(1247)temporary work while waiting for result

There are sixth formers in my church in Sabah. STPM (formerly HSC, equivalent to GCE A-level) results come out in a much shorter time than 40 years previously.

While I waited for my HSC result, I worked as a temporary teacher in a Chinese Primary School in KL for a term. Similarly, my youngest worked at a law firm doing conveyance clerical work for 4 months. From that experience, she decided law is the last profession she wanted in town.
Joanna, who is a happy-go-lucky person in the Sabah church, could not find a job and seemed to cheerfully doodle at home. Yvonne is a little more assertive, she grabbed a tutoring job and has been almost tearing out her hair in struggling to teach since. In teaching, I started the ball rolling a few years before Form 6. In Form One I had a student who came to my house three times a week for English tutoring for a few months. His English did not improve much but his mum was quite pleased to see him lose a few pounds during those months. For whatever homework he did not do, he cheerfully skipped rope as punishment. The dad stopped sending him when he sensed the boy was not interested in improving his English. After LCE (now called PT3) I taught a few children in the neighbourhood for a few months. That was a learning experience for me. As the parents and the housekeeper were supportive, the children did improve  much in English and Malay during that period.

Therefore I could see why Yvonne has such difficulties. Firstly most parents in Sabah just forked out money and left things pretty much to the tutor. Next thing to note is that the children could actually do substantial work during the school holidays if the parents and the nannies are supportive. Let's say the children come for one hour of tutoring three times per week, and they consistently do one hour of home exercise every week day, that would be 8 hours of work done per week. Assuming 6 weeks of work, it adds up to 48 hours of work done. We can see that judicially planned exercises done conscientiously work wonders with some explanation during lesson time.

By the time I was working as a temporary teacher, I realised that 9 years old are not the right age group for me. After strict streaming, 3E as a class is difficult to teach. I used to mark sentence making twice a week and journal writing weekly. The first was tough enough, it is the second that killed a novice teacher. It is funny that I did spend most of my adult life teaching remedial English to either college age classes or one-to-one tutoring to young children. At least it is much easier than attempting to teach a class of 48 children whom each required special attention.