12-hours

A colleague of mine went to attend a course on leadership for civil servants.
It was highlighted by others that if a member of their service has worked for 2 12-hour shift, they should be entitled to a 2 days off because to be on task for that long a session in 2 consecutive days is very draining.
Then my colleague blurted out "but teachers do 12-h shift all the time" and garnered a look of shock from others.

People often have the misconception that teachers start early in the morning but get to leave school in the early afternoon. While that is potentially possible, it is often unlikely. We start our day at 7-8am, often working til 5pm-6pm just like everyone else (10-11hr) then perhaps we will go home for dinner and spent the rest of the night preparing lesson, setting questions or just clearing admin work like testimonials, cca reports, updating own work reviews etc.

Certain jobs, although have a 12-h shift, the work stays while on duty and is abandoned after shift but not for us. I guess to a certain extent, it may be a personal choice of how much more miles you are willing to go for the students you are teaching although sometimes it is not. If it is, the teachers are quite lucky. I realised that students who have teachers as parents are generally more sympathetic although the parents are often the ones who are more demanding.

That probably explains why teachers will crash to bed on Friday nights and really value their holidays when throughout the term, they are kept on their feet with really no option to slack unlike the students who will choose to hand up their work late with a lame excuse sometimes, helps to delay the admin work and creates amazingly complicated troubles.

But I think the great thing about the job is that it is purposeful and meaningful. And those who choose to stay in the service, take it upon themselves to pass on invaluable lessons, not only in the academic side but also in life. Yet the fire can only burn with sufficient support, if not the fire will be dowsed with fatigue and sadness. It reminded me of another occupation with high attrition rate: social workers. Working with them, you see the sacrifices they often have to make for the kiddos, whether is it staying really late for night activities after school or burned their wkends. But it is also this very giving nature of theirs that makes it a pleasure to work with them - and the volunteers too who are all there not for themselves.

To digress, while out yesterday morning to distribute flyers as part of our fund-raising efforts for the end-of-year CIP trip, L told me about his less glamorous past after I spotted a suspicious bruise on his eyebrows and was concerned if he has gotten into a fight. It was his willingness to confide and ability to ditch shadows of his past that deserved a clap although I could still feel the remnants of the past holding him hostage, judging from the bruise. I guess there will always be things that are harder to walk away from.
I was informed of a kid-swap too and I will be taking O who has more piercings on his face than I thought possible and throw in a mohawk, you get a lethal combination. Old-fashioned and unworldly-wise, all these piercing disturbed me and I need to suppress the teacher-ness with regard to them. I think it is a youth thing. The blood, the hormones, the belief of invincibility. When I took the opporunity to work with O, he is actually quite funny and slipped readily into the role I gave him. And the teacher-ness still did manifest but only when I guided and gotten him to do his mental sums on counting the letterboxes. I think he was quite happy with it because before I left for cricket day camp in the afternoon, he told the social worker that he got to do quick multiplication, with a smile.