Just Another Day At School

So today was a rather busy day for me. Right off the bat, I was assigned to select and train the school’s track and field team. My highest achievement in olahraga was getting third place in the school’s 800m inter-house race back when I was in Form 5 (a good 8 years ago), and even that was a chance win. I had never been the fastest of runners, I admit that readily. So track and field was never one of my interests, but a teacher’s gotta do what a teacher’s gotta do, right?

It went alright, since we got a few names down and crossed some off the list too. The boys were so enthusiastic about it, right afterwards they asked if they could train again in the evening, to which I had to say yes, since it’s really tough to say no when kids are jumping around when they’re asking to do something. Also, because it was my job to supervise any training sessions. I took their 100m times, and, at eleven and twelve years old, most of them are actually faster than I ever was (even when I was 17). I’ll leave it at that.

Right after class, a couple of standard 5 students came to see me to make songs. How I met these particular kids (they’re different ones from the track and field ones) was last year, they performed as the percussionists for a nasyid performance during a school assembly. I asked them to teach me how to play percussions, since I’ve always seen them as cool instruments to play, so they invited me over to the music room after school and they taught me a few rudiments. It turned out, they didn’t know much more than the rudiments, and so I got bored quickly after I learned the basics.

I whipped out my book where I write most of my rhymes and started flowing over their beats. They found it cool, so they asked me how I did that. I then taught them the concept of rhyming words and, after some examples, they started writing some rhymes of their own. We made a chorus together last year, but it’s been lost in my old laptop.

Today was the first time this year that they came to see me, them being busy school students and all. We started writing again, but I had to reteach them the concept of rhymes, since they were rusty. Not practicing can do that to people. When I gave them a beat and asked them to write some lyrics, they ended up writing the lyrics to Altimet’s Kalau Aku Kaya. They were already one verse in when I caught them and asked why they were writing someone else’s words. I told them “pasaipa nak ada lagu sendiri tapi guna perkataan orang lain?” I encouraged them to write their own words, but since the day was ending and I had to go to attend to the track and field kids after that, I wrote a verse for them and asked them to go home and write two more verses. I’m looking forward to what they come up with.

Earlier tonight, after dinner, I finished up writing the script for my school’s choral speaking team. It’s about English and how we use it. It’ll be interesting to see how the kids perform the piece.