Wipe it off!

Never let it be said that I do not make an impact in educational circles.

When I was in Llanedeyrn High School I was instrumental in getting the staff toilet paper changed from the hard Izal-sandpaper-type to soft Labrador-puppy-type paper. You really have to be a teacher and have worked in a ‘normal’ school to realise just how big an achievement something like that can be.

Educational discussion in schools divides into two camps: those saddos who actually know what the acronyms thrown around with increasing desperation in curriculum debate actually mean, and the rest who only contribute when the topic being argued about is something nice and understandable like on which side of the corridor pupils should walk.

In Llanedeyrn years ago, when the world was yet young and Sir Keith Joseph stalked the corridors of power with the wide eyed fanaticism of the undead, the key question in school was ‘Should pupils be allowed to wear their coats in school? I kid you not. I can remember with that verge-of-tears feeling which characterised my usual response to staff meetings the many hours which were devoted to this crucial question.

The staff always voted for the pupils to have to remove their coats as soon as they entered the building. I always proposed the abolition of a rule for which I could never see the point. Most of the staff ignored its enforcement, though they argued vociferously for its retention! This apparent paradox will be very familiar to all benighted souls forced to listen to educationalists trying their very best to make the world a worse place!

So what have I achieved in my present school?

It all stems from ‘a nice idea.’

I thought that it would be ‘a nice idea’ to have a ‘picture a week’ for my classroom. I thought of buying some cheap art book for the illustrations, cutting it up and putting a great work of art in a frame and changing it every week. A colleague suggested matching the Great Work of Art

with a contribution from a pupil and having a weekly pupil picture on the wall as well.

I priced a few cheap art books and a couple of frames. Total possible cost, around €40.

And there the idea floundered.

In our school there is no petty cash. Radical ideas (sic) like this have to be passed along the chain of command and eventually be stymied by The Owner.

The idea of buying a cheap and cheerful art book and cutting it up was vetoed in favour of the more expensive alternative of using a colour photocopier! The buying of the frames has been lost in the Byzantine complexity of the ordering process.

The existence of a colour photocopier (heretofore a closely guarded secret) opened up possibilities.

On Friday, as part of the topic for our classes, my colour photocopying order of sculpture on roundabouts (don’t ask) reached the photocopying lady. There, alas, it was also seen by The Owner who looked at the sheets waiting to be copied and instantly devised a new regulation.

From now on, the laborious and lengthy process of getting a photocopy done in our school has an extra layer of administration. From now on, anyone who has the temerity to ask for colour photocopying has to get the form (don’t ask) countersigned by a unit manager.

Never let it be said that I couldn’t make my colleagues’ lives just that little bit more fraught.

Talking of fraught, we had good news in the Monday briefing at the end of school. From the start of the summer term, we were told, we could leave school as soon as our pupils were safely with their parents. This could mean that we would be able to leave school half an hour earlier.

By Friday this had been rescinded!

All members of staff had had a meeting with The Owner who told us that this was A Mistake. Next Year Something Might Happen. But not this year, oh no, not this year at all.

It says something for the lunacy which is the key operating factor of this school that this Renunciation was taken by everyone with phlegmatic indifference. Just another normal day in the Kafka novel that is our normal life here!

Thanks to Paul Squared, whose normal reading matter seems to be in the international section of the TES on line, I have been informed that there is a vacancy in the British School of Barcelona (here in Castelldefels) for an English teacher in the secondary part of the school.

I have sent in an application.

If nothing else it will save me the €10 a day getting to and from work along the expensive tunnel punctuated motorway to Sitges!

Here’s hoping!