A friend from Warwick whom I have not seen for quite a while, asked me yesterday at Warwick Malaysian Student's Association's annual general election (
which by the way, was a lot less entertaining than last year. You can literary FEEL the steam from the heated debate in the theater) whether I am free the next day to do some volunteering. I am not the do-good type of person, nor do I particularly like children (in fact, after today, I begin to think that I despise them), but I agreed to help her out on this occasion. 2 reasons. One, I haven't seen her for a long time, and it would be a good opportunity to catch up. Second, I have not done much volunteering despite being on the executive board for Warwick Volunteers and I thought I should probably do some contributions to the community.
Anyway, for those 2 goddamn reasons, I ended up waking at 7am, something I have not done for, hmm, maybe 2 months? and went to Westwood School, my first step into a school in the 'GREAT' Britain.
The school, unfortunately, was not that great. For one, the architect designer guy should be sacked. The whole place was a maze. I couldn't locate the staff room, the washroom, the classes, the staircase. In fact, I have a strong sensation that if I were to be dropped off somewhere within the school compound, I would probably never see sunshine again. You know those maze where you turn left, right, right, straight, left..... and still find yourself stuck in the middle of nowhere? That's how the school look like.
Let's move on to the actual event. We were there today for one purpose, culture awareness day. To educate the kids about immigrants, more specifically, assylum seekers. About 10 volunteers including me share the responsibility of conducting various educational classes: Communications, Caligraphy, Mock Immigration Games, Thai-boxing, all types of things to give them a general understanding about a different culture (and to let those brats know how lucky they are to be born overweight).
I was part of the cummunications and caligraphy group. I worked with 2 other volunteers from Warwick to teach them some basic Bengali (Shadhinota, Shadhinota), some Malay (I know, I know, but it's the only language I can speak apart from Chinese) and some Chinese caligraphy. One thing that I notice immediately is how active the kids are in class. I imagined it to be, Does anyone know this? Silence. Anyone wants to try? Silence. In actual fact it was, Can I try can I try? Look, I broke a chair! Look at that loserrrrr! Connor the Condom!!
Needless to say, I was clueless as to where to start. Keeping the class quiet? Seperating the fighting kids? Shout to be heard? By the way one thing that I know is that, don't as much as TOUCH the kids, you could end up in court. Desperately counting down to lunch break, i push back my urge to call every single teacher of mine since I was 4 to thank them for putting up with us when we were young.
I left at about 12 leaving the rest of the day with Michele and Moshan, both experienced volunteer in this aspect (I salute both of you) with Quennezy to get back to finishing my assessed essay. Overall it was quite an enriching day. I get to see how kids are educated in this country (or more like how teachers are educated by the constantly hyperactive kids) and realise the difficulties of being teachers as well as mums, both vital yet undervalued occupations in the modern business world.
To mum, this is for you. Happy Mother's Day.
Following several scandals involving British MPs claiming (from taxpayers) expenses for clearing the moat, dry-rot treatment and a number of others that were all exposed to the public recently, this guy, Frank Cook came along and top the 'Ridiculous expense claim' list.
