The Real End Days!

Two hours on the trot with the 1ESO was not necessarily the best way to start the day. 

The first part of the lesson was going in to the Exhibition which is mounted by the Art Department each year and that was excellent – though we had to get in in a rather roundabout way as the doors were locked.  And the film wasn’t working because everything was switched off and . . . but the content made up for everything. 

The kids, given a relatively short time to take it all in, seemed pleased by the visit and I made them write illustrated letters of appreciation to Suzanne on their computers.  As someone who has had to live on benign neglect as far as her efforts have been concerned, she is going to have the shock of her life!

One of the less able, but obviously more intuitive children asked, perceptively that wouldn’t Suzanne suspect that I had incited them to this act of simple courtesy!  She will know immediately!  But I suppose that it is a sign of maturity to understand that knowing this is not to negate the positive effects!  They have much to learn.  Which is why they are in school, of course.

The timetable has been suspended for today and after my two hour stint with the 1ESO and the quid pro quo being that my time with 3ESO was taken away, I found myself with nothing that I had to do until almost 4.00 pm.  A nod, as they say, being as good as a laugh to a dumb hyena, so I departed in faith and fear and went out to lunch with Toni.

And very pleasant it was too – and this time both of us had a decent meal, apart from one false choice on Toni’s part involving the dreaded cheese, which of course worked in my favour and gave me a tasty extra morsel.

I am now back in school waiting to do my bit in a darkened room keeping recalcitrant schoolchildren from wrecking the furniture by showing them a film.  So, my last teaching lesson in my career will be babysitting!  I am sure that there is a moral to be drawn from that somewhere, but I will leave it for others to do the drawing of it!

So I wait.  Tomorrow the Big Day when the comedy will be over

I suppose, looking on the bright side, I could not have had a better “lesson” to end my career than babysitting a group of Year 7 pupils on the penultimate day of term at the end of that day – because it couldn’t have been worse.

Over thirty years of teaching experience and I was struggling to control a small group of off their heads students!  If nothing else it gives scaffolding to my resolve to give up.  Teaching I mean!  Though at the end of the day as I walked, shell-shocked from the classroom, I was probably ready to give up more!

When I went back to the staffroom I met other veterans of the Year 7 Campaign, all equally traumatized.  Thank god I am not going to have to cope with this year after they come back refreshed revitalized and ready for further frays.  My colleagues are, very sincerely, welcome to them.  And any residual ideas of the “odd day” of supply vanished in a spasm of concentrated horror at just how bad young people can be.  They are now, officially, someone else’s problem!

As another teacher said in rather more trying circumstances, “It is finished!”  My contract is ended, the money is in the bank and I don’t have to go back.  The Third Floor beckons and the OU material is begging to be studied and assimilated.

The “fiesta” was rather more subdued than usual with far fewer parents turning up – or so it seemed.  The Tóm-bola as opposed to the Tom-bóla was its usual odd self.  There is no competition in this event and the only amusement it affords is watching rich people deliberate over spending small amounts of money for a good cause.

The meal was excellent and the pleasing effects of the Cava Sangria were augmented by the stimulating conversation of my colleagues.  The speeches came and went with three colleagues being honoured for their joint efforts in giving three-quarters of a century of service to the school!

The best speech was given by a redoubtable Scottish lady who commandeered the microphone and, ignoring the increasingly hatchet faced directora regaled the company with a lively and amusing Cava-fuelled speech which almost ended in a tug or war over the microphone, but she won and continued to great applause!

The actual end was a series of kisses and hugs and that was it.  A career over and the spacious days of summer to look forward to.

Home and a swim: a clear indication of how the immediate future should pan out!

In the Old Days, after the drunken debauch that the end of the summer term usually entailed, I did all those things that the pressure of work precluded my completing.

There will be the ceremonial packing of the ties; the putting away the white shirts and folding the black socks.  The black shoes will be put back in their accustomed places and await their regeneration for funerals, weddings, operas and official occasions.

