“Did I see your photograph in the newspaper?” asked the gardener as I put my case in the back of the vehicle in the underground car park. I had to suppress an instant feeling of guilt and shame as though I had received the famous advice, “Flee! All is discovered!” I am not sure which of my imagined indiscretions frightened me most, but I covered my confusion in a bluster of half attempted Spanish.
This unsettled me enough before I got to school and the incipient chaos that is a keynote of our everyday existence in school.
Today’s absurdity concerned a trip to the beach. We are, after all, situated in Sitges. The beach is not a problem. We can see the sea! However . . . there is always a ‘however’ in our place.
Not all pupils in our seat of learning share the academic impulse which is our life blood. Some are even naughty. Naughtiness is punished by forbidding the perpetrators participation in the delights of escape from the classroom. Five pupils were deemed to be of sufficient disruptive potential that they were to be precluded from participation. But the head of primary who agreed this just exclusion is absent and the administration which remains considered that there was insufficient parental notification time to stop the pupils from accompanying the other students on the trip.
This did not meet with unqualified approval from the teachers who actually know the miscreants involved. Their professional opinion was disregarded and administrators decreed that the pupils should go. Margaret had worried about this trip throughout the night and had produced a statement which identified the administrator and made it clear that this was all against the teachers’ advice.
The administrator, of course, refused to sign and there was a general hiatus as someone was found who could give an unequivocal order. This was, of course, another administrator with no teaching qualifications. Of course.
Margaret was thoroughly professional about the responsibility involved in this trip and agonized over what needed to be done. She was pressurized into going after refusing to countenance transferring the responsibility onto another colleague.
The pep talk that she gave to the five individuals involved who should have been left behind, aided and abetted by me, was a masterpiece of fully justified moral intimidation: a classic of its kind!
I have started writing memos of beguiling softness asking for information of the most sensitive nature. Our numbers are substantially depleted and the thorny question of supply is raising its head. I have asked for clarification.
I have not, of course, received my promised letter explaining the details of my future contract. As I am always in the vicinity of questions and problems in our school, I do feel that my future employment is becoming more and more of a marginal possibility.
More and more of my colleagues are adopting S Q Ball’s patented technique of ‘closing my head’ to remain oblivious to the lunacy around - and survive!
As you know, working out the actual date for the end of our term makes working out the date of Easter look like making a cup of tea. With a teabag.
Time with the kids is running out – they are off on the 20th of this month and I can’t help feeling that The Owner is playing a completely unscrupulous endgame.
But, there again, perhaps her paranoia has finally affected me!
This unsettled me enough before I got to school and the incipient chaos that is a keynote of our everyday existence in school.
Today’s absurdity concerned a trip to the beach. We are, after all, situated in Sitges. The beach is not a problem. We can see the sea! However . . . there is always a ‘however’ in our place.
Not all pupils in our seat of learning share the academic impulse which is our life blood. Some are even naughty. Naughtiness is punished by forbidding the perpetrators participation in the delights of escape from the classroom. Five pupils were deemed to be of sufficient disruptive potential that they were to be precluded from participation. But the head of primary who agreed this just exclusion is absent and the administration which remains considered that there was insufficient parental notification time to stop the pupils from accompanying the other students on the trip.
This did not meet with unqualified approval from the teachers who actually know the miscreants involved. Their professional opinion was disregarded and administrators decreed that the pupils should go. Margaret had worried about this trip throughout the night and had produced a statement which identified the administrator and made it clear that this was all against the teachers’ advice.
The administrator, of course, refused to sign and there was a general hiatus as someone was found who could give an unequivocal order. This was, of course, another administrator with no teaching qualifications. Of course.
Margaret was thoroughly professional about the responsibility involved in this trip and agonized over what needed to be done. She was pressurized into going after refusing to countenance transferring the responsibility onto another colleague.
The pep talk that she gave to the five individuals involved who should have been left behind, aided and abetted by me, was a masterpiece of fully justified moral intimidation: a classic of its kind!
I have started writing memos of beguiling softness asking for information of the most sensitive nature. Our numbers are substantially depleted and the thorny question of supply is raising its head. I have asked for clarification.
I have not, of course, received my promised letter explaining the details of my future contract. As I am always in the vicinity of questions and problems in our school, I do feel that my future employment is becoming more and more of a marginal possibility.
More and more of my colleagues are adopting S Q Ball’s patented technique of ‘closing my head’ to remain oblivious to the lunacy around - and survive!
As you know, working out the actual date for the end of our term makes working out the date of Easter look like making a cup of tea. With a teabag.
Time with the kids is running out – they are off on the 20th of this month and I can’t help feeling that The Owner is playing a completely unscrupulous endgame.
But, there again, perhaps her paranoia has finally affected me!
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