Teaching boys with gang connection

One year, I was assigned to teach Form 3C1, the last class of Forms 3. When I stepped into the class what greeted me were faces that gave me the don't-expect-us-to-learn-anything-from-you look. True enough, all of them were the least interested in studies. As I was teaching them Malay, I had to say goodbye to normal teaching and resorted to my own teaching method.

I asked the first boy in the front row to come to the board to write a word which I asked him to write. He kept saying that he did not know how to spell the word I dictated. So I pointed the finger to the second boy but he gave me the same reason. After a few attempts to get any boy to write the word on the board, I gave up.

Later, I learnt from my colleagues that I was dealing with boys with gang connection outside. It gave me a fright as I did not see any sign that anyone of them belonged to any secret society. However, my next lesson with them put me in a nervous situation. Luckily they were passive boys who were more interested in football than anything else.

When I was teaching Kata Nama (Nouns), I had to think of very simple words that they could relate in their daily lives. For filling in the blanks, I had to construct very simple sentences so that they could supply the right answers. Sometimes, I had to spoon feed them to get the blanks filled correctly. Their writing was horrible and full of spelling mistakes.

I could not believe my eyes when eleven of them passed the Malay subject in the PMR and only two of them failed.