I am very disgruntled.
I go to a school for an interview for a job which isn’t there on a Tuesday and I have to wait until Friday – the best part of three days – before the school has had enough gumption to force some unsuspecting teacher to catch the flu to give me the opportunity for a week’s supply.
Monday will see me getting up at the crack of dawn to get to Barcelona for some unearthly hour so that I can speak with the Head of Department to get some sort of idea what I might be teaching.
Goodness knows I understand what the HOD is going through with a teacher down: any sentient being with a vertebra and a working knowledge of something in this part of the spiral arm of the Milky Way will do. On second thoughts the vertebra is not an essential: I have seen a number of spineless wonders do very well indeed in the teaching profession!
This school at least has a radically different basis to its operations from The School That Sacked Me: it is Grant Aided; it has a board of governors; it is a trust; it has parents on the governing board of the school; it has a rigorous checking of credentials. Compare this with the attitude of The Owner in The School That Sacked Me. When she was sent a letter by a group of parents asking to found a Parent Teacher Association she immediately informed each of the parent signatories that they were to withdraw their children from the school at once! Unbelievable, but true!
Although this teaching experience is only for a week it will give me an opportunity to see what conditions are like in the place and find out what is beneath the orderly and seemingly coherent surface. There is always a chance, of course, that I will find out that it is orderly and coherent. Frightening thought!
This will be secondary teaching and there is a strictly English speaking rule inside and outside the classroom. The pupils should be trilingual as the funding from the Generalitat ensures that there is teaching through the medium of Catalan as well as Spanish. It will, if nothing else (and I certainly hope for more) be an interesting experience. And I suspect a tiring one, especially with rush hour travel in a major European capital. Oh joy!
I have had to get an employment form from the local (well, Gava) labour exchange or whatever they are calling these places now. I have also had to rearrange a routine blood test. I only mention these two chores because I had to get them done in Spanish and I was smirking with satisfaction when I managed to get my message across with only minimal linguistic damage to the hapless administrators I spoke to.
By way of celebration I went onwards from Gava to St Boi to visit a supermarket there and get some uninteresting shopping done and then to go to an much more interesting four star hotel next to it and sample their menu del dia. This has been a project which has been waiting to be completed for some time.
The hotel is oddly situated in the middle of a motorway strip retail park development.
It is unashamedly modular and has all the elegance of architectural form which comes from some sort of automatic computer program which takes certain ‘hoteloid’ elements and simply stacks them together on a given site. Nothing looks permanent and all the fittings and furnishings, the doors, the stairs and windows all look as though they were selected by a mouse click and then simply slotted into place.
The restaurant was on the first floor which was up two flights of stairs to allow for the inevitable mezzanine to give the foyer that opulent open look. When I got to the restaurant it was empty. Beautifully set out, but totally empty. When I eventually found a bar person and asked for a table I created chaos.
Although it was past one o’clock no menus had appeared. After a flustered explanation to me and a giggly telephone call to someone or other I was then totally ignored by the six (count them, six) members of staff who lurked close to me as I swung my legs (an infrequent pleasure when you are six foot) from a tubular steel bar stool.
Eventually a seventh person in a suit appeared and threw a sheaf of printed menus at one of the bar staff (not one of whom had asked me if I wanted a drink) who shrugged his shoulders and with a wry grin handed me one of the sheets.
I ordered my meal at the bar and was then asked for my sweet choice. I gave it, but was surprised to find out how uncomfortable it was to break the habit of ordering after the second course. Perhaps I felt the ghost of my mother standing near looking mildly ashamed as such a grave solecism was forced on her son!
The meal was excellent and only mildly pretentious but it was made for me by the fact that the hotel had made the best of its fairly hideous surroundings and tried to create a Mediterranean terrace at first floor level by having an open air area outside the restaurant with a view of the hills of the Garaff National Park and with only a few of the air conditioning ducts and signage visible from the hideous shed-like retail areas by which it was surrounded.
And it had fountains!
Three rectangular raised areas were tiled and each had a fountain with a multi jet sequence to keep an aquaphiliac like me happily amused and until a dish of food was placed in front of me.
I was eventually joined by three people speaking French who, as soon as they had put their coats on their chairs immediately scattered using their mobile phones. Two of them prowled around muttering into their devices while the third stood immobile except for her nimble fingers texting as though her very life depended upon it.
I know little enough French, but I could tell that it was the native language of only one out of the three and what the other two spoke would have had the French Academy frothing at the mouth!
I now must prepare the documentation which is necessary for my teaching on Monday. It may only be for a week but the mills of bureaucracy must have their quota of wood pulp. I will include a photocopy of my passport: virtually every official (governmental and commercial) with whom I have come into contact has demanded a copy. My photograph is decidedly faded after having been subjected to so many passes of the photocopier light!
