There must (surely) be a reason why I have a pair of (clean) underpants (mine!) in my briefcase. I half remember something from the end of last term but the details are fairly hazy. Not, I might add because of the depths of alcoholic stupor I was in at the auspicious termination of educational activities. No, I was cleaning the flat prior to its handover on the last day of term. And I still wake up sweating when I think of the work that Toni and I did in July!
It also shows how dedicated a teacher I am in my new environment by the fact that I did not discover this intriguing garment until well into this term when I was frantically trying to find something else.
It is a sad teacher who doesn’t clear out his school bag thoroughly at the end of the summer term in preparation for the ‘new’ start which usually links a clean, fresh briefcase with a renewed optimism to face the new term.
Finding these underpants which are still, inexplicably in my case makes me wonder about what else might be lurking in the depths. Perhaps this weekend, if I am feeling strong I will completely empty my case and the hell with the consequences!
I really going to have to address my complete inability to come to terms with the names (I am assured they do posses them) of the pupils I teach.
I have gone throughout the whole of my career with only the sketchiest notion of the personal nomenclature of the individuals who have sat before me while I have digressed in front of them.
One or two of the more resilient pupils have demanded me to tell them my names each time I pass them: I applaud their intelligence in appraising the problem and finding a possible solution to it. Would that others followed their lead!
The school has a system: teachers who take the first year take each of the three classes only for a term and then pass on to the next. This, the school in its touching naivety assumes, is enough time to learn all the new pupils’ names and then keep them in the memory for the whole of the time that these kids are in the school!
For the other teachers this does seem to work (god knows how) and they discuss pupils with an ease and with a name which leaves me breathless.
I am sure that my inability to retain the names of other people is a sign of a deep seated neurosis – a sort of super-id arrogance which does me no credit and which I should fight. But as I don’t know the names of my professional colleagues why the hell should I be expected to know the names of the mere amateur clients?
If anyone has any reasonable suggestions to aid my memory (short of putting labels on the foreheads of all the kids) and suggestions which are commensurate with the pitifully low salary that the school pays then I will be happy to adopt them.
It goes without saying that if anyone (staff or child) doesn’t know my name I am contemptuously disgusted with them.
I think this attitude goes back to my arrival in school when I was greeted as something little sort of a knight in shining white armour walking on water while changing stones into fresh, crisp loaves. The teacher I replaced must have had a nightmare of an experience in the school and she was eventually sacked to make room for me! With an introduction like that the school can be grateful that I didn’t immediately go to one of the overpriced curio shops in the centre of Barcelona in the Gothic Quarter and buy a Cardinal’s ring to give the people I passed among the appropriate object to which they could pay their respects!
Reality did, of course, kick in and leave me stranded on the arid wastes of grammar clutching scraps of literature about my person to salvage something of my self-respect as my colleagues waltzed through the tangled woods of linguistic sterility with practiced ease. They don’t make mixed metaphors like that nowadays!
Meanwhile I have to survive for the next year and twenty four days before the generosity of my increasing age begins at last to pay dividends.
What of my classes? My first year sixth is now already beyond redemption as we whip each other up into a state bordering on linguistic hysteria where ludicrous digression meanders into irrelevance which then mutates into anecdote and subsides into unsubstantiated opinion. We do have a stimulating time, but I don’t think that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing!
My youngest classes listen to me in fascinated horror as I cement each aspect of grammar and vocabulary that they have to learn with snippets of information that leave them gibbering with knowledge overload.
My second year sixth was today subjected to a listening test. They had printed answer sheets with the questions on them. I armed with a cassette tape and a player set up the machine before the class and, having distributed the answer sheets then, with a flourish turned on the tape recorder.
It didn’t work of course.
I had plugged it into the wrong sort of electrical socket. My second choice of socket brought much needed power to the machine.
It was the wrong tape of course.
A few desultory attempts to find the right part of the right side of the bloody tape and the lesson was heading steadily for chaos.
So I told them about the concept of the ‘Monkey Mark’ and they all then completed the test by random choices of the appropriate letters for their answers which should only have been put in the spaces after they had listened (twice) to the taped extracts.
One boy got 10/18 for his score!
I have thus successfully taught a whole class that they don’t need to do anything more in their examinations than put down whatever letter appeals to them when the choice presents itself!