The subscription to The Guardian will be reactivated and my daily drive to the swimming pool will recommence.

Life without Institutional Education begins!

In school alone-ish!

The awful weather yesterday has given way to a bright sunny day today. 

Wonderful! 

This means that all the school trips planned for today can take place and the “customers” will all be somewhere else, leaving my good self and a selected and choice few in glorious isolation in a virtually empty school. 

Allegedly one of my pupils will take her English exam having pleaded incapacity merely because her arm was broken.  Wimp!  The interesting aspect of this delay is that she deemed herself perfectly capable of doing other exams, it was only with the English one that she felt the necessity of a few more days revision.  The minds of our kiddiewinks are beyond comprehension – thank god!

I was summoned during the day to the Management where the gathered worthies reminded me that I was about to depart (very significant that!) and thanked me effusively for my help during the past months.

The reality is, I am sure, that they will be relatively glad to see me go.  I have done my own thing to a certain extent and rejected the bone rotting excesses of meetings, lunch duty, library duty, playground duty and virtually everything else that has little to do with the actual work of a teacher!  I have gone home when I am not teaching and have generally voiced opinions which classify me as a terminally loose cannon!

Two more days!

An unexpected release this afternoon, as I was encouraged to go after I had put my results into the computer.  This is a sweetener for tomorrow when I am going to be used to cover classes in the Day of Chaos which is the penultimate day of school.  They have made damn sure that I am doing something at the start of the day and at the very end!  Nothing is for nothing!

There is marking that I am supposed to do – but who, but the most fanatical students, is going to hassle me for work when the lure of the summer holidays is uppermost in their minds!

Roll on!

As does the corruption and maladministration in this beleaguered country.

The Royal Family (for whom I have utter contempt) have been implicated in a series of scandals the latest of which concerns the Infanta who was the lucky (one almost might say unique) recipient of a massive error in her favour from the tax people.  It turns out that the “error” is so unlikely that the odds of its actually being an “error” are something like ten billion trillion to one.  We have been told that there is more likelihood of the Infanta being hit by a meteorite than this “error” actually being legitimate.  The repulsive puppet-like nasal idiot who apparently is actually a minister (!) airily keeps repeating the “error” theory in spite of the fact that he has no credibility whatsoever.  And that is because this bunch of shit-smeared chisellers who form our government don’t give a damn about what people think.  They insult our intelligences by their tissue thin “explanations” and as damning fact after damning fact piles up against them they emulate the Blitz mentality and “Keep Calm and Carry On!”  The completely untenable position of the government has gone well beyond the realms of ordinary fantasy and they are now living in some sort of Surrealistic Escher Universe where presumably their pathetic lies can be accepted as truth.  This country does not, it really does not, deserve this crew of self-aggrandizing wasters.  I do not like them.

The opposition are not much better, but compared to the present holders of office they are like unto the driven snow!

The water in the pool has now warmed up so that it is not a heart-stopping experience when skin touches that combination of oxygen and hydrogen lurking beyond the back gate.  I had an invigorating plunge this afternoon to celebrate the “afternoon off” after waiting the customary hour after having a meal in the Maratim.  I experimented a little by trying the ox tail – rich, oily and delicious.  As is usual my meal was excellent and Toni’s mediocre; that’s how the bread crumbles!

A little light tidying, the minimum of preparation for the morrow and perhaps getting the letter for my Financial Advisor ready that he has been asking for (without much success) for some time.  Perhaps one of the last courtesies that the School on the Hill can afford me is to post it off to Wales for me!

Time is running!

Me?

The axe has fallen!

In a pleasingly ambiguous and confused conversation I was “asked” if I “wouldn’t mind” staying on for Thursday afternoon to help cover classes which were going to be teacherless because of the evaluation meetings that would stretch their weary length along through the periods before the end of school and for a considerable time afterwards.  I could hardly say no.  Well, of course I could, after all I am virtually untouchable with only four days to go, but professional etiquette demands a certain restraint!

