(871) Remedial lessons

There was a time I was teaching remedial English in a local public university. I was young and idealistic. My students were mainly arts students who did not want to improve their English. After a few weeks I was playing tactical games with the sign in sheet. At first I passed it out for the students to initial as soon as I walked into class. Then I realized that my student number dwindled by half when I let them out for a break. Thereafter I sometimes passed it out first thing  class started, other times I passed it out after break, once I even passed it around ten minutes before class ended.

With me varying the time of signing in, I did managed to maximize the number of classes most students attended. For they have to achieve at least 80% English class attendance or be barred from sitting all their examinations. Now that I am more cynical and not willing to force my will on others, I found my passion in those days a little aggressive! One of my students actually told me that he received a Government scholarship and would be given a life-long job by the time he graduated. It would not matter if he knew English or not. After all, all citizens going to a Government department would be forced to speak the National language anyway, which is his mother tongue. I remember telling him that my job is to encourage my student to learn, if he refused to learn, as long as he sat in my class and not disrupt the lesson; there is not much I could do about it.

By the time a rather arrogant young man told me that English is the corrupt language of the colonizer and that as a devout Muslim he refused to be corrupted, I told him to sit a few rows to the back if he intended to do other homework or talk to fellow die hard of the same faith while I was teaching.

By then about 60% of my students sat in the front rows, the die hard fellows would sit at the back and did whatever they please as long as my lesson was not disturbed. Some how that class still did well compared to the other classes. I heard that everyone was tested before attending classes, and then after 17 weeks, they were tested again. The two batches of scores were graphed and each instructor was graded depending on the improvement of the students as a class. The following semester I was posted to teach medical students, based on what the full timers said, it was rather an honor for me to be assigned to the cream of the crop as I was just a part-timer.