a piece of good news

I was surprised to receive a sms from Daniel Fan this afternoon.

DF- "mr tan, i finally passed my acca."
me- "congratulations! this calls for a treat! name the time and place. been a long time since we met."
DF - "weeknites are better for u, rite?"
me- "can, let me know. and congrats once again. good for u! i'm proud of u and very happy for u too."
DF- "thanks ya, i am so happy. took me 3 heart-aching years. arghh."

Then we went on about what to eat and when to meet and I said that he can decide since it is to celebrate his graduation and that I'll be paying.

DF- "oh please. i insist on paying. let me hv the honour since u have given us so much as a teacher in the past."

The conclusion is that I'll pay this time and he'll take the next one.

*******************

Daniel Fan is probably the brightest boy I've taught. Not the most hardworking nor the most diligent, but certainly one of the smartest.

What I remember most about him is that I "killed" him at his prelims. In my younger and naive days as a teacher, I felt the need to be smarter than my pupils and had to outsmart them and let them know who ruled the class. That year, the class was so good that I had to dig out my A level books to set questions for the O level prelim. I modified the questions, spent days crafting each question so that I could test as many concepts as I can in one single question and ... I did it.

A few pupils still did relatively well for the paper as they stuck to the rules and attempted all the questions and got the "format" marks. But Daniel was too adamant. He just could not admit that he could not find the figures. He'd rather let go of the marks than to admit that he could not solve it. He just kept trying for the whole three hours. He didn't fail, but he didn't do too well either.

After the exams, I felt kind of bad and worried that I might have demoralised him and the others. What if they give up now and think that they are not going to do well in the actual exams anyway, so why bother to work hard anymore? But thank goodness he got the distinction he so deserved for the actual O level paper.

You see, he stuck to his guts and I admire him for that.

Daniel, thanks. You made my day. Thanks for the sms this afternoon. Thanks for sending me the good news and most of all, thanks for being the quiet, attentive and smart boy who sat in my class years ago. I am so glad we met.