JAN 10 — The first week of school is always a little bit intimidating, especially when it means dealing with Year One children. I was made Year One co-ordinator for the year so I was feeling a little bit more nervous than usual. Not only that, I was also one of the teachers on duty this week.

Most of the children had gone to kindergarten so the first day of school saw a lot of smiles and confident little faces. I saw a lot of “Ben 10” and “Angry Birds” schoolbags, along with the usual pink “Barbie” bags that are always popular with the girls.

We only had one boy who refused to part with his mother. He wouldn’t let go of her hand and insisted that she sit with him and his classmates. Our wonderful counsellor then worked her magic on him and soon had the boy smiling. It was a relief to see him no longer crying and putting on a brave face as his mother nervously inched away.

The first day of school brought some surprises. There was no electricity when I got to school. The hall was quite stuffy as the fans were not working. I felt bad for the little kids who continued to sit patiently while waiting to be brought up to class.

As we are a two-session school, we couldn’t just bring the children up to their classes. Instead we would have to wait until the morning-session children had finished school and left the classrooms.

It didn’t help that some of the parents refused to move to the canteen so we could have a bit of air. I know they were worried about their little babies but quite honestly, I can assure you that we teachers take great care in ensuring no child is harmed during the hours they are at school.

Some of the parents left after the first period while some chose to hang around in the canteen. We knew they would be back though; they always do. When 3 o’clock rolled around, we saw them starting to come to see their children during recess.

I have no objections to them coming because I know they just want to make sure their children are okay. This however resulted in some of the children having to eat standing up or by the drains because some of the parents were using the canteen benches instead. I feel that the children should get priority over the use of the facilities at the canteen since it was built for their use.

As one of the teachers on duty this week, I would wait by the school gate after school each day to see that all of the children leave school safely. As expected, we had a few cases of children missing their rides. Usually we would call their parents or just take the children home since they live just around the area.

We would work out where the child lives then the teacher who lives nearest to him would take him home. I especially love the fact that I have great colleagues who have very big hearts who have never once refused to take a child home.

So that evening, when we realised some of them had missed their rides, we started asking questions to determine where they live. All of them didn’t know their parents’ or house phone number as well as their own home address. We checked their schoolbags to see if we could find their parents’ contact details but found none.

One of my colleagues tried asking about significant landmarks so we could determine where these children lived. I practically named all the streets around the area but received only blank looks from them.

One boy told us his house was on a street so we asked what was the name of the street. “Jalan terus,” he said, full of confidence. That of course got us all roaring with laughter. He then proceeded to tell us about how his house was near other houses and that it had a black gate, which of course was not really helpful since we still did not know what street it was on!

While one of my colleagues tried to get more information from the boys, I noticed one of the girls looked like she was going to start crying. Her mother had written the child’s name on her schoolbag but there was no phone number. My colleagues and I were very concerned because it was getting quite late and we still couldn’t contact the parents.

“Can you tell me where your house is?” I asked gently.

“My house is in Johor!” she said and started sobbing.

Her innocent answer sent us into another bout of laughter. Of course I felt bad about laughing because the child looked so distraught but we couldn’t help but felt tickled by her innocent answer. This is the joy of working with children; that even the most serious moments can result in lots of happy memories. I quickly soothed her and told her she wouldn’t be sleeping at school and that we would help get her home. That got her to stop her sobbing, although her face still didn’t look very happy.

As it was the first day of school, the documents were not yet completed so it took us awhile to get the contact details of their parents. Thankfully we got all of the children home safely. One was taken home by a teacher while the rest were picked up by their very worried parents. It was a good ending to a pretty busy day.

Although I came home pretty exhausted, I felt positive about the rest of the year. If they are anything like the first day, then there would be plenty of stuff for me to write about!

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.