After the
demonstration class fiasco last month, I wallowed in self-pity and self-doubt
with remorse for quite a while. After today's award ceremony, I realized that
even if I did a perfect job and made it to the final, I still couldn't win the
ultimate prize, for I didn't have a soul-touching story. Therefore, I'm
delighted I attended the ceremony with sorrow but returned home wholly
relieved.
Due to the surging
COVID infections in May, the judges and I had to push back their school visit
multiple times because of school closures until August. However, my students
had already graduated in May, and only 9th-graders went to summer school for
the coming CAP. I had no choice but to borrow a class from my colleague for
that demonstration class. I intended to help them better identify reading
comprehension questions and decide on the strategies, such as skimming,
scanning, chunking, guessing, etc. That class didn't go well as planned because
not only were the students not responsive, but the two judges questioned my
poor choice.
Without a shadow
of a doubt, I didn't make it to the final for the national. It was all because
of my fault that I didn't get to show off what I was really good at, conducting
a dynamic and interactive class with students collaborating on tasks and
building up to the end products.
Of course, I had
tried to convince myself that one failed class should never obscure all the
glories. I've won numerous awards and taken on government-funded projects in
the past few years. I did have such a positive impact on my school and many
teachers at workshops. However, my effort was to no avail because I could not
forgive myself for being this unwise and wasting my strengths like that.
Well, there can be
only one winner for each school level. Even if I gave one hell of a damn good
class, I still wouldn't have a chance to win the national grand prize. Why? I
just did not have the right public persona to sell. So, I have been literally
pulled out of regret and shame after hearing the winners' "intriguing"
life stories.
"We can only connect the dots looking backwards." I admired their stories but was determined to be true to myself. My endless pursuit of becoming a more native-like English speaker got me this far. I will always be working hard at it and take on all the tasks related to EMI, international education, readers' theater, sister school partnership- you name it.
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