Mrs Tan

Two more days before the big day. I sure am stressed. This is worse than waiting for my own exam results.

I met my Secondary School form teacher yesterday at Cedar. She was attending a Lesson Study Math Workshop and Cedar was the venue. We chatted for about 5 minutes before I sent her to the SDC where the workshop was conducted. Unlike for many others I know, secondary school life was not the best years of my life. It was good but certainly not the best. The best (and in some ways also the worse) for me was Singapore Polytechnic... but that is for another blog entry.

Anyway, I chatted with Mrs Tan and told her proudly how I am now the Subject Head for Science. I also told her that I'm now working with Mr Reynolds, my secondary school literature teacher, in a big project. I wanted to tell her about my first class honours but I just could not anymore. She asked for my email so that she could include me in the Alumni. That would be interesting. I wonder if I'm going to meet my old secondary school friends.

Mrs Tan was the teacher that really taught me compassion. I'll tell you why...

I failed my EL in Sec 4 Prelims... D7, which is preposterous. I aced EL since primary school. My composition writing was always on the board displayed somewhere for others to read. Somehow, some teacher decided to fail me prelim compo paper because it was short of 5 words! I do not know how I failed the other components but honestly, I don't really care.

What that D7 meant was, I could not go to my 3 months course in JC though I aced all my other subjects. So Mrs Tan dragged me to the Principal's office and explained the situation to him. He agreed to remark my EL papers and somehow I got a C5 or C6 (I really can't remember). I still did not go for my three months course, but I learned that a teacher's job is not about just teaching but also about learning and recognizing the potential in every student. I learned, from Mrs Tan, that only with empathy and compassion can I do this.

Anyway, I got a distinction for my English for my O Levels. That D7 could have easily made my self esteem low and God knows what implications that could have made for my O Levels. To think that Mrs Tan fought for me was something wonderful and I knew I could not let her down during the actual exams.

I am sure excited to go back to my secondary school. The guilty feeings for all the bad things I did in secondary school has prevented me from going back thus far. Meeting Mrs Tan, is just the correct reason for me to forget all that and finally visit my alma mater.