“Was it worth it?”
A key question and one which got me an honest answer.
An hour spent in the company of a lady who had set up her own school in a Catalan spa town in a most imposing Modernista house was revealing and informative.
The efforts to establish the school seem to have been accompanied by a whole series of experiences involving expense and frustration. She suggested that one should allow four years (4!) to get the paperwork done! She spoke of regulations as if they were self replicating viruses which were able to mutate at will to the detriment of honest hard working school establishers.
She spoke of vast and endless expense (four flights of marble stairs had to be replaced because the original features were a few centimetres too narrow) and the soul destroying hunt for finance.
But, in answer to my question, she was very glad that she had made the effort and she was enthusiastic about the future development of her school.
We covered a lot of ground and her comments have given me much food for thought.
The mobile phone call I had half way through our conversation was perhaps compensation for the journey up to the school.
In what is rapidly becoming a vastly irritating tradition, my tom-tom gave up the ghost just as I was about to leave familiar territory and venture into motorways new. I vaguely remembered the Directora telling me to come off the ronda de dalt and head for Vic. This was little enough information to go on as I had no idea where on the ring road I should expect to see a helpful sign.
After following my instincts on one or two forks in the motorway I felt, as I seemed to be heading straight for snow covered hills, that I should ask for help. I took the first turn off from a motorway disturbingly signposted to ‘France’ and found myself in a service station. The waiter in the café was both helpful and encouraging and suggested that I simply go through the toll and carry straight on. His vague indication of a couple of kilometres was woefully out and it meant that I drove ever deeper into Catalonia with a sinking feeling and a diminishing amount of time to get to my destination.
A sign above the motorway with my destination on it gave me a momentary lift but after an inordinate number of kilometres I assumed that I had missed the turning and was heading who knew where.
If you’ve read the start then you will have realised that I did in fact get there. I drove into the much larger than expected spa town and saw a teacher marshalling pupils along a road, stopped and asked her for the school and discovered that I was on a parallel road. Of course getting onto that road necessitated a circuitous approach, but I found a free parking space adjacent to the school.
The mobile phone call was from another school asking if I would consider doing supply for a history teacher. Teaching up to A Level. A later phone call revealed that the history courses which are being taught in the school all seem to be more like the background to current affairs than the ‘real’ stuff of history and an in depth study of the Paleologi and the development of Byzantium. Anything pre 1916 is, I assume regarded as Ancient History and having no relevance for modern pupils.
One of the modules is on the Civil Rights Movement in America – so Paul is going to find himself sending a quantity of the notes that I know he has tucked away somewhere as a monument to his one time calling as a history teacher (sic.)!
There is a meeting tomorrow to discuss the possibility of my being able to take over this timetable. As I have been asked to bring all documentation, bank details and certificates and as the person I spoke to on the phone has been taking the classes herself and ‘wants out’ I think that as long as I turn out to be a carbon based life form I have a good chance of being employed.
The problem comes with what happens during half term when I am expecting visitors.
Well, we shall see.
We shall see.
A key question and one which got me an honest answer.
An hour spent in the company of a lady who had set up her own school in a Catalan spa town in a most imposing Modernista house was revealing and informative.
The efforts to establish the school seem to have been accompanied by a whole series of experiences involving expense and frustration. She suggested that one should allow four years (4!) to get the paperwork done! She spoke of regulations as if they were self replicating viruses which were able to mutate at will to the detriment of honest hard working school establishers.
She spoke of vast and endless expense (four flights of marble stairs had to be replaced because the original features were a few centimetres too narrow) and the soul destroying hunt for finance.
But, in answer to my question, she was very glad that she had made the effort and she was enthusiastic about the future development of her school.
We covered a lot of ground and her comments have given me much food for thought.
The mobile phone call I had half way through our conversation was perhaps compensation for the journey up to the school.
In what is rapidly becoming a vastly irritating tradition, my tom-tom gave up the ghost just as I was about to leave familiar territory and venture into motorways new. I vaguely remembered the Directora telling me to come off the ronda de dalt and head for Vic. This was little enough information to go on as I had no idea where on the ring road I should expect to see a helpful sign.
After following my instincts on one or two forks in the motorway I felt, as I seemed to be heading straight for snow covered hills, that I should ask for help. I took the first turn off from a motorway disturbingly signposted to ‘France’ and found myself in a service station. The waiter in the café was both helpful and encouraging and suggested that I simply go through the toll and carry straight on. His vague indication of a couple of kilometres was woefully out and it meant that I drove ever deeper into Catalonia with a sinking feeling and a diminishing amount of time to get to my destination.
A sign above the motorway with my destination on it gave me a momentary lift but after an inordinate number of kilometres I assumed that I had missed the turning and was heading who knew where.
If you’ve read the start then you will have realised that I did in fact get there. I drove into the much larger than expected spa town and saw a teacher marshalling pupils along a road, stopped and asked her for the school and discovered that I was on a parallel road. Of course getting onto that road necessitated a circuitous approach, but I found a free parking space adjacent to the school.
The mobile phone call was from another school asking if I would consider doing supply for a history teacher. Teaching up to A Level. A later phone call revealed that the history courses which are being taught in the school all seem to be more like the background to current affairs than the ‘real’ stuff of history and an in depth study of the Paleologi and the development of Byzantium. Anything pre 1916 is, I assume regarded as Ancient History and having no relevance for modern pupils.
One of the modules is on the Civil Rights Movement in America – so Paul is going to find himself sending a quantity of the notes that I know he has tucked away somewhere as a monument to his one time calling as a history teacher (sic.)!
There is a meeting tomorrow to discuss the possibility of my being able to take over this timetable. As I have been asked to bring all documentation, bank details and certificates and as the person I spoke to on the phone has been taking the classes herself and ‘wants out’ I think that as long as I turn out to be a carbon based life form I have a good chance of being employed.
The problem comes with what happens during half term when I am expecting visitors.
Well, we shall see.
We shall see.
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