#117 Cleaning my ears

Nothing gave me a better feeling as a kid when my mum put my head on her lap and she proceeded to clean my ears with a cotton bud. Sometimes this would be accompanied by a story or two. Bliss.

#116 Value added

In its simplest form, value added is a great way of assessing your value as a teacher, with the possible exception of really high-scoring classes. You can factor in the relative difficulty of examinations, and know how your pupils have improved compared with the rest of the cohort. From here, you know who's really improved and whether you've improved them. Also, you could also find out how consistent your respective exam setters are.

#115 Pet shops

For those of us who can't handle the commitment a pet requires, there are always pet shops. Play all you want, see all you want, touch all you want, and there's no need to pick up any poop. Unless you have a kid, of course...

#114 Memories

I think the mind works brilliantly. How wonderful it is, that even if you've neglected to record something down that happened when you were in primary school, your brain is able to retrieve it from its long-term memory, in vivid detail with nary a gap, even though it happened 20 years ago. Truly amazing.

#113 Rewarding improvement

One of the best decisions I've made as a teacher is to reward improvement instead of achievement. The pros are numerous and obvious:

1. Every child has an equal playing field; they are compared only to their past achievements.
2. Even if the child underperforms at any time, the child can redouble his efforts at any time and still improve.
3. It encourages every child to keep putting in their best effort and keep trying; even the best-scoring pupil can't rest on his laurels.

Of course, you'd need a formula to measure improvement. The simplest way is to see the net difference from the child's entry score. However, it'd be helpful to compare to the entry score only for the first few tests; thereafter, to provide a more accurate and relevant measure, you need a 'moving average', comprising the last two test scores and the last average. By so doing, late bloomers are forced to continue to improve instead of relying on just being better than their underachievement last year.

Empirically, it also enables me to identify who's really trying, or just plain better, though it does not exclude external factors such as tuition or learning difficulties.

#112 Photography

When I'm assigned for school duties, I love it when they leverage on my talents, such as hosting (apparently), photography, and data crunching. Sure beats ushering, filling out forms or standing guard at imaginary danger spots.