Blog si Feminis

Last Friday a workmate asked me to substitute him coz he couldn’t come to the workplace due to the accident he got some days before.. By sms, he told me that it was a TOEFL PREPARATION class and the schedule was for reading section. He asked me to prepare the material by myself then ask the office boy to have it copied 25 compies. My (sometimes) being ignorant made me not read the sms carefully. I just took it for granted that usually a TP class didnt consist of many students. Usually there are less than 15 students in one class. If the class happens to consist of more than twenty students, it will be divided into two classes. I remembered in the filing cabinet in the supervisor’s room, there are already some copies of reading exercise. I didn’t need to bother the office boy to copy some material. I could just borrow those copies and then return them in the filing cabinet. And if we still had some time left, I would give them listening exercise of two songs. Then, I would ask them to interpret the lyrics.

That friday afternoon, I was not quite sure why I felt like I was not myself. I felt like I was just a robot coming to my office. Then, I went to the copy center to copy the lyrics of the songs to be given to the students. I had it copied 10 times. However, after going back to the teacher’s room, and checking the attendance list of the TP class, I found out that there were twenty five students!!! Ups…!!! Hurriedly I went to the supervisor’s room to check whether there was any reading exercise in twenty five copies. NONE. In a rush, I went to the copy center again, to have the material of listening exercise (with lyrics of two songs) copied 16 more copies.

At five minutes half four. The time to go to class. There were around fifteen students inside with the AC off. Gosh, it was very hot. Luckily I didnt forget to bring the AC remote control so I could directly turn it on. After checking the attendance list and telling the students that their class teacher was absent, I told them that I wouldn’t give them any reading exercise, but listening exercise instead. The exercise I prepared was I jumbled the lines of the lyric (for the lyric “Sweet Child of Mine”) and would ask the students to rearrange into the correct order, while for the second song (“When The Children Cry”), I would ask the students to rearrange the jumbled word order every other line.

After telling the students what to do, I let them listen to the song. I was quite surprised to see most of them just read the lyric on the piece of paper I distributed to them, without doing anything on it. I asked myself why they didn’t seem to work to rearrange the jumbled lines? They seemd to enjoy listening to the song, and some of them humming the song.

The song ended. I asked them whether they could rearrange the jumbled lines easily or not. Most of them looked at me puzzled. I was wondering why. When I came to one student sitting close to my chair and looked at the piece of paper he had, gosh, I realized that I gave them the wrong copy!!! I gave the 16 students the right lyric os the song, no jumbled lines at all, while the rest got the right copy—where they had to rearrange the jumbled lines. LOL. LOL. LOL.

I was wondering if I got blushed at that time. LOL. Jokingly I told them, “Wow … you are lucky then, no need to do anything, huh? Just enjoy listening to the song.” LOL. They smiled politely. LOL. LOL.

(One characteristic of a TP class è the students are serious, mature enough, coming to the English course to study, not just to hang around with their firends. Some have graduated from bachelor’s degree and expect to continue their study to the master’s degree.)

“Alright, then, so, you can continue doing the following activitiy. Work in group of three and give your interpretation based on the lyric of this song.” This was what I told them after that. And nicely, they seemed occupied to discuss the interpretation of the lyric with respective group.

Quietly, I went to the restroom for a while and sent a short message to my Abang, telling him the embarrassing situation I was in. LOL. LOL. During my experience teaching for ten years, this was the first embarrassing situation I had. LOL. LOL.

PT56 20.30 280107

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