Thank you, Teacher!

Do you still remember your school days? I still remember mine, especially my secondary school days. I was one of the 45 students (if not mistaken) in my class. Hehe…it was supposed to be a class for the terrer and goody-goody students…kononnya la. LOL.

Contrary to our seniors, we were a mischievous bunch. As soon as the teacher walk out of the door, the classroom become anything but quiet. It’s not that the Class Monitor didn’t try her best to keep everything in order, but the task was just impossible. We, the girls were co-operative but not the boys. Majority of this mischievous bunch remained classmates until Form 5. :)

During school time, I’m sure we all have our least favourite teacher. Mine was our Form 2 Class Teacher, Ms Betty. She was also our English teacher. She’s not a bad teacher, not the one that gets angry easily and punishes students for some small reason. In fact, she was a nice, soft-spoken Kadazan lady. Well, I didn’t dislike her for her character but more to what she made us do. I’m sure most of my classmates felt the same way…hehe.

Being the Class Teacher, Ms Betty made full use of her veto power. She separated each of us from our clique. She made us sit in boy-girl, girl-boy arrangement. Disallowed any other language except English during her class. Imagine la how awkward it was for us as most of us were not English-speaker. But we weren’t called MISCHIEVOUS for nothing * evil grin *. We made a pact with our respective partner: 1) to stay in our designated place during her class only, 2) planned our communication, pre-determined the topic and rehearsed before she came in and 3) keep the communication as minimal as possible, never go out of topic. We did it all to please Ms Betty, to avoid the boring lecture. Hahahaha….punya jahat kami kan…J:) Don’t know la if she ever found out the truth…

She also made it mandatory for us to read at least one English book per week. We were to report our reading to her, either in the classroom or see her privately in the office. Hahahha…it was no surprise that most of us prefer the latter. Why? To save ourselves from embarrassment. You can imagine how poor our vocab and grammar were bcos most of us hardly ever speak in English, not at school and certainly not at home. To stand in front of the Class and speak in English was a total embarrassment. A suicide mission! Having Ms Betty hear our broken English was embarrassing too but at least she won’t make fun of us.

There was this particular boy, *Gitut who was popular for being galangas (stubborn). He hadn’t report any book, not a single one even though months have passed. Obviously, Ms Betty’s lost her patience. One fine day, she walked into the Class and forced him to stand in front of the Class. She confronted Gitut and demanded him, on the spot, to make up for his lack of co-operation or risk a punishment. He was given the choice to either summarize a book he read recently or tell a story or recite a poem, or sing a song….anything as long as it is done in English. The poor boy opts for singing. He chose the song Only You by Brit accapella group, The Flying Pickets. Even at that time, it was already an old song but it was very popular then. Though I can’t remember why. :)

Now, after 15 years, those memories still fresh in mind. How funny it seems now. I was smiling to myself as I was typing this post. :) Looking back, Ms Betty never did anything wrong. In fact, she did the right thing. I guess, I am forever grateful of what Ms Betty had done for us. If she had not force us to read English books, I could never improve my English. Moreover, develop an interest on English books.

No, no, I’m not saying that now my English is good, malah sekadar cukup makan saja but yes, it is enough for me to read and understand the bestsellers by James Patterson, Steve Berry, Kathy Reichs, etc. It also enables me to come up with an English blog. So, here’s one big “THANK YOU!” for you, Ms. Betty J for your untiring efforts. The same goes to all my former teachers. I’m not sure if they are reading this though. If we bumped into each other on the street, I’ll belanja minum kupi…hehe. To all the blogger friends who are also teachers by profession, eg Carol, Annie Ming, Miss Sab and Nadia…Happy Teachers’ Day to you all. I am sure that one day your students will appreciate your efforts.

*Gitut was his pet name. His mother came to school one day and accidentally called him with his pet name. He tried to cover the slip-of- tongue but it was already too late, damaged have been done! Some of the girls over heard it and soon the news spread like wild fire. LOL! From the day onward, we never called him by his real name. He was also too lazy to argue that he just let it be. *smile*