Just a random rant of what happened in class today

So I went into a school as a Teaching Assistant under one of the 2017 TFM fellow, Sui Yang, today. It was all well, until I took over a relief class.

The feeling of defeat and hopeless was real today.

Students were running everywhere, screaming and shouting, pushing one another off the chair. One student even broke a plastic chair in class (yes, I saw it happening in front of my eyes).

I was totally not in control.

When I tried to get them to play a game, half of the class were cooperative and the other half said they would rather sleep, and the classroom was drowned in shouting. In the end I had to tell the other students (who were rather keen on playing a game) that the game cmi. T___T

"Teacher....you have to be more fierce, or they won't listen to you," suggested one student, who probably felt bad for me.

Having attended Chinese Primary School (where, discipline can be as strict as a jail), I really wouldn't want to put on a super strict teacher's persona - Replicating and imposing my childhood nightmares on these students would be my way last resort.

In the end, I decided to let the students buat kerja sendiri (translation: do whatever they want to). And even so, a few students managed to sneak out dash out of the classroom under my nose. The students only came back to the classroom when Sui Yang came over to check on the class T______T

Thank goodness the relief class was only about 40 minutes.

Yes, my confidence level as a teacher definitely took a plunge today. But even so, I won't give up. This is just the beginning, and I know I might face challenges that are far worse than what I've experienced today.

My confidence booster song from Sound of Music always cheers me up when I am down!

Time to prep for a (okay maybe 10 or more!) contingency plan for situation like this again.

Happy Birthday Jiaaqieats!

www.jiaaqieats.com is 1 year old ! 

*cues celebratory music*

How time flies. I can still remember vividly the day I wrote my very first blog post for jiaaqieats (back then I blogged @ jiaaqieats.blogspot.com): in the middle of my AS Trials to de-stress. Jiaaqieats was created purely out of fun, to de-stress & for my food & memory documentation purposes at that time. It didn't hit me that I could achieve 266k views in a year!

It has been an incredible journey throughout my blogging experience, I met new friends, attended all sorts of events & food tasting sessions, received numerous sponsored products...& also gained lots of FATS. After all, the header of this blog is & will always be, CAKES & Beyond. ;)

One of my most glory moment in my blogging journey- Being Featured at #NNFeatureFriday!

Juggling between, blogging, studies (& my part time job after I graduated from A-Levels), eating, exercising, social life & sleep has not been easy. There are days where I only had 3-5 hours sleep (actually, most of the days in my third semester in A-Levels) but it was all worth it. Maintaining a healthy financial level balance was even tougher (thanks to Mr Rice & RM2 Vegan Shop, I made it phew!). This blog is the product of my love & passion towards food & writing & the internet.

That being said, to those of you who intend to take A-Levels for their Pre-U studies, please do reconsider carefully♥

Thank you, my kind readers & followers who has been constantly following & reading this blog. Thank you, my dear blogger friends who gave me so much opportunities to attend events, & showed me around the blogsphere when I just started off. Thank you, my dear friends who has been supporting me since the start, reading each and every blog post I wrote, correcting my grammar mistakes. Thank you, my family, who has been funding my food adventures, petrol money & internet bill. Thank you, my bunch of friends (Wei Chen, Rachel, Jeanette, Jin Wei, Ying Hui, Wei Qian, Felicia and Carmen!) who surprised me with the best birthday present I could ever asked for- www.jiaaqieats.com .Thank you, Guan Ren, for being my cafe-hopping buddy, driver for most of the time, my personal photographer & my personal blog advisor.

Thank you all♥

Hoping for another amazing year ahead filled with good food!

And now, I should have a slice of cake to celebrate.