Gargantuan task awaits.

This is the first official weekend for me as a teacher.

It’s weekend people! My weekend break starts today as I had to attend a school activity yesterday morning till noon.

Anyway, I know I had been abandoning this blog (just like the previous one) for days. I guess this is the right time for me to provide an update about my current well-being here in Semporna. For those who do not know, I got posted here in Semporna and I’m still in the process of adapting myself to this brand new environment.

Did I miss KK? Yes, I did and as a matter of fact, I am still missing KK! Just like my colleagues, I am also anticipating for the school holidays!

As mentioned before, I am still trying to get myself comfortable in this new place. Prior coming to this place, I was quite worried about myself not being able to “connect” with the people here. Luckily, I met my two good housemates. Both of them are also teaching in the same school with me. They somehow helped me to feel less homesick and we instantly became good friends. I hope it stays that way.

Now, let’s talk about my job. Let me be frank here. Teaching at this place, particularly in my school, is not an easy task. The challenges I faced might be different from the ones faced by other teachers in other schools. I am teaching in a “low-performance” school – in terms of academic performance. As an English teacher, I am facing a gargantuan task of teaching the students the proper English language. English language is like an alien language to them. They can’t even comprehend most simple words in English! The only English sentences that they can say are like “good morning sir/teacher”, “thank you”, “my name is ___”  and “yes/no”. How sad is that? =.=

Even worse, some of them (or should I say most of them) can’t even spell out simple English words. What about reading English materials? It’s even worse! Oh Lord, give me strength to endure this. Nevertheless, deep down in my heart, I feel sorry/pity for these kids. Seriously, I’m teaching a bunch of secondary school students who still cannot understand/utter/write simple English words. They even spelled their names wrongly!

Today, my housemates and I drove all the way to Tawau to pay a visit to the bookstore there. Apparently, it is the famous bookstore in the division. Most of the teachers from Semporna would travel to Tawau just to buy books. There’s no bookstore here in Semporna that has wide variety of quality academic books, mind you!

After some discussion with my housemate who is also an English teacher, we decided to buy several enrichment books to be utilised in the classroom. Knowing the standard of the students, my heart shattered when we had to buy primary school level books for our students. We’re not talking about primary 5 or 6 books. We made a consensus and bought primary 1 & 2 books! How sad is that? We had to lower the level of difficulty and teach the students from the very basic. *Sobs*

I decided to get myself a couple of secondary-level English books as I personally want to gradually make the students aware of the exams format and the level that they supposedly have to master. It would not be a very good idea to overly expose students to primary-level materials throughout the entire lesson.They NEED to know their supposedly current level.

I hope the so-called combination of primary-level and secondary-level books will help the students to improve their command of the language. *Crossing my fingers*