4I IS LOVE.

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4islove

The class blog of 4I'07 Dunman High School

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3[I]chiban 06
4islove 07
Past Gang Head: Chng Jia Hui
Current Gang Head: Celine Chee (No retirement for you!)
Outstanding achievement: We are a class!

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

11:48 PM

An old bag of love

He came up to me with an old, brown-stained cloth bag that bore the word ‘Yahama’.

It was the long cloth bad with drawstrings at one end that came with his recorder.

I had just enter the Primary Five class and the students were still in the midst of getting themselves settled for my lesson. He prouldy strode to the teacher's desk at the front of the class and declared, "Cher, see...can put things yah?" ('Cher' is a commonly used short name for 'Teacher'.) He had put some stationery into the cloth bad and was swinging it by the strings, quite pleased with his obviously new-found use for an otherwise unglamorous receptacle.

"Yes, Nizam..."

I wanted to begin the day's lesson and this boy was getting in my way.

After close to two chellenging months, it was the second last day of my teaching practice exercise. Great importance was placed on whether I could complete what had been planned and wrap up the lesson flawlessly to mark the end of an exciting attachment.

Nizam came from a struggling family. And so did many of the pupils in this 'second last class' that I was teaching. Being a wide-eyed new teacher, I had tried to help them learn better in whatever way I could. I had given Nizam a dictionary after finding out that the whole family shared a mini-dictionary that did not even hold the word ' perpetual'. I believe the treasures in a good dictionary are equally valuable whether one is in the 'second last class' or the 'second best class'.

For the past few weeks, I had also been teaching the class that good gifts did not cost a lot. This was after several students had revealed that they were embarrassed about not being able to provide 'good' gifts on their friends' birthdays. It is in such lessons that I find great meaning in being a teacher.

During a very short break after some activities, Nizam approached my desk again. "Cher, eh...actually can also put coins yar?" he said, jiggling the same cloth bag. Preoccupied with preparing for the next class activity, the unwelcome distraction frazzled me. containing my growing frustration with some difficulty, I muttered an agreement and urged him to return to his seat.

"Cher, actually what else can put inside ah?"

It was a five-minute break after the last set of activities, and Nizam was once again in front of me as I gathered the equiment from the previous activity. It was also his sixth attemp at getting my attention on the bag, presenting himself in front of me during every breather I gave the class.

What kind of question is that? I thought to myself. What's wrong with him?

"Nizam, do you think it's possible for you to concentrate on my lesson while you are also thinking of what you want to put into this bag?" It was a rhetorical question with an obvious answer that even this pesky child knew the answer to.

And indeed, he did. For the rest of the lesson, he left me in peace to complete everything I wanted to do while he looked downcast and obviously disturbed. I was quite happy wiith the results of the lesso and was sure the students had learnt something - happy enough to pust the sight of a low-spirited Nizam to the back of my mind.

After school that day, Nizam called for me at the staffroom. He looked rather nervous and unsure. I was quite concerned that maybe I had been a little too harsh before and might have hurt his feelings.

Before I could reassure him, Nizam quicklty shoved the dirty 'Yamaha' cloth bad that he had been hounding me about for the entire day into my hands and muttered some words of farewell. He had folded the cloth bag into a neat bundle and painstakingly tied the bundle with the drawstrings.

For a moment, I was unable to respond.

The bag was his present to me at the end of my attachment. A farewell gift. What he had been trying to do for the entire lesson was to find a way for me to recognise that what he was about to give me after school was something of use and value. He was trying to put into practice what I ahd been trying to tell the class, but he was still sceptical that a bag used to contain his recorder could be of any value to this teachr. And in my single-minded goal to deliver the lesson the properly, I had failed to see this.

Even as I transcribe this memory into words on a keyboard, the brown-stained old recorder bag hangs on a white-washed wall in my room, containing the collection of little notes and letters that students have written to me over the years. a collection that is only possible because a boy thought he had to give me the most useful possession he had that was worthy enough for a teacher.

Someday, I hope, he will come to realise that what he have was more than an old cloth bag.

It was love.

Jeremy Cai Zi Mian
Extract from Chicken Soup for the Singapore Soul