Caught out!

I have been stymied by my own housekeeping!

My briefcase was ludicrously overweight, especially considering I had no school textbooks or marking in it!  The OU course books are solid things and with the bits and with the electronic bits and pieces that go with study it was full before I had the inconvenience of actual school stuff to contend with.

Having got up at some absurd time this morning for an 8.15 am start with Year 9 I found that I had time to rationalize my briefcase and exclude those items which I would have no opportunity to use during this period crowded morning.

As it turns out, of course, not only do I have spare time, but I have also carefully forgotten the marking which I should have been able to get completed this morning and left it on the coffee table in the front room together with all the other stuff which would now be useful for me to have.

One class has turned into a study period and I am left typing because everything else, including the marking that I have to do for another year I did not pick up yesterday and is somewhere else – lost between buildings!  It is yet another case of the best laid plans etc etc.

Today however will be a test day in my new approach to the Draconian plans which this place has towards teacher attendance.  According to my timetable my afternoon is free and I intend to put to the test the conversation that I had with the head of department when I agreed to work in the school until Christmas.  If I am not teaching then I am not here.  Accordingly I should have at least two afternoons when I can get on with the work that I actually want to do and two other afternoons when I can leave early to avoid the ridiculous amount of traffic that clogs up the inadequate streets around the school when the kids are let out.

I noticed with some degree of consternation that one small vertiginous street which was a major route of egress, which admittedly caused chaos when pushy parents used it in their over-the-top 4-by-4s to steal a march on other equally pushy parents, has now been blocked off and all the traffic has been diverted so as to create one cataclysmic traffic jam rather than two merely major ones at the end of school.  I do not intend to find out just how finger gnawingly frustrating these jams are and will softly and silently vanish away whenever I can.

Yesterday was the first full day that I was in school and it is depressingly easy to forget that I have ever been away from the place.  There are a few new faces in the older classes but everyone, obviously, is the same as when I left them back in the balmy days of last June.  Some people have indeed not really taken in the fact that I am back as I sit in my usual place and walk around as if I have never left.

One new face among the teachers is a man who I last saw in the School That Sacked Me.  At that time he was presented with a camera which was going to record his impending marriage and honeymoon.  Given the awful nature of the School That Sacked Me there was much speculation about whether the guy was going to be allowed to take his legal entitlement of a number of days off to get married.  But, off to get married he went and, as was usual in The School That Sacked Me, we never saw him again.  At least he has a fairly secure and reasonable berth now!

Seeing his face was one of those unsettling moments, common to teachers, where you recognize it but have a vague feeling that it is out of place.  If a teacher stays in one school for longer than a certain critical amount of time then pupils, teachers, parents and pupils who eventually become parents all become confused in the memory and this leads to a considerable amount of social embarrassment.  It took me a couple of seconds (and hearing his New Zealand accent) before I placed him.  I spoke to him with interest and sympathy until I remembered that, given the recent form of the Welsh rugby team, he more than represented the enemy!

I have now seen two teachers from The School That Sacked Me in other schools in the area and I suppose that I should be happy that they have escaped too.  I am sure that if I made a tour of the other English language schools around us I would find other survivors!

How that damn school continues to survive is beyond comprehension – though I am disturbingly informed that it is not untypical of the horrendous conditions that obtain in schools that are owned by a single, unsympathetic, unprofessional owner.  God rot her and all her works!

I suppose that finding out whether my slimmed down week (which still has 24 periods in it) has worked will only become apparent tomorrow when I will be able to see if my absence this afternoon went by unnoticed – officially that is, because nothing goes unnoticed in that place!

Tomorrow I have to be there all day because I have a lesson last thing in the afternoon.  And my day doesn’t end there because after school I am meeting Suzanne for the opening of an exhibition in Barcelona and then on to a life drawing class.  With naked people to be humiliated by my erratic pencil!

