The most difficult decision that any working person has to make is whether or not to link personal keys with work keys.
Let’s face it, it is after all a decision of crucial importance. On the one hand putting the two sets of keys together makes it less difficult to find yourself with the wrong set and vainly trying to open the car with a classroom key and cursing the fact that you have put the other set in your case.
On the other hand separation means double the opportunity for mislaying the damn things.
I freely admit that I am not the most tidy of people and the fact that I do not have a teaching room base means that in my frantic peregrinations around the school and my equally chaotic progress from one teaching space to another there are numerous opportunities for the keys to go missing. And they do.
At the moment my losses have been compensated for by the reality behind the homely wisdom of my head of department who sagely says in a calming sort of way when I am frantically turning over books and searching cupboards, “They always turn up.” Not, please note, “usually” but the infinitely comforting “always!” So far that has been the case and my keys have always been found in the places where I have left, ignored, discarded, dropped or otherwise dispensed with them.
As doors have to be locked after use and opened to let the pupils in, it would appear to be possible to trace where the keys were last used. Appearance is not reality. Sometimes one takes over directly from another teacher and sometimes the room is not locked. Such combinations lead to panic on my part when the clanking comfort of the chatelaine-like bundle is missing.
I have found my keys lying ignored on otherwise clear desks; placed carefully in my pigeon hole; dumped unceremoniously in the centre of the staff room table to join the jumble of stationery and other impedimenta; handed back to me; hidden deep in one of the pockets of my briefcase and only found following Mad Lewce’s dictum that things have to be cleared out entirely three times before they can be classified as lost; hidden under other people’s books – and once, horrifically, on the floor. But they have always made it back to me. So far!
I thought long and hard about the separation of the sets of keys, but it was becoming something of a joke to take out a combined set which looked as though I was the jailer of some maximum security installation!
I have now tried to adopt a policy where I put my house keys in the same spot every time I come home. And, amazingly, so far it’s almost working. Which I think I have to classify as success. For me.
During the winter months I utilize my overcoat as part of my key filing system. The car keys go into my coat pocket and then the coat is locked in the cupboard which we use for coats. The school keys then go into my trouser pocket. The only thing I have to remember is to replace my school keys in my pocket every time I lock or unlock a door. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But it is more difficult that you think.
Classes are not empty rooms and, almost as soon as you are through the door (and often when you are not) the kids regard you as a resource to be tapped at once and it is all too easy to drop the keys in an absent minded gesture as you cope with the thousand questions that our needy kids always have to ask!
It is now 11.00 am and, given the bloody meeting which we have to endure this afternoon and evening, we still have eight hours of school business ahead of us.
I used to think that Curriculum Meetings in LHS were the absolute nadir of human experience, but these meetings in Catalonia are not only as boring, but also have the added ingredient that most of the talking is in Catalan.
I used to think that not knowing the language in which self important non entities were mouthing off platitudes would be an advantage – giving you obvious scope for infinitely more interesting day dreaming. Not so. We all sit around a square island of tables and there are too many people watching you for you to be able to drift away to the Isles of Oblivion and ride the gentle waves of tedium until real life drags you back to reality and the delicious possibility of escape.
An hour has passed and there are now seven hours for purgatorial time life in school until the delights of the ring road claim me and show me the way to oblivion and an early bed!
And just in case you are wondering about the spacious time I have to type in school then I might point you to our ridiculously long day where spaces for teaching are available from 8.15 to 16.45.
Let’s face it, it is after all a decision of crucial importance. On the one hand putting the two sets of keys together makes it less difficult to find yourself with the wrong set and vainly trying to open the car with a classroom key and cursing the fact that you have put the other set in your case.
On the other hand separation means double the opportunity for mislaying the damn things.
I freely admit that I am not the most tidy of people and the fact that I do not have a teaching room base means that in my frantic peregrinations around the school and my equally chaotic progress from one teaching space to another there are numerous opportunities for the keys to go missing. And they do.
