Friday tomorrow?

There is a definite feeling of end of term about the staff room this week – just because we have a three day week! Don’t knock it, the feeling is authentic and I am making the most of it because this will be our last real break before Christmas as far as I can tell!

I am sure that this is wrong because Spain and Catalonia have a way of suddenly presenting you with an occasional day of freedom because of some obscure festivity. All days off are gratefully received!

The school is settling down into a routine and, as far as I can tell, we have a full complement of staff. This is obviously not the case in all other schools as I have had another phone call from a school offering me work. As the call was in Spanish I have only the haziest notion of what was being offered but it was definitely work of some kind.

If anyone has teaching qualifications and they are looking for work in this area then I would suggest that they send their CVs around all the schools listed on the internet because I am sure that some of them are now in the final stages of panic as they try and secure enough warm bodies to take their classes.

The School That Sacked Me continues to lurch into the new academic year and already some of the teachers that started in the school in September have now left. The unreality that is the professional life of that place continues to amaze year after year and nothing official seems to be done about it.

A meeting of some of the Disgruntled Ones who once taught there has been tentatively arranged for some time during the impromptu holiday this extended weekend and new battle plans can be sketched out for action in the forthcoming months. At some point I must make the journey to the courts and find out what has happened to the case about the disappearing charity money. Every little helps.

In spite of (I’ve been teaching that phrase in class today) the generally positive and supportive nature of the school in which I am presently teaching I have found this start of term exhausting. As this is after only seven teaching days I have to say that the official date of my retirement seems a very long way off and any idea of extending the period of time that I continue working seems ridiculous.

As all the other members of staff seem to share my tiredness I perhaps should not read too much into the normal dread that attends teachers who see the academic year stretch away into what seems to be the sort of infinity which characterizes the disappearing writing at the beginning of Star Wars pictures.

It will be interesting to see what I am saying in January when 25% of the academic time that I have left before retirement will have gone when this first term is consigned to history. The money is useful and it does pay for the house. My investments (which are in British pounds) are 10% down and the Euro is currently trading at over 90p. Something of a disaster if I think about it, and something which my salary encourages me to forget. For the time being!

I have done my first marking and have checked and corrected the writing of a girl who wants to go and study in MIT. She was taught by me last year and came to me this term because, “Stephen is the expert on writing.” Where this accolade comes from I do not know, I have certainly done nothing obvious in the school to deserve such a commendation, but I am loath to bring reality into the picture!

I still feel an almost comical sense of unreality about my whole experience in the school. It is unlike any other in which I have worked. It is almost insanely examination orientated and as the head of English said without any irony, “We don’t do fun!” as far as the content of the teaching is concerned. Cheating is endemic and is regarded as one of the quaint traditions of the area, but the kids themselves are generally happy and polite.

They don’t listen of course, but that is something that everyone who teaches in this part of the world finds out with some speed!

I suppose that the fact that I can walk away at any moment is also something which adds to the general feel of otherworldliness about my time there. It is obviously too good an opportunity to squander, but the oddness of my situation keeps intruding into any unguarded moment in my teaching.

Meanwhile I look for images from the internet to bring some reality to the Somerset Maugham story that I am attempting to get the equivalent of the First Year Sixth to read. Believe you me, it is uphill work and I had never realized quite how much there is to explain in what seems like a perfectly innocuous story like ‘Before the Party.’

It is, as they say, an education to teach!