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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

What is there without chocolate?


Thank god for M&S.  Thank god for colleagues using the Occasional Day on Monday to visit aged Ps in Great Britain.

The spirit of Chocolate Week lives on!

The end result is two buckets (poetic licence) of chocolate coated goodies with the style and quality of that most wonderful of shops.  And in the other staff room a delicious chocolate roulade cake!  Delightful.  I used to think that getting soft toilet paper introduced into a school in which I taught was my greatest achievement in education – but I do think that chocolate week, extending as it is into its third or fourth great week is a greater triumph to put to my credit!

Not of course that I actually shop there. 

Even when I was living in the UK I did not shop there, but I liked living near a store.  I heard/read that geographers used the location of M&S stores as a shorthand way of finding out the socio-economic status of a particular area: if M&S was there then you could assume that all the requisites of a normal middle class life were to hand; if M&S were not there then you were in Skelmsdale or equivalent.  I therefore made it a rule not to live more than three miles away from an M&S store.

The equivalent in Spain of M&S is, in my view El Corte Ingles and, although I had to be a little more flexible on distance, I am now delighted to report that the whole system has reversed itself and the store is following me!  We now have a branch of El Corte Ingles (admittedly a discount store, but it still has the name) well within the three-mile limit of my present domicile!

Another glorious day made that little bit more squalid because I am looking at the sun’s refulgence through the grimy window of a staff room rather than in the free space of the Third Floor.  Still, it’s better than looking at rain.

As far as I am aware, the day today is one ravaged by examination supervision so that the normal timetable is in shreds.  There is also a colleague absent which always adds its own dash of chaos as we work so near to capacity – so who knows what might happen today!

First lesson and it’s payback time!

I gained part of a period last week and now my colleague has claimed her rights and I am stuck in front of a class revising or should that be “revising” for their examination.  To be fair since so much of the ethos of the school is taken up by the process of examinations the pupils are well versed in the niceties of the system and knuckle down to work in a much easier way than other pupils I have taught.  Generally speaking (except for the usual suspects) they are all now working and as I touch type I can watch and type at the same time so they realize that they are under observation even if I appear to be working.

As this is my six-period day I welcome the disruption of examinations, as they tend to break up the long slog that this unnatural day brings.

Now is the time to think of more pleasant things and to hope that Toni is phoning the superb restaurant in Girona to find out if there are any places left to sample the gastronomic dinner that Ceri and Dianne did not have the last time they were here. 

If everything goes according to plan then we should be able to sample the world famous cuisine during their next visit – and drink a few tasty wines as well. 

If that doesn’t work out then there is always the fall-back plan of going to the restaurant in Hospitalet and hoping that the restaurant in the “flying saucer” has cooled down a little so that we are able to eat in a place with truly spectacular views.  One does wonder about the quality of an architect who designs a building in Spain which cannot be used in a Spanish summer!  We shall see, but it is something to look forward to whatever location we finally decide to eat in.

There is still no absolute clarity about what is going to happen to our pay this year.  I have been told conflicting stories about what the government is going to do and all we have is rumour and not hard fact.  The school does not seem to have set a time aside for a meeting to inform staff about the probably deductions from their pay and I have to say that my colleagues seem remarkably, even shamefully resigned to the possibility of 5% of their total income being deducted in two tranches of 3% and 2%!

The date for the strike has been set for the 29th of March and I am more than inclined to take part.  I realize that it might be something of futile gesture as none of my colleagues seem inclined to take part, but the situation is so serious that to do nothing seems to me to be a complete abdication of union responsibility.  But it is also the loss of a day’s pay and god knows what complications with the tax authorities etc.  However, this really does seem to be a time, if ever time there was, to take some form of action to tell the government in no uncertain terms that their actions are not acceptable to working people.  Or me!

The next period is a “study” period with the equivalent of Year 9.  Need I say more?  However, this penance is compensated by the next period being made into a free as my colleague is compensating for me taking a whole class rather than our individual groups.  It all works out in the end.

Perhaps this is the time I should be taking to get ready for the Great Change which usually catches me out.  One of my classes is divided into three.  Our school year is divided into three.  It follows that each of the classes should last a term.  Wrong.  The date for the Great Change seems quite arbitrary but, this year, for the first time, I think I know when it takes place.  So for the last class of the year I will have one week and two days of this term and the rest of the summer term in which to teach them.  Previously my class has simply disappeared to be replaced by another group of bemused looking kids drifting into my class.

At least I have two days notice this time and some spare examination gained time in which to prepare.

It does mean, however that the introduction to the subjects are lost in a general lust for holidays and the usual mind-wipe of the school holiday makes the start of next term something of a trial when you are building on material and knowledge that the kids have long lost!  But, there again, it all adds to the gaiety of nations!

We are also, on the very day of the changeover, starting the projects which are supposedly taking up a swathe of time during the day.  However, with the change in approach that has been brought in with little or no consultation I think that it means that after a whole day of being off timetable, my ordinary classes will be there waiting for me to teach them.  A rabble mentality having been established for the majority of the day I suddenly have to bring the kids back to conventional teaching.  O Joy!

It is now, at long, long last getting on for the end of the day.  I am stuck with a Year 9 class for a double period and have suddenly been informed that the periods last Wednesday that I took to be the end of the course were not and the two this afternoon are.  Well, stuff that.  I am not in the mood to magic up a sudden lesson or couple of lessons for these unreceptive people when I have work to do for the next group.

I have now designed and printed out the cover sheets for the work that these kids are going to do.  Not unimportant because if work is not recognized as having a mark these kids consider it worthless.  A cover sheet (an A3 printed single sheet folder) therefore gives legitimacy to all the work it contains.  As it will get tatty by the end of the course - part of the mark includes designing a replacement!

One of my courses is made more complicated by my having a pupil stay on from the group that I am supposed to be giving up because he does not speak fluent Spanish - so he is going to have to do everything again.  Actually this is not as futile as it sounds because he came late to my course and anyway I change things that I have done so there will be enough there which will be different to keep his attention.  I hope.  And my attention as well which is, after all, much more important!

By the end of the day I can look back on the production of two folders for my two credit classes; pages printed out for my Making Sense of Modern Art class; a bluffer’s guide to how to paraphrase; a guide to the writing of effective magazine articles and the consumption of numerous cups of tea

But today has been thoroughly unsatisfactory in all sorts of ways.  There is a growing tension in the school about all the work that has to be compressed into the last two weeks of term before the holidays and there is frustration building up about what exactly is going to happen to our money and about the strike which is going to take place on the 29th of March.

The school management have stated that the school will be open during the strike and, from what I have heard from my colleagues, shamefully there are going to be plenty of teachers who are prepared to come in to keep the place going.

As time goes on I am more and more prepared to go on strike and I have had support from one other member of staff.  Two of us out of the whole of the teaching staff!  It’s pathetic! 

And, let’s be realistic, we haven’t actually done it yet.


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