Well, I had two teachers instead of one who inspired me to becoming a teacher, so let me share with you in this chapter. If you recall in the earlier chapter on how I swore never to be a teacher due to the bully incident, that's going to change in this chapter.
When I was in Secondary 3, I had Miss Foo as my form teacher. Miss Foo taught us English and Geography. She was very friendly and cared a lot for every one of us. She would even join my classmates for tennis games after school.
I was struggling to keep up with my friends academically. I was not doing very well. In fact, I had problem passing in grades for several subjects like English, Geography and Chemistry. I did continue to strive in both my Additional and Elementary Mathematics.
Miss Foo was very patient with me in both English and Geography. I was very grateful to her concern and did not want to disappoint her. I asked her if she would help me mark my extra essays if I were to write more than what she assigned to everyone in class. For those of you who are teachers, you would agree that marking essays are not easy. Well, Miss Foo agreed to my request gladly.
I remembered the day when I was taking my Geography Prelim Paper, something terrible happened. We had to bring our own atlases so that we could refer to the maps in them to answer certain questions in the exam. Geography paper was scheduled after the break and we had another paper before the break. While taking our other paper, we had to leave our bags outside the hall. After the paper, we took our bags and proceed for our break before returning for our next Geography Paper. To my horror, I realized my Geography atlas had gone missing! It must have been stolen by someone who came out of the hall earlier than me after the earlier paper and stole my atlas. I reported to my acting Vice-Principal but she thought I did not bring the atlas and was trying to pull a fast one. A few minutes later, my class monitor appeared and he too had his atlas stolen.
With no trace of our atlas, we were forced to enter the examination hall without our atlas. Deep in my mind, I was feeling hopeless. I could not even clear the exam with my atlas, let alone without it and could not attempt more than ten questions!
Then just before the examination started, Miss Foo walked up to my monitor and me. She handed us an atlas each from the department resource. She told us not to worry and focus in our paper. She was like an angel sent to us by God with calming voice that put us back on track.
After the paper, the Discipline Master called the two of us out to see him at the front of the hall. He did a check on every single atlas and found two very suspicious ones. The names on both the atlases were written with broad silver markers, as if it was trying to masked something beneath. The Discipline Master handed us the two atlases for us to see if we could find any traces to proof that they belonged to us. The culprits had erased all markings we had in those exercises we did in class. However, they failed to erase the markings I left in the last few pages. Well, it paid off to have uniquely ugly handwriting as Ms Foo could recognize it the minute I showed her. Case closed.
I did mention two teachers who inspired me right? So after Miss Foo, I'm please to introduce to you Mr Tang, my NPCC teacher who was also my chemistry teacher for a year.
Like Miss Foo, Mr Tang became my teacher when I was in Secondary 3. He taught me chemistry. Unfortunately, my foundation for the subject was not there as I did not have a permanent Chemistry teacher before Mr Tang joined the school. As such, my "chemistry" with Mr Tang was not for long when I decided to drop the subject at the end of my Secondary 3 year.
Thankfully, Mr Tang was also my NPCC teacher. He was very encouraging in all the things that we did. He joined us for lunch after our activities. Most importantly, he was always interested in our character development, guiding us closely what's right and what's wrong. I remembered once when we were out in an occasion, Mr Tang told me that among the whole of my NPCC cohort, I'm most likely the one to become a teacher. What a prophecy that was!
I felt really blessed to have wonderful teachers in my secondary school. Miss Foo and Mr Tang were more than wonderful. They were inspirational. They made me retract my vow of never becoming a teacher, which I eventually did become one.
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Nothing To Lose
Non-FictionIf we realise that we came to this world with nothing, then perhaps every gain would be sweet and every loss would not be so painful.perhaps that's the secret to happiness.
