To Reap Desired Responses In Discipline, Sow Loads of Love In Good Times

“COME HERE NOW! WALK NEXT TO ME!”

I shouted at Rita above the chaos that was way too loud for a Monday morning.

Rita was raising hell about another student, Seema, threatening both her ancestry and her yet unborn descendants, for a supposed social media insult Seema wouldn’t dare say to her face.

Although Ms Thomas was in the thick of the gathering spectators, she couldn’t diffuse the ticking timebomb.

And the more I tried to ignore the mayhem just outside my classroom door, the louder the noise seemed to get.

Then I heard Rita’s voice barge in through the small gaps between my door and the walls, waking up selectively delaying response system.

I knew it was only a matter of time before the school nurse had an unwanted guest.

Begrudgingly, I saved what I was doing on my PC and made my way out of my safe and comfort zone.

As my shout made eye contact with her, I could tell she was hellbent on putting Seema in her place before she responded to me.

And I countered that thought with The Rock type raised eyebrows that said, “Don’t you dare!”

Thank God she got the message!

Still huffing and puffing, she made her way towards me but was still

Carry on reading here

Confession of an angry black woman

I think it was about 3 weeks ago, the following conversation happened between a boy in one of classes and me. Let’s call him Adam. He had left his assigned seat to sit next to his mate, who we shall call Enoch.

Now, about a week prior, Enoch had said during parents’ evening that he doesn’t want to be near Adam because he distracts him. So, when I saw that Adam had moved over, literally diagonally across the classroom from one end to the other, I told him to move back to his seat.

In fact, I was more generous. I said to move two tables away. But Adam refused, kept arguing with me.

Adam: What do you have against me?
Me: I don’t have anything against you. You can’t just sit there!

This carried on back and forth, till he said something that I promptly forgot but was very disrespectful.

(I’ve trained my brain to have selective amnesia on rude & disrespectful comments from students, that I literally have to write it down immediately to be able to report exactly what was said! 😎 In my previous school, I used to carry a piece of paper and pen around as the students there eh, let’s just say the words of their mouths weren’t pleasing in God’s eyes AT ALL!!!)

Me: You need to leave my classroom.
Adam, walks out, mumbling whatever under his breath.

About 10 minutes later, he walks back in.
Adam: I’ve been reset.
As he proceeded to sit where I’d offered him earlier.
Me: I can’t have you in my class.
Adam: You’re a waste of time, Miss.
Me: Your behaviour is a disgrace! As I walked away from him wanting to curse the daylights out of his destiny!!🤬

This September 1

Hey beautiful readers!! Howdy? Long time no hear from me. This September, eh! It’s on full throttle such that my bed is currently my happiest place on earth!! Honestly, I’ve not experienced such stretching and capacity increasing in a while. It reminds me of when I was writing up by PhD thesis. Phew!! I’m not sure how I pulled it off nor if I can pull that off again without divine intervention.

Anyhow, how are y’all doing? I hope the new school year has been great so far whether or not you’re associated with schools. Surely, you’d have seen more traffic than normal as students move between school and home. Hope you’re well, safe and sound? It would be great to hear how you’re doing in the comments. Please say hi.

For today’s post, I just thought I’ll share some of the things I’m learning in this season. As I type, I’m not sure how many I’ll share but you can count at the end. Here we go!

God can sometimes use people we find annoying to reveal a place in our hearts that still require some healing. Just yesterday (Friday) as I taught my year 8 class, final lesson for the week, a boy asked me in the middle of the lesson, “Miss, why is your voice so deep?” I almost lost it. I replied as I stood over him, leaning in closer to his face so he could see my anger, “I didn’t create myself!”

“Miss, who created you?”, he replied. I wanted to say God but I was too annoyed to carry on the conversation. Meanwhile, said lad had been acting up all lesson, not focused on his learning like he should. So, I told him to stop asking irrelevant questions and get on with his work. But I was stewing inside and while the rest of the class was engaged and excited and taking part, this boy and his pal two rows behind were acting dumb, whining that they didn’t get the work!🙄

I had no patience for either of them. The friend of my enemy is my enemy! 😁 So, I let both of them have it. They could tell I was very annoyed with them and disappointed that they couldn’t be bothered to make an effort to learn simple rounding to decimal places.