And talking of humiliation it is time for me to check into the website for the OU to find out what new developments there have been in the developing soap opera which is my course!

Never a dull moment!

OU in Crisis

Put seven people together for an Internet task which necessitates discussion and two decisions and spread these people out over Europe and what do you have?  In International Situation within minutes of the discussion forum being created.

I like to think that I have had some input in this co-operational disaster merely by saying that I had some proficiency in poetry analysis.  This introduced a complicating factor which has seen successively vituperative Internet posts so to such an extent that an arbitrator has had to be called in!  In this case our tutor.

I have to keep pinching myself to remind myself that what is happening is around the first tutor assignment in a first level OU course!  I cannot remember when I have laughed so much over a few electronic communications!

Seriously, I am thoroughly enjoying the course at the moment, in spite of the fact that some pieces of information are irritatingly difficult to find.  At the moment, for example, I am still trying to find the original 1908 poem which was the basis for the 1920 poem which became the lyrical basis for the 1921 “hymn” which is known as “I vow to thee my country” but which in its 1908 version was known as “Urbs Dei” or “The Two Fatherlands” – I know this poem exists but I have been totally unable to get my hands on a copy, or even find out if it exists in manuscript or published form.  Many people make reference to it, usually in the exact wording that Wikipedia uses!  I simply wonder how many of the authoritative people making reference to it have actually seen the words.  Ah, research was ever thus!

Toni is still not well but the antibiotics seem to be having some effect.  Another week of so of pills should seem him back to normal.

And tomorrow is normal in another sense for me.  Monday sees the start of a week of real teaching which will go on until the end of term.  I am beginning to wonder just what I have let myself in for with this unnatural extension of my career with yet another stint of teaching.  But it does pay.  I suppose.

It will be interesting to see how I feel at the end of the week – though I can always compensate myself with the thought that there is a time limited aspect to this jaunt into education!  December the 21^st and I am out of there!  For good! 

Meanwhile the soap opera of OU students at play will keep me entertained tomorrow when I start work on the music or continue with the poem and try and deflect the flak that bruised egos in the educational field start shooting when they feel intellectually threatened.  Especially when they are not!

And I have now read (via the Kindle) all three volumes in “The Hunger Games” series.  Thoroughly enjoyed them, though the third volume was the weakest in my view.  The first two are well worth reading as they take various ideas and make something new of them.  I like the anti-Utopian concept and the take on government is cynical enough to satisfy even the most jaundiced viewer of politics.  Though there is a happy ending of sorts, the whole thrust of the storyline is that nothing really changes and that power corrupts and the human species is basically unsound and prone to the most venial sins.  Optimism is in fact too optimistic a view to take!  Chimes in with the general feeling in this time of crisis!

I do like my Kindle Fire, which is more than I can say for my new wireless keyboard where the cursor goes missing for no reason and I have yet to work out how to get it back with any degree of consistency.  Teething problems.  I hope.

Now to bed to prepare for yet another day of work!

The long slog to Christmas

So, as is usually the way, I find myself in front of a class typing because I am too self-conscious to read openly!

I have not done very much teaching as, surprise, surprise this is an Examination Period in this school!  Who would have thought it!  So my timetable is taken up with revision periods and invigilation.  Invigilation may be easy money, but it does produce marking which I think that I am expected to do with enthusiasm and a closed mouth!

I have been somewhat hampered by my totally understandable reluctance to accept that today is Friday as it feels like a Monday to me.  If you have not taught for the rest of the week then there is no reason to suppose that a sudden day of institutionalized repression will produce anything other than dour Monday blues!

I suppose that everyone should return to a past school at some point in their professional career to get the sort of response that I have been treated to.  Little squeaks of delight and chanted choruses of my name as well as effusive hugs and kisses from the colleagues I left a comparatively short time ago are just some of the demonstrations of glee at my return.  It can’t last, of course, but I will make the most of it while it happens.

