FRIDAY 17th JUNE 2011

In an incident serious in its immediate consequences, a colleague has had the beam from a laser pen shone in her eye.  The pupil who did this was also rude and offensive to her.

My immediate reaction was to tell my colleague to take a taxi and go to the doctor immediately.  I also asked if the boy concerned had been suspended.

In my view, a real test of any school is how the management reacts to what is an assault on a member of staff. 

In a way I know that I am setting myself up for an extended period of irritation as the action that will be taken will, inevitably, seem to me to be woefully inadequate.

There is a French cartoon on the staff room notice board that shows two sets of parents with their respective children in meetings with the pupils’ teachers set in different decades.  In the first one from the 1960s the teacher is sitting proud while the parents round on their cowering son and demand he explain his poor grades. 

In the present day version the teacher is cowering behind the desk while the infuriated parents of the smirking boy demand that the teacher explain the low grades given to their child!  I am sure that the concept behind the cartoon translates easily as a comment on many of the schools in Europe.

I know that school exists to teach the young and without them there is simply no school, but that is no reason to look on our raw material as pure ore rather than the adulterated amalgam that we get to work on. 

 

“The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves” - unfortunately the sense behind Cassius’ words go unremarked by generations of parents who see little wrong in their progeny and constantly try and find some external blameable reason for failure rather than looking at the qualities (or lack of them) in the individual concerned.

Today our school is pleasantly denuded with 50% of the secondary school going on a trip or two and so we should be able to get down to the real stuff of teaching: moving books around and throwing away accumulated paper!

My cupboard in the staffroom is like a three dimensional jigsaw which, as far as I can tell, is constructed using more than three dimensions.  This means that only the slimmest of sheets of paper can be tentatively fed into the morass which is revealed when the doors are opened.

My lesson “gain” from the departed kids has, of course, been nullified by my having to supervise a class for a colleague in that gained time.  This has been the story of this summer where expectation has been dashed by squalid reality and I have supervised class after class to the detriment of my imagination - but it has certainly improved by typing skills!

Amazingly I still, after all these months, have the edge on lust-worthy computers.  My MacBook Air with its clean, and above all sharp lines, is still a thing of envy for our materialistic pupils.  The glowing Apple symbol on the cover of the computer is still a visible point of excellence and, although there is a bank of three girls all with their Apples in a row – not one of them has the elegance of my machine!

It must be unprecedented for a computer to have held its “wow factor” for as long as mine has done!  My first mini laptop was a sensation, but was quickly followed by pupils’ acquisitions and (more slowly) by those of the staff.  Suddenly everyone had a mini laptop – and all of them look roughly the same.  When I bought mine there were only a couple of models to choose from now there is a pleasing plenitude of desirable devices arrayed in even the most pedestrian of electrical shops.  But nothing is quite like the MacBook Air which - given its grossly inflated price - is as it should be.

The work of the department is about to begin and I will be asked to do lower grade clerical work, but this is better than taking some of the classes that I teach or, at this stage of the year I should say that I “taught” – all things come to the end; but this year seems to have gone on for an eternity.

 

I have been reading (re-reading surely!) “Trent’s Last Case” by E C Bentley on my mobile phone.  I am well used to the “gobbet” approach to literature having read three Dickens novels on my old palmtop and it is very comforting to know that I am (nearly) always with the means to facilitate the reading of a book. 

The list of out-of-copyright volumes that I have on my phone grows as I utilize the download button on anything that looks even half way likely lurking in the “publicity” material that is situated at the end of each novel or short story that I read on the program that I use. 

There has to come a time when the memory is used up but so far the library keeps increasing and the machine doesn’t really seem to mind so I will keep adding to my eclectic list which should cover any mood that I am in.

The school day was a series of supervisions interspersed with periods of proof reading documents that had been written in Catalan, translated into Spanish and then rendered in a form of English spoken by no speaker of the language!  It was my function to try and rewrite this into real language.  The school is rewriting its website and we have been ploughing through verbiage which even if it had been written by Shakespeare would still have been crap.  And lies.  But what the hell!  I rather enjoy making the odd silk purse!

The Birthday Party in Terrassa was, considering the Birthday Boy was just 3, enjoyable. 

Of course, as was only predictable, I was shocked at the number, expense and complexity of presents for a three year old and the equally uncomfortable situation where most of the relatives gave the 3 year old’s brother presents as well even though it was not his birthday. 

I would imagine that this is standard practice to prevent sibling rivalry but it goes against ingrained attitudes formed by extensive reading of R H Tawney – or at least a half-baked understanding of an summary of what he might have said about the role of Protestantism in forming “correct” attitudes towards life as opposed to the clearly “wrong” ones inculcated in people by the pernicious doctrine of the Whore of the Seven Hills!

Also, I didn’t have the same quantity of presents when I was three.  Not that I remember my third birthday of course, but I know that I was deprived!  Certainly compared to the largesse showered on the undeserving these days!

SATURDAY 18th JUNE 2011

A better day weather-wise and there was a period in the afternoon when I was able to repair to the Third Floor and take the sun.

All of this was after going into town and various supermarkets and garden centres so that Toni could find the raw material to continue with his experimentation for his latest invention.  Prototypes have been made and they are ready for testing.

Among all the sensible buying I was much taken with an object once seen soonest bought! 

There may be some so cold of heart that they are able to resist a solar light illuminated wire construction covered in chunks of coloured glass in the shape of a peacock with a spread tail – but I am not that man.  I am now eagerly awaiting night so that I may glory in the shimmering wonder of it all.

And next week is only four teaching days long!

Life is good.