School always gets in the way of my education

Bah, my brain feels tired from all that math. Unfortunately for me and the rest of my batch, my Calculus and Math teacher are the same and she’s fond of giving us really difficult quizzes. My Math class is different from my Calculus class–I am taking up more numbers than I will ever use for the rest of my life. Tomorrow is my Math unit test and although I studied really hard for it I’m not feeling very optimistic about the possible grade I will get. A lot of the things I review don’t show up during the test because my very considerate Math/Calculus teacher likes to include these really impossible problems. And she always gives surprise quizzes. Bahala na nga! I’m quite worried about my math grade because my scores aren’t that good. I hope that bitch gets a lot of bad karma in life for giving me such a hard time in that subject.

There was an emergency teacher’s meeting this morning, so Annie and I got to be substitutes for the same third grade class again. The teacher’s meeting went on slightly longer this time–two hours. During the first hour, the kids were at the Computer Room playing games, which was what their Computer teacher told them to do. Then it was the other third grade’s class to use the Computer Room so Annie and I ushered them all back to the classroom where they had to do a seatwork for Social Studies.

Question: How hard is it for a class of 38 third graders to do a seatwork for Social Studies?
Answer: Extremely hard!!

If a lot of them weren’t cute and adorable kids I would’ve probably screamed, “SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DO THE FUCKING SEATWORK NOW!” The room was in a state of chaos when we got there, and lots of kids were chasing each other around the room and stuff. Somehow, Annie and I managed to quiet them down and when I had their attention I explained how to do the seatwork.

“It says here,” I said, looking at the board, “that you should write descriptions of the Cordillera and Central Luzon. Open your books to page so and so and just copy the descriptions written there.” Their Social Studies is in Filipino, it took me quite a while to find the words to explain it to them.

“Ate,” a girl in the front row piped, “could you please say it again? I don’t understand.”

So I explained the entire thing again and thinking that they all got me, sat down with Annie and breathed a sigh of relief.

Another girl came up to me with her notebook and book, a puzzled expression on her face. “Ate, what are we supposed to do?”

Thank God I wasn’t suffering from PMS or anything today or I would’ve totally lost it. Instead, I explained what to do again and gave specific examples. I decided that they should give four descriptions of the Cordillera and Central Luzon so it would all be organized. She went back to her seat, and then came back a minute later. A sentence describing the Cordillera was written there.

“Is this correct?” she asked. I smiled at her and nodded. “Yup. One down; sevenmore to go!” She came back to me seven more times.

There is this girl from India in the class, and I had to translate the chapter for her in English because she doesn’t know how to speak or read Filipino. That took me awhile to do, and after trying and failing to translate two paragraphs she just pointed at the pictures and asked me what they were doing. We ended up talking about random stuff for a couple of minutes. I forgot what her name was, it was kind of hard to pronounce but she’s a really nice girl with a cute accent. Suddenly, another kid pulled me away from the Indian girl to show me something or other. When all the kids were done with the seatwork (after forty minutes of Annie yelling at them to keep quiet and me trying to help those who needed it), they said they needed to practice for some Christian Living Ed. presentation. By that time, we were too tired to give a damn if they were noisy or not, so we just let them do whatever they want. Who cares, there weren’t any teachers around anyway. And it’s not as if we aren’t noisy ourselves.

When lunch finally came, Annie and I exchanged triumphant smiles and gave each other a big hug to congratulate ourselves for going through such an ordeal. I never realized how much energy it took to keep a couple of eight year olds disciplined and quiet. My throat was hurting slightly from doing all that yelling and talking. Maybe that’s why my Math/Calculus teacher is so mean and fond of giving surprise quizzes. If I were a teacher I would make my noisy, bratty students suffer, suffer, SUFFER!

Future students should be thankful that I want to be a diplomant.