Friday is the fin de curso and is a day of general chaos.  I suppose that I do not need to be there, but again it would be expedient for me to give formal goodbyes as I finish my time in the School on the Hill.

Looking back it seems like an unbroken time that I actually spent there, in spite of the fact that my teaching is actually divided into four or five distinct contractual periods.  It remains to be seen if this last stint of work actually entitles me to anything of the money that I have paid in to a scheme from which, in the ordinary course of events, I am going to get nothing. 

Unfortunately I am not (and indeed never will be) a member of the odious ruling PP party and they are the ones, according to a television programme last night, who spend vast sums on the purchase of ham, trips, booze, private jets, helicopters, ties, suits, and lots of “presents” while publically they preach the sort of austerity and retrenchment that they flamboyantly do not practice themselves when they think that the gullible fools (as they obviously consider the electorate) who voted for them cannot see!

The pension payments that I have made in Spain will produce nothing for me, as you have to work for at least 15 years before you get anything.  Irene is finding this out and is now self-employed in order to boost her years of countable service.  I, however, get nothing.  Pay, yes – but pay out, no!

I am still waiting for my first TMA of the new OU course to be returned, and am a little apprehensive about the tutor’s response.  There was little opportunity for originality and it was far more a question of arrangement than research.  I am, however enjoying this course more than the first, but my enthusiasm is going to be tested by the immanent participation in the Wiki where a group of we students have to work together to produce a finished piece of written work which is composed on the Internet in the form of a web page. 

The obvious difficulties of trying to get a very disparate group of students to produce something which is coherent is exacerbated by the problem of language where not all of us are native English speakers and tactful rewriting is not always possible.

The work will also take place during the height of summer when half the people may well be elsewhere and not be in the frame of mind to do something academic.  The cut off date is the 1^st of August, which gives you some idea about how difficult it is going to be to coordinate and execute.  Ah well, something else to worry about in due course in the course.

I think that my final grade for TMAs has already been compromised by this first one and the Wiki is something in which it is notoriously hard to gain a decent pass, so that only leaves me with the last TMA to recoup my status.  Sigh!

We have now got on to relics and reliquaries and, this being the OU, their wider significance.  Philip II gets a high place not only because of his almost unrivalled collection of religious bits, pieces and odd body parts (including El Escorial which itself might be regarded as a giant reliquary) but also because of the way he is perceived to have used them.  They became a way in which he could give material form to an abstract vision not only of himself as a king but also to his House as a dynasty.

It is strangely comforting to consider that there are probably around a thousand people musing on the same sort of ideas at the same sort of time up and down Britain and across the continent.  A coterie sharing increasingly esoteric knowledge – I love it!

I have finally changed my shower curtain: shamed into that action by the presence of various petrie dish clutching scientists asking for samples from the more extravagant and unsavoury mould colonies established on its lower fringes.  As the mould was about to be granted nation status by the UN I thought it was time for a little bacterial genocide.  There is now a new curtain in place and the old one has been consigned to the washing machine for a “last chance cleansing opportunity” before being consigned to oblivion.

We have taken the opportunity to purchase two other curtains for the other bathroom and for the living room as well as a multi-coloured set of plastic drawers for the “tea room” – I am always amazed how spending a relatively small amount of money has a disproportionate effect on the look of things!

I do have to do some work this evening to get the remaining results into some sort of order so that I can get them into the system tomorrow.  Somehow.

My drama classes continue their chaotic way with four or five memory sticks doing the rounds for kids to download their film clips and make something of them with the programs they have on their computers.  My star pupil is fanatically devoted to producing something and assures me that I will get something soon.  It would be nice to see some sort of end result from all our efforts – but, as I keep reminding them, “process is all!”

Three days to go!

Last Days Again!

Yet again, displacement activity comes to the fore and precludes my doing anything useful for education.  When in doubt, type – seems like a philosophy for survival to me!

