A Room With A View

July is the month which marks many new beginnings for me. I'll be moving in to a new room with a new roommate ( but then again, I tend to do that almost every year, not that I am very difficult to get along with though, mind you).


The few visitors to my new room claimed that the view from my 8th floor is spectacular. The Am Corp Mall is figured prominently here.


I swear that the night view is breath-taking, guess have to fiddle more with my camera's functions.



However, the most pivotal first step that I am going to take would have to be on the morning of 7th July, 2008 when I am about to embark on the journey of my teaching practice as a full-fledged trainee teacher. I am partnering with Chee Hwei this time, never knew our lives could intertwine this much when she sat behind me in class when we were in Form 2.

We had paid a visit to our school, SMK USJ 8 on last monday and we have talked to the very amiable Principal, PK 1 and the Ketua Panitia English. The Principal, Pn. Rubiah gave us a rather long briefing ( opps, can't help that is an oxymoron here) about the background of the students in that school. According to her, the students there are lonely kids as they come from double income families. They are not really delinquent kids and thus we teachers have to show our caring side to them while being firm at the same time. Hmm, this is not too bad, I think I would have failed in acting as a garang teacher anyway. Nevertheless, I think Pn. Rubiah is a very benevolent lady. She told us that she allows her staff to bring their children to work if no one is around to keep an eye on them at home as she could not face her own conscience should anything bad happened to them. Don't you think that she is a very nice employer to have, well I certainly hope she is because lady principals do have the reputation of being quite fussy.

To my surprise, SMK USJ 8 was just established 8 years ago and it was quite a beautiful school actually. We toured the school on our own while waiting to meet the teachers and I was enchanted by the pots of petunia hanging around the school compound. No pictures here because I thought better of being taken as a too-eager first-timer furiously snapping away. Much to the worry of my partner, we will only be given our timetable on the big day itself but we were informed that we will be taking Form 4 classes. This aside, we are also in the understanding that the proficiency of the students there are generally above average as Subang Jaya is a middle class area.

All in all, these are all the rather physical domain of the preparations prior to the it's-finally-here-teaching practice. I think I have been preparing myself mentally for the big day by relaxing as much as possible, hehe. I am convincing myself that I am going to have a lot of fun during my 10-week stint. Positivity never kills right? Nevertheless, I think all of us have been thinking on what to do on the first day in class. There have been conflicting opinions on whether to have any ice-breaking activity on the first lesson because some supervisors advised us to teach straight away. I am not too sure about that because I find it very weird if we did not make an effort to get acquainted with the students in the first place. Isn't the golden rule of teaching is remembering the names of your students? Anyway, that's about it now. I will carry out some simple ice-breaking activity anyhow. Keep your fingers crossed for each other, alright. Cheerio.