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Today was my first classroom observation and I feel like I got a breath of air in an oxygen free zone. I got to meet some students and spend some time in a class and finally get a sense of what the actual teaching here will be like.

In Singapore, the teachers come to the students, so when classes change you notice that the hallways are so empty and easy to get through. There isn't the swirling chaos that most of us Canadian teachers are accustomed to, no worrying about who is shoving who into which locker or bashing who on the head with watter bottles (all things I have seen and yelled at kids about during class changes...). When you enter the classroom, the class has to stand up and greet you. They say "Gooood morning teeecha! Goooood morning Miss Joooolley!" and then they get to sit down.

Classes here have 40 students and the class that I observed today was what they call here "Normal Academic." When they leave Primary school here students write a test that decides which level they will be streamed into when they come to secondary school. So they have Normal, Normal Academic and Express. The Express students do their secondary school in four years, and the rest I think so it in either four or five years. It's sort of like Locally Developed, Academic and Applied. The kids today would be considered I guess like our Applied students in Ontario.

40 kids is a lot to have in one room, so I think that's going to be the biggest challenge here. Students here seem much younger than Canadian kids, Ben was talking about the kids he taught in China and said the same thing, the maturity level here is much lower, but the students are much more diligent. Also, if they sass you it is a caning offence. So you don't get the kids telling you to go fuck yourself, you have no power here begone type of deal that you get in Canada.

At the end of the class the students again stand up and say "Thank you teeecha, God bless you" which is kind of adorable and kind of unsettling coming from Canada. I'm going to stick with adorable for now.

During the class that I observed one of the girls flipped the bird to one of the boys (teaching me that if I need to flip it here, it means the same thing....) and the teacher had a talk with her in the hallway about it. A boy said it was a finger spasm and she reminded him that integrity is one of the school values and he apologized.

After the class she assured me that the students they give me will be much better behaved and I started to laugh. I told her that in Canada that would be the least of my concerns. She assured me that I will likely be teaching lower sec (grade 9 and 10) Express students and that they have a lot less discipline problems.

It was just nice to see kids being kids and being in the classroom and reminding myself that I'm here to work with all sorts of interesting, funny, challenging young people who are inevitably going to teach me possibly more than I will teach them (and it will be the important stuff that no one else will, like that people here say shit, and flip the bird) and I just feel a lot more refreshed and energized now.

On the way home I also stopped into a drug store to get some cotton swabs and polysporin (what I hoped would be polysporin came out looking like peanutbutter so fingers crossed on that one) and I found my shampoo!! This doesn't seem like a big deal but I've had a hell of a time finding body products that are like the ones I had in Canada (my foray into deodorant-ville brought about the unfortunate incident of buy a product that bleaches your armpits. Yea, I said bleaches.) and being able to wash my hair with a product I know doesn't contain boat loads of silicone and plastic is something I am very much looking forward to. 

So, loyal readers and carers about Bea, take heart. I am feeling better and my hair will soon be as close to the way I like it as it can get in a tropical climate where I permanently look like I have, well, a permanent.