Mom as a teacher's helper

Last week, my son teacher Miss Fan called me to help as parent volunteer in school outing to the Zoo. Though it was a last minute, I happened to be free on that day, so I agreed to go with them.

The outing to zoo started from 2:00. I met Miss Fan and class at school canteen. The students were very excited. It took a quite while for Miss Fan to quiet down the children. Children were divided into a few rows lining up to go to a bus. As soon as the bus was moving, they were all like happy birds starting chipping.

I can see it is not easy job for one teacher to control 38 active students. Miss Fan announced anyone who behavior well would receive five “good behaviors” stickers, anyone who do not behave would receive a “black sticker”. She had to “shout” sometime to time. I said to her “ Teacher must have a good voice” “Oh, yes, but I loss my voice almost every two days”.

When we reached to the ZOO, children grew more excited. There are many interesting sites to see, monkey, elephants, tigers and many others. We went to see elephant show. It was very crowed; some students had no place to site. But they did not mind at all. It was fun to see how elephants can be trained to do all kinds of tricks, yet, deeply in my heart; I felt pity for these gigantic animals acting like clowns to entertain human beings.

Miss Fan did look tired, she told me she has to leave home 5:30 am, traveled by bus for one hour to reach school. From 7:30am to 2:00pm everyday, she has to endure the super high noise level. By the end of day, she felt really exhausted. She told me she does love her job but, if she has child one day, she will not put her child into public school, she will either home school or send her child to private school. I was quite stunned by her words. But I understood why.

The short outing with the class let me understand more about teacher’s job. Everyone knows how important a teacher can be, how we need a good teacher for our children. They are also like anyone of us, a human being with basic needs. It is high time for MOE also look at “work and life” balance for teachers.