The Iberian peoples are a tactile lot. And that extends to the pupils I teach too. Accepting for a moment that they actually qualify as people.
I have tried in a professional and fairly vindictive way to keep my distance from the life forms that I teach, but this is much more difficult in Spain.
I first noticed this tendency to march straight through the “forty inches from my nose where the frontier of my person goes” by the primary pupils who were positively clingy and draped themselves around me in a manner which would have done irreparable damage to my Scrooge-like demeanor which had been painstakingly built up over the years of my time in British schools.
One would think that one would have been safe in the secondary sector of education, but this is simply not the case.
Today, for reasons which are not immediately apparent, one of my strapping first year sixth pupils picked me up and walked a few (I would like to say faltering, but he was too strong for that) steps to demonstrate that he could. Having done it, to popular acclaim he repeated the feat. Now I have to admit that, much like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, “hardily, I was nat undergrowe” so to lift me with consummate ease demonstrated that he was a strong lad – though why he did is still not entirely clear. He, unusually in Spain, plays rugby and he managed to extract a shamefaced admission from me that I endured many a cold day in the arid ranks of the second row. Perhaps he feels that it is a cultural link between us, though I have to admit it is an unsettling one.
I tried to cast my mind back to those distant days when one could still take an unalloyed pleasure in the extent of the map of the world which was still painted pink, when we New Boys in The Cardiff High School for Boys were lined up in order of height to be put into houses. I was one of the tallest boys in the school at the age of eleven and even at that age would not have been picked up lightly!
I think I have to go back to when I was in single figures to recall the last elevation!
A couple of the boys in that class have now decided that we have to adopt a ceremonial way of greeting with a sequence starting with open palm followed by knuckle meet leading to fluttering fingers and finally chest bump I have only done this twice and I have felt a total fraud on both occasions. In my wildest nightmares I cannot imagine this having happened anywhere in my experience in Britain. Though that may well be a function of my over-developed sense of innate authority rather than anything else!
The unbelievable story of the missing examination continues.
I left school yesterday evening secure in the knowledge that my revised examination paper was in the head of English’s pigeon hole together with my letter explaining that the paper had been found and we could stay with the paper that had already been printed.
Not so.
When I arrived this morning the head of department informed me that while my paper might have been safe, the kids had acquired an examination paper from last year and were eagerly distributing it around the playground to interested parties.
In a use of logic whose well, logic, did not strike me immediately as sound, an executive decision was taken to remodel my already revised paper. With my fingers poised over the keys we commenced to slice away sections of the paper that we told the kids would be there and add things which we had not told them about.
One of my colleagues was very upset about the unfairness of it all, but I, on the contrary couldn’t care less. The kids in our school have raised the noble art of cheating to a positive science, so anything that keeps them guessing is fine by me!
The kids were, of course, horrified. Although their revision is minimal they recognize anything which has not been ‘studied’ instantly. The picked up on the word ‘ailment’ and were stumped by the request to find three separate meanings for the word ‘story.’ They have the attention span of Homer Simpson so all their hysteria will pass. Especially with the mind wipe of Snow Week starting for some of them on Monday.
And we are not to take examination papers in the rooms until the kids are actually sitting the exams.
All things change.
I have tried in a professional and fairly vindictive way to keep my distance from the life forms that I teach, but this is much more difficult in Spain.
I first noticed this tendency to march straight through the “forty inches from my nose where the frontier of my person goes” by the primary pupils who were positively clingy and draped themselves around me in a manner which would have done irreparable damage to my Scrooge-like demeanor which had been painstakingly built up over the years of my time in British schools.
One would think that one would have been safe in the secondary sector of education, but this is simply not the case.
Today, for reasons which are not immediately apparent, one of my strapping first year sixth pupils picked me up and walked a few (I would like to say faltering, but he was too strong for that) steps to demonstrate that he could. Having done it, to popular acclaim he repeated the feat. Now I have to admit that, much like Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, “hardily, I was nat undergrowe” so to lift me with consummate ease demonstrated that he was a strong lad – though why he did is still not entirely clear. He, unusually in Spain, plays rugby and he managed to extract a shamefaced admission from me that I endured many a cold day in the arid ranks of the second row. Perhaps he feels that it is a cultural link between us, though I have to admit it is an unsettling one.
I tried to cast my mind back to those distant days when one could still take an unalloyed pleasure in the extent of the map of the world which was still painted pink, when we New Boys in The Cardiff High School for Boys were lined up in order of height to be put into houses. I was one of the tallest boys in the school at the age of eleven and even at that age would not have been picked up lightly!
I think I have to go back to when I was in single figures to recall the last elevation!
A couple of the boys in that class have now decided that we have to adopt a ceremonial way of greeting with a sequence starting with open palm followed by knuckle meet leading to fluttering fingers and finally chest bump I have only done this twice and I have felt a total fraud on both occasions. In my wildest nightmares I cannot imagine this having happened anywhere in my experience in Britain. Though that may well be a function of my over-developed sense of innate authority rather than anything else!
The unbelievable story of the missing examination continues.
I left school yesterday evening secure in the knowledge that my revised examination paper was in the head of English’s pigeon hole together with my letter explaining that the paper had been found and we could stay with the paper that had already been printed.
Not so.
When I arrived this morning the head of department informed me that while my paper might have been safe, the kids had acquired an examination paper from last year and were eagerly distributing it around the playground to interested parties.
In a use of logic whose well, logic, did not strike me immediately as sound, an executive decision was taken to remodel my already revised paper. With my fingers poised over the keys we commenced to slice away sections of the paper that we told the kids would be there and add things which we had not told them about.
One of my colleagues was very upset about the unfairness of it all, but I, on the contrary couldn’t care less. The kids in our school have raised the noble art of cheating to a positive science, so anything that keeps them guessing is fine by me!
The kids were, of course, horrified. Although their revision is minimal they recognize anything which has not been ‘studied’ instantly. The picked up on the word ‘ailment’ and were stumped by the request to find three separate meanings for the word ‘story.’ They have the attention span of Homer Simpson so all their hysteria will pass. Especially with the mind wipe of Snow Week starting for some of them on Monday.
And we are not to take examination papers in the rooms until the kids are actually sitting the exams.
All things change.
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