This week, I’m really proud of myself as a teacher. Not because my Primary 6 students performed extraordinarily well for their Prelim but because I stubbornly refused to release the results to them.   I thought I should slow down their pace of life a little. Otherwise, they would grow up, used to sitting for an exam one day and getting back the result the next day. Real life doesn’t work that way, so it would be good for me to forcibly inculcate the virtue of patience in them. Another noble reason is that I don’t like students’ unhealthy obsession with marks and how they let these grades overwhelm their sense of self-worth. So if I can refrain from discussing results, I will do so.   This meant that I managed to go through exam papers without them knowing their marks. Such a genius, I was.   It also meant that I could give my Science students a particularly hard time for making mistakes that showed how they haven’t been listening to me all this while. I swear some of them were squirming in their seats as they awaited my deafening roar. Yup, I’m sadistic that way.   And just when everyone had given up hope on receiving their result, I unexpectedly flashed everyone’s mark on the visualiser. Their huge sense of relief was palpable! The mood in the class lifted considerably enough for the brave class chairperson to ask “so 'cher, what does ‘conductor of heat’ actually mean anyway?”   Heat transfer was one of their weakest topics but I never understood why. Now that someone confessed her ignorance, it was easy for me to address their learning gap.   Which explained why I borrowed the frying pan from the canteen auntie to show my P4 class an exemplar of a good conductor of heat.