Don't Be The Cause of Another Loss

Star Q

i.  Sambutan Qurban Perdana

ii.  Profiteroles

iii.  Reading Activities

Yesterday was a sad day for two of my friends who lost their husbands, both almost at the same time.  Puan Hamidah whom I have known for almost sixteen years, lost her husband to problems related to his heart.  Another friend whom I call Kak Ani, lost her husband, Abang Maarof to stroke.  My condolences to both ladies and their families for their loss.

When I received the news (one yesterday and the other one today) I immediately thought about the classes, and especially the relief classes which (this year especially) are simply given to teachers without a second thought about the implications to the teachers.  The two losses above should more than open the eyes of the school administrators as to whom the relief classes are given to.  In fact it should also open their hearts with regards to how these teachers may feel.

Anyway, feelings aside, the reality of the matter is, when certain classes are given to teachers as relief classes, I especially cannot help but feel the blood rushing to every vein in my body, mostly to the head!  As you get older you can be sure that health is not always on your side.  So, I feel that the administrators, when preparing the relief time-table, should consider the health situations and age of the teacher to whom these classes are given to.

To be fair, I feel that these teachers, after almost thirty years of teaching would have paid their dues of teaching and relieving all the end-classes; putting up with their bad behaviours, their lazy-to-study attitudes, their lack of respect to teachers, their howling and high-pitched voices and every other negative aspects to humans that I cannot think of at the moment.  

In my service in this school alone I have gone for three ECG's after feeling terrible sharp pains in my left chest.  But still the end-classes kept coming to me.  I have also noticed my blood pressure increasing year after year, due to stress of getting these end-classes, but again nobody cares about the health situation I and a few other teachers are in.

As far as relief classes are concerned, every teacher, senior or junior, new or old in the service would argue that they deserve the best classes.  But I am not asking for the best classes.  All I am asking is for a class that I can control, a class that is more like a classroom than a zoo and most of all a class where I can teach (even a relief class)

It's no point for me to go up to the administrators and tell them about my health condition and hope for them to really understand, sympathetically and empathetically, when all the response that I will get is, "Oh1 It's not easy, doing a relief time-table!"  In fact that would increase my blood pressure even more.

All I am asking for is, please learn from the circumstances of the two losses that our friends above experienced and of others who have experienced the same situations long before this.  It would be sad, albeit too late, when you, the school administrators, cause the same loss to your teachers' families just because you refuse to put in a little bit of extra effort in drawing up the relief time-table.

However, the short-term sadness (f any) felt by the administrators will be nothing compared to the tremendous sadness felt by the families of the deceased.