This is the start of my last week in education.  I am stating that with increasing fervour so that I will not be tempted by the warm summer months and a decent timetable to think of anything other than retirement!  The demands of the OU make it easier to contemplate the extra free time and commandeer it for study!

Seriously, this week has to encompass my producing, as if my magic, hundreds of results to give some sort of numerical authenticity to my past six-ish month sojourn in the school on the hill.  Normally this would not be a problem, but the new computer platform which has been created to make our job so much easier, does, in fact, unsurprisingly, make it considerably more stress-filled.  But, for me, each time I do something now, I am conscious that I am doing it for the last time, and that does make it somewhat easier.  To say the least.

On the other hand, there is also a sort of time-stretch which occurs when I think of distant Friday when I finally shake the dust form my sandals and quit and the time seems to extend itself into some sort of grotesque lengthened insult to my impatience.  However, parasite-like I am feeding off the barely concealed resentment of my colleagues as they realize that I will be sailing into the blue beyond while they have years to go before they sleep (and years to go before they sleep).

I have now been intimidated by the rest of my frantic colleagues into making at least a pretence of “doing something” with the exam marks.  The typing will have to cease, as the Americans say, momentarily.

I’m back!  I made the attempt and am waiting for a colleague to give her expert “massaging” advice to my final figures so that they can be published as something which can be taken seriously.  Karl Marx (with his well known attitude towards statistics and imaginative numbers) would delight in our school!

I did precisely no English teaching today.  I had a free instead of a sixth form lesson; I invigilated part of a Catalan exam; I filmed part of a drama lesson and finally sat in sullen silence watching the dreadful behaviour of kids supposedly watching a film.  And then home.

Where the news was good and bad.  The good was the kids were having a party in the park and we did not have to go to that.  The bad was the gathering for adults was at 9.30 pm at night and so god alone knows what time I will get back this evening – and its up at half six tomorrow morning and teaching at eight fifteen!  God help!

It looks as though I am not going to get my Grown Up Camera before the end of term (at least the end of term for me) and I will have to wait for later in the summer before I try it out and see whether I can get back to the standard of picture taking that I had with my old Canon.  Time will tell.

More and more dirt is being displayed in public about the disgraceful way in which political parties in this country behave.  The “ruling” party continues to astonish by its blatant disregard of the avalanche of multitudinous items of corruption and amazing misuse of public funds which would have ensured its dismissal anywhere in northern Europe.  The hollow cypher which (I use the word advisedly) is our Prime Minister continues to wander aimlessly around this country, and even more embarrassingly, around Europe where his shambling appearances produce widespread indifference and he is generally ignored as a total irrelevance in modern politics.

The weather is disgraceful and the summer continues its shamefully unseasonal progress through to the holidays when I hope its comes to its senses and lavishes sunshine on my work exhausted limbs.

The jaunt to Terrassa was exhausting because of its late start, but we made it home just before midnight and I fell asleep almost at once as soon as I had downloaded the drama videos to one of the grudgingly “loaned” memory sticks that I have managed to squeeze out of the school stock.

The whole of the drama course has been a productive failure with lots of good ideas foisted on unsuspecting kids which should result in a more rational and effective course next year – except I will not be teaching it and the teacher who takes back the class has other ideas and I am not prepared to present mine in a systematized way because there are only four days left of my career and, basically, I can’t be bothered.

The major element in the course this term has been the filming of a group-produced script.  The process has been valuable and I only hope that the kids have been able to take something from it, because the final results are a little less than professional.  If I am realistic there is a limit to what can be done with only an hour a week, but if it is spread over a longer period and more time is spent on the production of the script interspersed with workshop type exercises in monologue, dialogue and filming I think that it can work.

My most pressing academic chore, which is becoming more pressing with each passing day, is to put my “results” into the computer system.

This chore is much more than that because the computer system seems to have taken ag’in’ me, and no matter how hard I try to get my access information to do just that, I remain stubbornly on the outside looking in, rather than inside and completing the information.

