Cikgu Matematik

Peace be Upon Us, with God's Grace and Mercy.

Today, I came across a Facebook status by my former classmate Intan Rohani. The status was as follows:

"students, besok jgn kencing dlm seluar lg please?"

for those who can't read mixed English+Malay, Intan asked her students to not pee in their pants again.

I replied to the status "maybe the teacher was too fierce, scaring students till they pee in their pants." Well.. it was a possibility. hehehe.. Then, the memories of primary school flooded back into my mind. One particular teacher popped up in my mind. My standard 5 math teacher. Haish~

She was the most insensible teacher I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. Very short tempered, very arrogant, loves to shout and often under stress. The worst combination to occur in a personality. More over, the even more unfortunate thing was, she was dressed similar to what an Ustazah (female teachers who teach Islamic subject). My first impression to her was; "hurray! math and Religous Studies in one teacher!"

God, how I was wrong.

She was swift to anger. Her cane was swifter. My hands were very familiar with here cane. She was only the second teacher to cane me. The 1st was Ms. Thamis Malar Chelvy- an accident, a boy was running towards my, somehow my hand hit his pocket, and his pocket was torn, and to solve the matter quickly, a cane on my hand- even then I understood her actions and never blamed her. She explained to me later privately that action had to be taken, so that the boy can report back to his parents and hopefully they won't attack the school for this. Yadda.. yadda.. yadda..

One bright sunny day, we had math right after break. She was right on our heels when we were heading for the class. She went in together with our Cikgu Bahasa Melayu. Apparently, they had something important to talk about. I on the other hand, was poked from behind by the Satan in Human Disguise- Amli. My wooden chair moved a little making a little bit of noise. Her eyes darted immediately to me, and she shouted straight away, asking me what happened.

"Amli poked me, ma'am."
"Amli, did you poke him?"
"No ma'am, he's lying."

A stroke of the familiar cane on my hand. I started to hate math.

A few more series of similar events, I had had enough. One day, I refused to go to school. I was crying to my mum one day about her but, mum said to just behave like the teacher likes, surely the teacher will like me. Aiseh man!

Hahaha..

I began finding math very difficult. It was her curse i think that hampered my performance in math. I was doing well in all other subjects except for math [and Pendidikan Jasmani- I hated exercising! hahahaha]. No other teacher in my history of education had even laid a finger on me, except for her. Every year, during the Prize Giving Ceremony, my name is written over the Language Prize for Malay and English. One student can only receive 2 prizes a year. Hehehe..

My math grades fell and fell.. On the End of Year Performance Report Card, she wrote beside the "C" grade that I got "Usaha lagi. Ubahlah sikap supaya dapat menjadi berjaya di masa hadapan." Imagine what my father said when he saw that. It was the longest half and hour I ever experienced. He was very disappointed.

In my mind years later when I read the report card, "What fuc*ing attitude, eh?"

Yeah- I hate her that much.

I never got the hang of studying math after that. Even in later years. I had great difficulties in understanding the great Mathematical concept of simple Algebra. I was math blind. The only time I scored A in math was when I was 13. We studied negative integers. It was more logic than math, so it was easy. I tried hard afterwards. Especially in months leading to SPM. Just name it. what questions haven't I tried at home. I recycled all of the available pages of my old school books to do math revisions and practice by answering questions from exercise books i bought and borrowed. It was difficult. Some time around 2 weeks before the Great Examination, I gave up studying math, and started studying other subjects.

I still hate numbers.

Teachers. Please. Do not do what my math teacher did. In one way or another, she had taken a substantial part in shaping my future as it is now. Please do not hate your students. Love them with all the love you have. May they turn out to be good, law abiding citizens, even though they don't turn out great academically.

This post is specially dedicated to all my friends, who were teachers, who are teachers, and those who will be teachers. Don't teach if you're not prepared. You'll be partly responsible if they go out into the world a failure.