Builds a wall...

I've been going to this teachers' training programme that gathers all the rural schools in the area to improve on the teachers' teaching skills and to revolutionise the whole teaching process.

It's a good programme and it really is a welcomed change from what we were so used to when we were students.

The training is besides the point. What is bugging me now is that there's this teacher who joined us half way and is going about, rather disturbingly, carrying herself around as if she owns the place. I mean, if you'd look at it from the outside, you'd think that she's just bossy and shows a tad too much of initiative for everyone's liking, but deep down, after having sat beside her for the entire session, I can see that she's just a poor kid who had a low self esteem which grew up to be a rather big bully. She had somehow built a wall around her and installed a steam roller in front of the wall so that she would get what she needs however she needs it.

Amidst the tough attitude that she carries around with her, she also carries in her back pocket her old insufficiency traits; seeking for clarification on the smallest matter, especially if she knows the correct answer, fighting for the right to be correct even though it a petty little thing and the points don't matter, sets her targets on whoever is the best in class to probably trample on them so that she can step higher, makes a fuss although its a game of learning and everybody is supposed to win, bellowing out little petty things that the trainer has overlooked and the such...

Throughout the entire class she kept summarising the trainer's points into her education jargons like methodology, pedagogy, non-visual cues, and all that mumbo-jumbo perhaps to show me that she knows her stuff, afraid that I'd undermine her if she didn't show me how much she knows... Sitting beside someone like her only kept me from listening to every word the trainer said... Being a teacher herself, I wonder whather stand is on one of her pupils talking in class when the teacher is teaching... Her insufficiency creeping out...

Well, a lot of people don't like her for who she's turned out to be. There's a lot of wind outside about her and what she is capable of doing just so that she doesn't lose out; kiasu. And from what I see, she is doing nothing to suggest otherwise.

I on the other hand, am feeling a tad sad to see someone like her doing what she is doing. Maybe it's the compassion that God has put in me that's speaking, but I find it rather sad that she's built a wall around her to protect her hurting spirit and since no one can penetrate this wall, I don't think she'll ever be told how to get herself out of this.

I don't know what's sadder, that there is such a person or that I cannot do anything to help her...