So much to do!
I go to a school for an interview for a job which isn’t there on a Tuesday and I have to wait until Friday – the best part of three days – before the school has had enough gumption to force some unsuspecting teacher to catch the flu to give me the opportunity for a week’s supply.
Monday will see me getting up at the crack of dawn to get to Barcelona for some unearthly hour so that I can speak with the Head of Department to get some sort of idea what I might be teaching.
Goodness knows I understand what the HOD is going through with a teacher down: any sentient being with a vertebra and a working knowledge of something in this part of the spiral arm of the Milky Way will do. On second thoughts the vertebra is not an essential: I have seen a number of spineless wonders do very well indeed in the teaching profession!
This school at least has a radically different basis to its operations from The School That Sacked Me: it is Grant Aided; it has a board of governors; it is a trust; it has parents on the governing board of the school; it has a rigorous checking of credentials. Compare this with the attitude of The Owner in The School That Sacked Me. When she was sent a letter by a group of parents asking to found a Parent Teacher Association she immediately informed each of the parent signatories that they were to withdraw their children from the school at once! Unbelievable, but true!
Although this teaching experience is only for a week it will give me an opportunity to see what conditions are like in the place and find out what is beneath the orderly and seemingly coherent surface. There is always a chance, of course, that I will find out that it is orderly and coherent. Frightening thought!
This will be secondary teaching and there is a strictly English speaking rule inside and outside the classroom. The pupils should be trilingual as the funding from the Generalitat ensures that there is teaching through the medium of Catalan as well as Spanish. It will, if nothing else (and I certainly hope for more) be an interesting experience. And I suspect a tiring one, especially with rush hour travel in a major European capital. Oh joy!
I have had to get an employment form from the local (well, Gava) labour exchange or whatever they are calling these places now. I have also had to rearrange a routine blood test. I only mention these two chores because I had to get them done in Spanish and I was smirking with satisfaction when I managed to get my message across with only minimal linguistic damage to the hapless administrators I spoke to.
By way of celebration I went onwards from Gava to St Boi to visit a supermarket there and get some uninteresting shopping done and then to go to an much more interesting four star hotel next to it and sample their menu del dia. This has been a project which has been waiting to be completed for some time.
The hotel is oddly situated in the middle of a motorway strip retail park development.
It is unashamedly modular and has all the elegance of architectural form which comes from some sort of automatic computer program which takes certain ‘hoteloid’ elements and simply stacks them together on a given site. Nothing looks permanent and all the fittings and furnishings, the doors, the stairs and windows all look as though they were selected by a mouse click and then simply slotted into place.The restaurant was on the first floor which was up two flights of stairs to allow for the inevitable mezzanine to give the foyer that opulent open look. When I got to the restaurant it was empty. Beautifully set out, but totally empty. When I eventually found a bar person and asked for a table I created chaos.
Although it was past one o’clock no menus had appeared. After a flustered explanation to me and a giggly telephone call to someone or other I was then totally ignored by the six (count them, six) members of staff who lurked close to me as I swung my legs (an infrequent pleasure when you are six foot) from a tubular steel bar stool.
Eventually a seventh person in a suit appeared and threw a sheaf of printed menus at one of the bar staff (not one of whom had asked me if I wanted a drink) who shrugged his shoulders and with a wry grin handed me one of the sheets.
I ordered my meal at the bar and was then asked for my sweet choice. I gave it, but was surprised to find out how uncomfortable it was to break the habit of ordering after the second course. Perhaps I felt the ghost of my mother standing near looking mildly ashamed as such a grave solecism was forced on her son!
The meal was excellent and only mildly pretentious but it was made for me by the fact that the hotel had made the best of its fairly hideous surroundings and tried to create a Mediterranean terrace at first floor level by having an open air area outside the restaurant with a view of the hills of the Garaff National Park and with only a few of the air conditioning ducts and signage visible from the hideous shed-like retail areas by which it was surrounded.
And it had fountains!
Three rectangular raised areas were tiled and each had a fountain with a multi jet sequence to keep an aquaphiliac like me happily amused and until a dish of food was placed in front of me.
I was eventually joined by three people speaking French who, as soon as they had put their coats on their chairs immediately scattered using their mobile phones. Two of them prowled around muttering into their devices while the third stood immobile except for her nimble fingers texting as though her very life depended upon it.
I know little enough French, but I could tell that it was the native language of only one out of the three and what the other two spoke would have had the French Academy frothing at the mouth!
I now must prepare the documentation which is necessary for my teaching on Monday. It may only be for a week but the mills of bureaucracy must have their quota of wood pulp. I will include a photocopy of my passport: virtually every official (governmental and commercial) with whom I have come into contact has demanded a copy. My photograph is decidedly faded after having been subjected to so many passes of the photocopier light!
So much to do!
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