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Friday, January 23, 2009

It's more than the food.




I am now the proud possessor of a Watford football club scarf.

I found the thing waiting on my desk when I came to take one of my classes today. One of my pupils who a couple of days ago admitted to supporting the club bashfully said that it was a gift and he had plenty more! This is all a legacy from a training camp that the pupil (you will notice that I am not using his name; my legendary inability to learn names in my classes continues) said that he had attended with Watford. Once you have played with that team you are obviously infected for life!

My overweening pride has now reached critical mass as class after class begged me to stay on and teach in the school permanently. There is, as I keep telling them, no job available for me. The looks on the faces of the pupils do not bode well for the reception of their normal teacher on her return! God help.

If I am asked to summarize my response to the school after a week there I would say that we had asparagus for lunch today. I do respond to such civilized touches in the otherwise feral world of education!

Monday is guaranteed as an extra day but then everything is dependent on what the doctor says about the teacher that I am replacing. My time there could extend into the middle of the week or my sojourn there could end on Monday afternoon. We will see.

And now out to dinner with both solid and liquid delights. I certainly feel that I have earned the right to sample the latter!

Some time over the weekend I have to complete my first tranches of marking. One of the groups of papers is a test on the passive in English. I had no idea that our grammar was so organized and that there were so many tidy rules to govern the writing of forms of English that we never think about in Britain. An eleven year old in this school has a greater knowledge of English grammar than most of the English teachers in most secondary schools! It is not only intimidating but downright frightening when some chit of a child starts talking about the past continuous perfect tense with a confidence bordering on ownership.

There is one girl in my youngest group who has a way of saying my name (all children refer to the teachers by their first names) and looking at me which makes me doubt all grammatical knowledge that I profess to possess. I shall filter all my future pronouncements by a flick of the eyes seeking her approbation before I have the temerity to continue any exegesis I care to make in the field of English grammar!

Keep thinking of the asparagus!

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