Pining for Attention

You are standing in front of the class, pouring your heart out, trying to get through to the students on how to go about process writing.  You have been straining your voice for about twenty minutes now, trying to make sure it reaches the students at the back of the class.  You notice a group of students talking 'grandmother stories' during that time.

It's not these students are in Form 1 or 2 or 3 or 4; but these students are now in form 5 and will be facing what is described as the most important examinations in their young lives; an examination that will literally determine their future.  However, when you see the behaviors or lack of interests of students in this particular class, you tend to wonder if they themselves realize the importance at all!

It is not that the class is conducted purely in a '-chalk-and-talk' manner.  In fact, you have gone out of your way to search for materials in the internet, adapt them, create suitable comprehension questions based on the materials and also design vocabulary exercises based on the passage, among others.  You have done all you can to keep the students fully occupied, with no time for idle chit-chat, but they still find time to do things other than learn.

There are also students' who take their own sweet time to come back to class after Science at the laboratory or from the field for Physical Education.  You can understand if they take at the most twenty minutes to return to class.  In reality, for that length of time, they could probably run round around the field five times!

What is worse is, some of the students are even bold enough to play truant and skip the class.  When you ask the students who are in the class, they say that the particular group of students has gone to see a certain teacher.  When you call up the teacher, he denies ever having seen the students!

You tend to wonder when it comes to classroom situations, who is the who is supposed to be paying attention.  The spontaneous response would be the students who should be paying attention because the teacher is teaching and they are 'supposed' to be studying.  However, as a reality check, as well as teaching, the teacher is in fact pining for attention!  Sigh!