1 teacher - Mrs Tan May Ling of Nanyang Primary Sch. DM and my
form teacher cum maths teacher cum art teacher. That was early
90s.
Pretty but overweight, act fierce, always picked on me. I was a
tomboy, liked to fidget - she didn't like it. One time during a
major test, I needed to check the answers but light too dim. So I
held up the test paper slightly. If I recall correctly, I fidgeted
quite a lot because it was hot. Mrs Tan called me to the front and
accused me of cheating. She said she "caught me talking 3 times".
She marked a big "0" on my paper with a red pen, then asked me to
stand in front of the entire class and do strange squatting tricks
for her. My finger was bleeding from an accidental cut while I was
using a metal ruler for the test, and my sweat made it more
painful. I began crying and told her about the cut, but she refused
to get me aid and said it "served me right". It didn't help that I
had finished my test early.
My mom confronted her and demanded an explanation.. The biatch said
I was cheating. So my mom had a look thru the paper and wallah, I
would have gotten 100 marks for the test.. highest in class (and
the only one too). My mom was like "if my daughter were cheating,
it means she didn't study. If she didn't study, how could she get
full marks??" So the teacher give a super lan face and mark me
100.
From then on, she made sure my life was a living hell.. she made me
stand outside class or in front of class for things like fidgeting,
for looking at my eraser (that time, eraser with country flags on
them were all the rage), for bending down to pick up stuff,
forgetting to bring my pencil ... even once when I said, "Hey
JunLi, Mrs Tan May Ling called you", she punished me and gave me
demerit points. Whatever excuse she could find.
She also gave me low marks for all my art pieces and never gave me
encouragement though I was one of her brightest students. Once, I
did an art folio with a nicely coloured picture of a Warner Bros
character. It took me 8 hours to complete it and wrap it lovingly
in plastic. She accused me of taking someone else's work as my own
and refused to accept it. She gave me '0' for that assignment for
"non-submission". All my classmates said it was my fault, so I
didn't dare tell my mom this time. I later threw it away in
shame.
From then on, I started passing up homework late coz I was
paranoid. She used that against me, saying it signified an
"attitude problem".
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