In my wallet is a tattered piece of paper with barely legible instructions about how to get in, but yesterday I spent almost an hour trying various forms of propitiation to get the system to bend to my will – and failed.  There are some sixty results which I have not yet fabricated to enter and even assuming that I can get each one out of the way in just a minute that means a concentrated hour of my time is going to be devoted to this particular piece of vacuousness.  I think that Wednesday is going to be the day as that particular day I have to stay in this place until the final bell, so there are various times when I will have the enforced opportunity to do what should have been done before.

The weather is dreadful.  It is overcast and sultry and has that sort of glare that is the bane of contact lens wearers.  Talking of which I am getting on better with my present lenses than any since I started wearing them – or at least since my eyes went their separate paths and made wearing a simple prescription impossible.  The present attempt to get my sight back to something approaching normality uses the same approach of past opticians, that is trying to get my right eye corrected for reading and my left one for distance and then attempting to get my brain to sort out the messages to make it all work.  In the past this has not happened, but this time there seems to be a greater inclination on the part of my little grey cells to do their stuff.

The only problem is driving at night when the confusion of messages is exacerbated by the out of focus halo effect around lights which produce a very complex view of the road.  I think that I will have to get a pair of glasses made which correct the right eye to distance and equalize the vision.  Or wear glasses for night driving – I do, after all, have four new pairs to choose from!

If the contact lenses are encouraging, the glasses (in all their unbelievable expense) are not.  The new ones are not a patch on the old ones and the area of good sight in the multi-focals is severely limited.  I suppose they are just something else to get used to, but at the moment I prefer the lenses.

Much to my surprise my lack of glasses has prompted a storm of questions from the kids, in spite of the fact that my previous glasses were nigh on invisible!  Perhaps I underestimate their powers of observation!

Meanwhile, there is a day to get through.  At least this is my early end – and another day will be able to be crossed off in the final countdown! 

What next!

What to start with!  So much to say and so little inclination to say it!

Probably the lady with big boobs is most worthy of note.  Not, you might think, remarkable.  There are, after all, many pictures of ladies with big boobs.  You can see them everywhere.  And I think that is part of the point.  And the word point is significant too.

As I have finally finished the bulk of my 3ESO marking and put the marks on my computer before putting them on the school computer, I felt that some form of mild celebration was in order.  So we went out for a beer and tapa this evening.

After denouncing a group of Romanians who were raiding the charity clothing bins in the centre of town in broad daylight we had a few bevvies and then I had occasion to use the facilities in the bar.  The toilets were in good order but it was the positioning of the photograph of the lady with the big boobs.  Which was just above the water line on the back of the toilet.  Presumably we were supposed to aim for the nipples!  Questionable taste I fear!

I have now consumed the mini bottle of Cava which was the guys’ gift from the couple we went to see get hitched what seems like months ago.  The reason for drinking this inestimable liquid was because the Scumbags have left for another week and given us the gift of their non-presence.  However, we fully expect their re-appearance next week and that will signal their summer stay.  We count each week they are not here as an extra present!

My penultimate week has now been completed and I am looking forward to only five more working days to the end of my career!  There is much filling in of spaces on a computer to facilitate the production of end of year reports and there are two extra examination papers which I will have to mark.  But the end is very much in sight.

Which is more than can be said for my Grown Up Camera which still appears to be languishing in customs in the UK and not in my hands in Catalonia!  And it looks as though it is going to be unlikely that I get it before the end of term.  Ah well, delayed gratification is something which should be second nature to a person of my generation!

There has been much good-natured banter about our respective triumphs in our recent examinations.  I have to admit that I have never been so relieved in my life to get a comparable result to you-know-who to ensure that we are both on a level playing field!

The next part of my course continues seamlessly with the first TMA sent in and our area of concern now having switched from Greek Vases to Iconoclasm.  Never a dull moment!

Tomorrow Terrassa for the birthday of one of the kids.

Life goes on.