But later, when I was by myself with my thoughts, the Holy Spirit inspired me to ask myself why I found that question so triggering. And yes, I could have responded a different way I admitted. I could have said, “Your voice is too squeaky.” “My voice is the best for me.” “I’m above the norm,” etc. But after sitting with that question of my default response, I realised there was some level of discomfort, to put it mildly, if not shame, about how my voice sounded compared to other women.

That nonsense comparison mindset! Anyway, I repented and asked the Holy Spirit to heal my heart of any hurts that may have been done to me by anyone undermining my voice especially as a child growing up. I’m sure in time I’ll discover exactly where the hurt happened, forgive the perpetrators and myself, let it go, embrace the radio commercial voice God has blessed me with and enjoy it to the full!!

To your discovering any hidden heart wounds, . . .

Lessons from Ziora

Last week, my friends and I gathered together to study the Bible and pray. For some reason, I decided to do my own study and prayers with a 3-year old playing football.

Meet Ziora, my friend’s three year old daughter. Our history? She used to do me shakara oh, but was very welcoming that day. Of course, I let her score some goals as a good aunty and we both celebrated with hands in the air shouting. Even those adulting in real Bible and prayer could not silence us. Haha…

Habits

Recently, I wrote a blog post on habits that no longer serve you, which you can read about here. I’m extending that thought in this week’s blog post which is a rather short one, sorry.

For one of my classes, which is slowly becoming my favourite in my new school because of the very distinct characters in there, they were getting quite a few worksheets and it soon became apparent that they needed a folder to keep things from falling out and getting lost.

Random Questions and Answers

This week was our first week back after the Easter holidays and as with most African women, that meant a new hairdo. My current school has next to no other African human in it so my start of term new braids caught quite a few eyes. With questions following from those who were bold enough to ask. So, I thought I will share some of the conversations I had with students this week. Enjoy.

P.S.: I sincerely apologise for not releasing a blog post last week as I was committed to doing so at least once a week this year, and so far I think I have been quite consistent. So, please forgive me and to compensate, you’ll be getting two blog posts this week! How about that? Eh? Gracias!

Back to this week’s post!

Classroom Conversations 2

As I said in one of my previous posts on classroom conversations, one of the things that make teaching enjoyable for me is some of the random conversations that evolve when interacting with students. It makes for deep thinking sometimes. And yes, while it could be distracting from the main lesson, it is usually a moment not to be missed in teaching children about life beyond the academic curriculum.

Meet my only Obosa 2

In my last blog post, I introduced you to one of my favourite humans. You can read all about it here.

This week’s first post sees the concluding part especially as I said I had two main encounters with him during the Christmas holidays, which I fondly remember as I spent some days at his house.

He had this sports car that needed assembling and had so many different small parts. I think he and his sisters had taken the parts out of the box and managed to bury some of them in the thick rug that beautified the centre of their living room.

All in a School Day

One day last week in school delivered a plethora of different things. They were so varied that I had to make a list least I forget how interesting a teacher’s day in school surrounded by teenagers can be. I’m about to share these with you. But in other matters, I hope you are doing well wherever you are?

My day started with a child in my form (pastoral) group handing me a hand-drawn piece of art with my name and role on it. I was so touched by the gesture especially as it was coming from a very quiet girl with very few words, who had almost never spoken to me except to answer her name when the register is being taken. I made sure to put it in properly in my pockets for transfer to a safer location later.

Train up a child

If you’re of the Christian worldview or have been around those that are, you may be able to complete this blog post title.

Before we go on, I apologise for my later than normal post. I am committed to posting every weekend but that didn’t happen this past weekend. The upside of that is you’re getting two posts this week!!

So back my first thought. Just in case you’re not sure of what completes that sentence,