At the moment my losses have been compensated for by the reality behind the homely wisdom of my head of department who sagely says in a calming sort of way when I am frantically turning over books and searching cupboards, “They always turn up.” Not, please note, “usually” but the infinitely comforting “always!” So far that has been the case and my keys have always been found in the places where I have left, ignored, discarded, dropped or otherwise dispensed with them.
As doors have to be locked after use and opened to let the pupils in, it would appear to be possible to trace where the keys were last used. Appearance is not reality. Sometimes one takes over directly from another teacher and sometimes the room is not locked. Such combinations lead to panic on my part when the clanking comfort of the chatelaine-like bundle is missing.
I have found my keys lying ignored on otherwise clear desks; placed carefully in my pigeon hole; dumped unceremoniously in the centre of the staff room table to join the jumble of stationery and other impedimenta; handed back to me; hidden deep in one of the pockets of my briefcase and only found following Mad Lewce’s dictum that things have to be cleared out entirely three times before they can be classified as lost; hidden under other people’s books – and once, horrifically, on the floor. But they have always made it back to me. So far!
I thought long and hard about the separation of the sets of keys, but it was becoming something of a joke to take out a combined set which looked as though I was the jailer of some maximum security installation!
I have now tried to adopt a policy where I put my house keys in the same spot every time I come home. And, amazingly, so far it’s almost working. Which I think I have to classify as success. For me.
During the winter months I utilize my overcoat as part of my key filing system. The car keys go into my coat pocket and then the coat is locked in the cupboard which we use for coats. The school keys then go into my trouser pocket. The only thing I have to remember is to replace my school keys in my pocket every time I lock or unlock a door. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? But it is more difficult that you think.
Classes are not empty rooms and, almost as soon as you are through the door (and often when you are not) the kids regard you as a resource to be tapped at once and it is all too easy to drop the keys in an absent minded gesture as you cope with the thousand questions that our needy kids always have to ask!
It is now 11.00 am and, given the bloody meeting which we have to endure this afternoon and evening, we still have eight hours of school business ahead of us.
I used to think that Curriculum Meetings in LHS were the absolute nadir of human experience, but these meetings in Catalonia are not only as boring, but also have the added ingredient that most of the talking is in Catalan.
I used to think that not knowing the language in which self important non entities were mouthing off platitudes would be an advantage – giving you obvious scope for infinitely more interesting day dreaming. Not so. We all sit around a square island of tables and there are too many people watching you for you to be able to drift away to the Isles of Oblivion and ride the gentle waves of tedium until real life drags you back to reality and the delicious possibility of escape.
An hour has passed and there are now seven hours for purgatorial time life in school until the delights of the ring road claim me and show me the way to oblivion and an early bed!
And just in case you are wondering about the spacious time I have to type in school then I might point you to our ridiculously long day where spaces for teaching are available from 8.15 to 16.45.
At least it makes timetabling somewhat simple and it usually offers at least one “free” period a day – hardly surprising when you consider that the number of slots in a normal week (though god alone knows what is normal in this place) is around 35, compared with a normal British school which would have 25 slots. And in a British school at least some of those periods would be non contact periods. I have 23 teaching periods in my present school and a weekly scheduled departmental meeting, taking my total to 24 allocated periods leaving as many as nine “free” periods in the artificially long week. In the British system I would be suffering from only 1 free period in a 25 period week.
So, not only am I teaching more in the Spanish system but I also have to consider my personal time as so-called free periods. And I am paid less. But it is money. Though not much. And so on ad infinitum.
It is at times like this that United Nations Day seems both very far away and very close!
And there is always the National Lottery and Euro Millions and the ONCE and a random act of munificence . . .
So, not only am I teaching more in the Spanish system but I also have to consider my personal time as so-called free periods. And I am paid less. But it is money. Though not much. And so on ad infinitum.
It is at times like this that United Nations Day seems both very far away and very close!
And there is always the National Lottery and Euro Millions and the ONCE and a random act of munificence . . .
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