the bones in the wings were shaped like the hand of a human (it was the first time I've seen a bat this close. I've only seen them flying around at night, and detected them using a bat detector/ultrasound microphone)

However, if you were to encounter a similar situation with bats, you should take note that bats may have rabies, and it could potentially spread to you, if you were bitten by a bat (i guess this is where the vampire legends originate from) or if the blood from the bat comes into contact with an open wound, eyes, ears, etc. For more information, I'd suggest you check out this website. :)

H1N1 hurray!

I am so glad that the temperature-taking exercise is finally going to get scaled down. Instead of having 2 temperature-taking exercises every day, this has now been reduced to just one in the morning. This temperature-taking exercise takes up too much time, especially the 2nd one, where a whole 30 minutes is scheduled for it and it really seems more like the temperature-taking-forever exercise. ;p

Anyway, I have officially become a common-test-setting-machine - these common tests take a really long time to set! =(

For now, it's break time!