The Olive Bird

I love that you're doing what you love.

When someone says his heart is hurting, we don't shy away, or question, or doubt, or label him as "attention seeking". Instead, we attend to the wound that feels as real as a physical wound. We attend. We sit with him. We become the anchor when the waves threaten to sweep him away. We lend him our strength. We stay, and stay, and stay, until he finds it easy to breathe again.

The school climate is rather bleak. The senior teacher explained that teachers are over-worked on initiatives that do not fully resonate with them. Last year, 17 teachers left. This year, almost every department has an unhealthy number of relief staff (trained and untrained). The full-time teachers are exhausted from spending most of their time on work that is unrelated to their subject of expertise. What happens is misalignment that creates deep dissatisfaction. To make things worse, some students bring a whole slew of issues unheard of in previous batches. The talent drain is damaging and perhaps irreversible in the short run. There is no easy solution for there is a shortage of teachers nationwide. This problem must be addressed at the policy level. We must ask ourselves: What are we asking too much of? What can be done to better support teachers? What burns the candle faster and for naught?

I love how my children make sense of what they've watched. After watching Swapped last night, Oli (now 7) revisits key moments and verbalises the plot twist, details, and her opinions. She even explains the plot twist to her sister (now 4+) as her sister doesn't quite get it. Then, they go on YouTube and search for videos on Swapped to further their understanding of the movie. I love how self-directed and self-motivated they are in meaning making.

I watched a video by Dr Becky, a child psychologist, who shared that parents could comfort their children by "infusing" their presence into memories of unpleasant experiences. As an example, she shared that her son had been having a hard day, and she told him that if she had been there in some invisible form, she would have given him a big hug and told him how much she loved him and believed in him. Her son found this message deeply reassuring and it reshaped his perspective of that bad day. Hence, I took the idea and tried to imagine my mother's presence in yesterday's confrontation with the insolent student. But instead of picturing her hugging me, I could see her giving the boy a tongue-lashing and if she could, she would have whooped his ass. I found myself comforted with this knowledge that my mother would not have tolerated his disrespect either. I am my mother's daughter and we are deeply grounded in our principles and values. This is why we feel anger when children lack good character and manners. We are women who care deeply about the moral compass and makeup of our society, and we would rather offend than turn a blind eye.

I, too, am not immune from vile thoughts, especially when faced with an insolent spineless student who lies through his teeth. His attempts to wriggle out of the situation were so pathetic that I became disgusted. He deflected, lied, and even attempted to ridicule my speech. These behaviours all signalled a lack of accountability, remorse and integrity. More fundamentally, they demonstrate a lack of self-awareness, social-awareness and self-regulation. If left unaddressed, he will become a bane of society. But that would be the fault of his parents, and not the school.

What if our immediate response to art is: Can I buy it?

My sleeves smell of love - sweet sweat of both girls, their little heads warm against the softness of my arms. One complains about the quick passing of the day while another asks for tomorrow's promises. I assure them that I will miss them dearly tomorrow as we set off to our separate schools.

On the subject of forest camp training for female teachers, my colleague loudly declared, "I will not let that happen to someone (i.e., me) under my charge!" At that moment, I felt silly happy and warm, like a child. I haven't felt this motherly protection in a while, and it felt good.