Need I go on? In a school whose motto is ‘Test Them Till They Drop’ I am forming a one many Counter-Revolutionary Committee for the destruction of the Culture which has built up the reputation of the school over the 40 years that it has been in existence!
Ah well, one should always have a hobby!
It also shows how dedicated a teacher I am in my new environment by the fact that I did not discover this intriguing garment until well into this term when I was frantically trying to find something else.
It is a sad teacher who doesn’t clear out his school bag thoroughly at the end of the summer term in preparation for the ‘new’ start which usually links a clean, fresh briefcase with a renewed optimism to face the new term.
Finding these underpants which are still, inexplicably in my case makes me wonder about what else might be lurking in the depths. Perhaps this weekend, if I am feeling strong I will completely empty my case and the hell with the consequences!
I really going to have to address my complete inability to come to terms with the names (I am assured they do posses them) of the pupils I teach.
I have gone throughout the whole of my career with only the sketchiest notion of the personal nomenclature of the individuals who have sat before me while I have digressed in front of them.
One or two of the more resilient pupils have demanded me to tell them my names each time I pass them: I applaud their intelligence in appraising the problem and finding a possible solution to it. Would that others followed their lead!
The school has a system: teachers who take the first year take each of the three classes only for a term and then pass on to the next. This, the school in its touching naivety assumes, is enough time to learn all the new pupils’ names and then keep them in the memory for the whole of the time that these kids are in the school!
For the other teachers this does seem to work (god knows how) and they discuss pupils with an ease and with a name which leaves me breathless.
I am sure that my inability to retain the names of other people is a sign of a deep seated neurosis – a sort of super-id arrogance which does me no credit and which I should fight. But as I don’t know the names of my professional colleagues why the hell should I be expected to know the names of the mere amateur clients?
If anyone has any reasonable suggestions to aid my memory (short of putting labels on the foreheads of all the kids) and suggestions which are commensurate with the pitifully low salary that the school pays then I will be happy to adopt them.
It goes without saying that if anyone (staff or child) doesn’t know my name I am contemptuously disgusted with them.
I think this attitude goes back to my arrival in school when I was greeted as something little sort of a knight in shining white armour walking on water while changing stones into fresh, crisp loaves. The teacher I replaced must have had a nightmare of an experience in the school and she was eventually sacked to make room for me! With an introduction like that the school can be grateful that I didn’t immediately go to one of the overpriced curio shops in the centre of Barcelona in the Gothic Quarter and buy a Cardinal’s ring to give the people I passed among the appropriate object to which they could pay their respects!
Reality did, of course, kick in and leave me stranded on the arid wastes of grammar clutching scraps of literature about my person to salvage something of my self-respect as my colleagues waltzed through the tangled woods of linguistic sterility with practiced ease. They don’t make mixed metaphors like that nowadays!
Meanwhile I have to survive for the next year and twenty four days before the generosity of my increasing age begins at last to pay dividends.
What of my classes? My first year sixth is now already beyond redemption as we whip each other up into a state bordering on linguistic hysteria where ludicrous digression meanders into irrelevance which then mutates into anecdote and subsides into unsubstantiated opinion. We do have a stimulating time, but I don’t think that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing!
My youngest classes listen to me in fascinated horror as I cement each aspect of grammar and vocabulary that they have to learn with snippets of information that leave them gibbering with knowledge overload.
My second year sixth was today subjected to a listening test. They had printed answer sheets with the questions on them. I armed with a cassette tape and a player set up the machine before the class and, having distributed the answer sheets then, with a flourish turned on the tape recorder.
It didn’t work of course.
I had plugged it into the wrong sort of electrical socket. My second choice of socket brought much needed power to the machine.
It was the wrong tape of course.
A few desultory attempts to find the right part of the right side of the bloody tape and the lesson was heading steadily for chaos.
So I told them about the concept of the ‘Monkey Mark’ and they all then completed the test by random choices of the appropriate letters for their answers which should only have been put in the spaces after they had listened (twice) to the taped extracts.
One boy got 10/18 for his score!
I have thus successfully taught a whole class that they don’t need to do anything more in their examinations than put down whatever letter appeals to them when the choice presents itself!
Need I go on? In a school whose motto is ‘Test Them Till They Drop’ I am forming a one many Counter-Revolutionary Committee for the destruction of the Culture which has built up the reputation of the school over the 40 years that it has been in existence!
Ah well, one should always have a hobby!
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