Counting down

Today has been enlivened by the chaos which is endemic to this school.  The occasion for the chaos (as if occasion were needed) concerns the photographs which need to be taken of the student and working population of the institution.

The “timetable” for things to happen well deserves the inverted commas as it has been, in the words of Captain Barbarossa about the Pirates Code, “more like guidelines” with classes appearing at odd times and the poor old photographer (who I suspect is not poor and was certainly not old) was left devoid of students and looking at his lists with only the occasional desultory photograph of a passing member of staff to keep himself amused.

My photograph has also been taken “for the intranet” presumably so any parent can identify and target any member of staff that their progeny might finger!

I have now ended up with a first year class as the teacher has been called away to stay with her wayward form as they go to have their likenesses taken.

The one advantage of burgeoning technology in this place is that the class is provided with a computer for each class member and so, by sitting firmly at the head of the class and not being foolish enough to look at what they are doing or supposed to be doing, I have the leisure to type and they are presumably profitably employed – and I certainly d not intend to find out if the opposite is the truth. 

I am also, in a very real sense of the word not teaching which is always a positive aspect in any true teacher’s life.  True I have a class in front of me, but I am not being asked to do more than contain the anarchy which is always a possibility when the young of our species is gathered into one fairly cramped space.

I am now eating lunch again, but restricting myself to a diet of salads in school.  I might (as the only adult I know) be tempted to partake of arroz a la cubana which I do like.  This is a very simple dish of white rice, topped with tomato sauce which is itself topped with a fried egg.  Delicious!  Though my colleagues regard it as infantile and spurn it as ‘twere a rabid dog.  The only positive aspect in favour of our school when compared with the palatial establishment (they had an indoor swimming pool you know that I visited last Friday was that their version of arroz a la cubana lacked the fried egg, making the dish vapid and as ashes in my mouth!

Yesterday in my haste to get out of a school in which I had taught six periods I forgot a scheduled meeting with a small group to discuss the Credit of Synthesis or Personal Research that takes place to general rejoicing at some point in the term.

Usually this event has been an occasion on which teachers do little more than sit out the front and watch students get plugged into their computers and do what they will.  This laid back and admittedly generally unguided from of time wasting has now been seized by those who would Improve The Standard of Teaching so that there is more planning (meetings after school) and ownership (teaching) in the new version.

In the last meeting I caused hysteria by suggesting that we teach the works of Chaucer, which was increased to wild panic when I recited the opening of The Canterbury Tales in what I take to be Middle English!

My absence allowed the cowards to change the theme from the Middle Ages to Heroes.  Alas!  I feel that my suggestion of therefore studying the fascinating story of Palamon and Arcite might not have gone down well either.

As I missed the meeting (thank god) I will now have to make up for it by producing a photocopied course of work which will Show That I Care.

Being an English teacher my first thoughts obviously go not to the stated theme but its antithesis: the anti-hero.  I remember one of sixth form students saying that she would always remember me as the man whose two heroes were Iago and Satan.  Perhaps we could do extracts of Paradise Lost.  Perhaps not.

I certainly think that there is some mileage in the Classical concept of the hero and the attributes of the hero based on the writings of Aristotle about the tragic hero.  Heh!  Heh!  That should give my colleagues something to think about.  Especially when teaching all that to the first form!

I will have to do some research and produce something soon if my tattered reputation for inventiveness is not to be lost!

Tomorrow the opera and Scenes from Goethe’s Faust.  I have been listening fairly intensively to the work and now sort-of know my way around it.  I do not think that this is a staged version so it is just as well that I have made the effort to learn the music, as there won’t be very much to look at on the stage, though I will take my high-class opera glasses with me.  One must appear to be professional at all times.

Let the culture commence!