Significantly I have had the headteacher breathe, “Thank you!” into my ear which was accompanied by a significant look and I certainly intend to build upon that implied debt!

The first repayment will take the form of my departure this afternoon when my timetable is blank.  The second repayment will be not going to a meeting on Saturday morning which occurs tomorrow!  There is another afternoon when there is a timetabled space and yours truly will not stay around in school to sit sulking when there are OU units of work to be completed.

The only remaining question on my first day is whether or not I will have lunch.  As most of the kids now know that I am back in the school the excitement will have abated a little and I will be able to take my lunch in relative peace.  This will probably be more possible because the staff dining room is hidden away around a corner from the pupils and what for them is not immediately visible does not really exist.

By Monday my reappearance will be old news and I will be accepted as if I had never left.  Even as I walked between one building and another this morning kids were stopping and asking me questions as if I had been with them since the beginning of term.  I suppose all kids look for stability and they are able to go back a few years in my memories.  Even if their names still do and ever will escape me!

Visible changes are few and inconsequential to my view.  Apart from the subtle rearrangement of the front office and the addition of a few more lockers for staff everything seems very much as normal.  It will take another couple of working days before I note anything worth noting about the differences between what was and what is.

I don’t think that the full effect of what I have let myself in for has really struck me yet.  I can kid myself that there are only about twenty days of teaching but that does work out to being more than three full weeks in school – and I have not done more than a week of teaching since I retired again!  It should be interesting if nothing else – and I should never forget that favour thought this might be it is, after all a paid favour!

Getting up at 6.30 am was not as horrific as I expected it to be – though it was full darkness and there is something inherently wrong about such an approach to mere work!  The roads were clear, but it was clear also that if I had delayed my departure by anything more than a few minutes I would have been caught up in delays.  It is a harsh reality of working in Barcelona that prompt departure and indecently early arrival is essential if one does not want to waste one’s life by sitting and fuming in an interminable traffic jam.

My arrival is now old news and it is rapidly seeming that I have never left.  Monday sees the start of a full week though, in a reversion to my school days it seems as if I will have two afternoons off!  Ironically enough the meeting tomorrow (to which I am not going) would be the final touch of my normal school week when I was a schoolboy!  Throughout my time in school from the age of 11 to 18 we had four lessons on a Saturday morning and then either Tuesday or Thursday afternoon off!  One is tempted to say it ends as it began with a school career in which I am not in school for a full week!  How poetic!

Meanwhile the decision time for the OU task is immanent and should be made by tomorrow.  I want to get started on this and get it done long before Christmas.  Such enthusiasm!

Now, after a long half day in school, the relaxation of the weekend and catching up on my OU studies!

Rain again!

My well-deserved rest after a whole day in school was rudely broken up by a telephone call from my last head of department who is feeling somewhat stressed after a fortnight without a teacher and no clear idea of when he will return.  It has been suggested that I take the place of the ill one.  That is an on-going concern and nothing has been decided yet.  The question of time and how long I might be expected to be there is of primary concern and I am waiting for clarification either tonight or perhaps tomorrow.

Today has been a time for the buying of essentials and restocking the fridge and muttering imprecations against the foul weather which seems to have followed me to Spain.

My OU work has not been foremost in my mind over the past few days and it is just as well that I got well ahead of myself before my little jaunt to Wales – but tomorrow must see me at my books again.

After the “tutorial” on Saturday we have been set into groups, I for example am now a proud member of Team Green and we have the task of creating a Wiki utilizing a couple of designated texts to produce a page for an audience of arts students.  This is all fine and wonderful, but the work that has to be done needs us, as a group, to decide on which two of the five texts that are on offer to use.  So far, since the tutorial, only three of our group of seven have actually written anything on our Wiki Forum and only two of us have come close to suggesting texts.  This is one of the frustrating elements of working with a group which is scattered around Europe!

We have five days left to decide.  I will panic on day four.