Crack of the whip!

A day of unrelieved baby sitting lightened only by a casual discussion of medical ethics in one sixth form chemistry class – otherwise, I have been sitting on an extraordinarily uncomfortable chair, watching kids generally get on with the work that they have been set.

This tedium has however been very good for my OU studies and I have been making notes about Buddhism and John Donne as though I have never heard of either.  My high and mighty attitude is not entirely justified as I have actually been learning things about the life of John Donne (which I probably should have known) and about the Metta Sutta (which I probably have been told about at some point in the past but which I have totally forgotten) and other bits and pieces which add to the jollity of nations and make me feel happier as it certainly makes the day worth while.  And I have ten sides of notes and various flashes of fluorescent yellow highlighting to show that I have been busy.

I do not think I can take much more of this though and I am constantly telling myself that there are only three more days and then I get my papers and I begin the bureaucratic rigmarole of getting my details on various governmental computers all over again, again – but this time with more satisfactory results I trust!

In theory my timetable tomorrow should include some free periods, but if I were in charge of cover I would work the supply teacher for the whole of the day without breaks.  After all the supply teacher does no preparation, does no marking, does not have a form class and usually does not do any extra duties.  As the art teacher is also absent I think it highly unlikely that my timetable will have any gaps.  Indeed, if it does have gaps then I should, in all conscience, offer to take the place of a full-time teacher who has been asked to give up a hard won free period.  We shall see, there is only so much Christ-like giving of myself that I can do in one week. 

I am still living in the warm glow of appreciation from colleagues that comes with offering to take the place of a teacher doing supervision in the so-called “study area” for the sixth form during one of my “free” periods.  From the look of disbelief on the face of the teacher I feel that such a gesture will live on in the mythology of the school for generations to come!

The school is Doing Something for Save the Children: a sponsored walk, crawl or run in which even the three year-olds are taking part.  Although I will not be teaching in the school when this event happens it is too good an opportunity to pass by for getting rid of the so-called Oxfam money that is in the 5L plastic jar in the kitchen.  At last it can go to an “acceptable” charity – even if it isn’t my charity of choice, Oxfam.

I am keeping up my swimming after school (as in the old days) and am feeling better for it – in spite of the fact that I am usually surrounded by hordes of small people splashing their excited way along in parallel lanes.  I am (apart of course from the monitors) the only human swimming up and down with the monotonous regularity that I find invigorating and highly satisfactory for the twenty minutes that is my limit before terminal boredom sets in.

Yesterday I was totally wacked when I finally got home and gazed for the first time on the Tea Room Annexe in all its glory.  I slumped in a chair and didn’t really move, not even a muscle until Toni cooked something that finally galvanized me into some sort of action, if only of mastication!

Today, after my swim, I have to call into the supermarket – a prospect which is energy draining merely in the thought, let alone the reality.

At least the today, Wednesday, started with a lesson with the semblance of normality where I actually had to interact with the class and do something vaguely approaching teaching – even if it was only PSE with Year 11.

After lessons of incomprehensible chemistry I am now in an art class where the pupils are busily constructing congratulations cards which should keep them occupied for the lesson they have in which to produce them.

An my gestures of studied casualness as I willingly give up a free period for the benefit of my colleagues are now nugatory as my timetable had been fully filled out with supervision.  I know in theory that a supply teacher has no right to free periods because of the lack of need for preparation and marking, but I would have liked to have been able to shyly offer my services to a needy colleague.  Ah well, another piece of faux generosity bites the dust!

My name does, however ring through the staff room in the mornings when the cover list is put up and colleagues recite my name in a delighted chant-like way as they realize that I am doing the cover that could have fallen to them.

I wonder how they are going to adjust when reality hits on Monday when I will no longer be here and their free time will be swallowed up in resentful supervision!

There are eighteen periods to go before the end of the day on Friday, and the fact that I am counting them shows my attitude quite starkly.  This is a good school with generally well-behaved kids, but I had not realised just how frustrating it is to be in a school and not teach your subject.  Very.  I am not even in classes where I can bluff my way.  This is probably going to be the one time in my life where studying for the OU course was a form of escapism and displacement activity!

As he days have gone on I have become bolder in the way that I am studying and today was the first when I looked at the DVD excerpts and listened to the musical examples that I am supposed to be considering.  This meant that I, like the majority of my class, had an earphone firmly placed in a single ear.

In the inclusive and multi-cultural way which is the lifeblood of the OU I have been listening to Buddhist chants, the Hallelujah Chorus and Cole Porter.  I have the Vienna Opera yet to come!

And two days to go before my release from durance vile.

Four more days!

There are those who love travelling as an end in itself.  I am not one of those.  In much the same way I enjoy things being tidy and, as Toni quaintly puts it, “everything in his place.”  What I don’t enjoy is the process whereby things get put in his places.  Especially in areas where not only pints but also gallons have to fit in pint pots.

This is where Toni excels.  With a fervour, usually only found in the most devoted fox hunting Tory enthusiasts flogging a hunt saboteur, he can play a game of three-dimensional Tetris and put things in an order which, to the untrained eye appear to be almost magical.  The order is his order and any attempt to suggest alternative spacial solutions is treated as if you have not only spat on the fragment of the True Cross but you have also previously used it as a toothpick.

Toni is also not averse to the throwing away of Things Which Have No Apparent Immediate Use.  I do not understand this approach and have often thanked whatever gods there be for the small container or essential piece of ribbons or length of coloured wire which I have salvaged from the threat of discardation and have then played an active and essential role in the way that I live my life.  And if any words used in that last sentence do not exist they should do.

Toni has an approach that puts me in mind of the worst excesses of Savonarola in his cavalier approach to the sacred quality of permanence of Stuff. 

To me an uncluttered environment and the one in which I prefer to live is akin to the differences found between a Thurber cartoon and one by Giles; they are both ways of presenting something, but the Giles cartoon always has small details to discover that you missed the first time round.  There is always something more to find in the Giles, whereas what you see is what you get in the Thurber.  Not of course that I underrate the Thurber, who was obviously a comic genius.  But I like the detail in a Giles cartoon for the same reason that I like the paintings of Bosch, Van Eyck and Breughel.  Though possibly without their respective visions of Hell and Damnation!

For Toni things out of place is purgatorial if not infernal and, like many naturally and compulsively tidy people he does not understand the inability of mere humans to fail to replace things properly.

The Chaos of the Third Floor was a state of untidiness of Augean proportions that even the question of where to start was something which defeated me.  I was satisfied with carving a narrow path through possessions to a chair and a space on the desk; the wider implications of a theoretically tidy room was a concept one intellectual conceit too sophisticated for me.

Toni, however was not only able to contemplate the mass of things actually having a home but also was able to postulate the appearance of a Tea Room in a space which could not possibly possess one.  Even without having been brought up on the finer points of Doctor Who he seemed to have grasped the concept of the Tardis and transferred its qualities to the Third Floor.

And behold!  These things came to pass.  And the only thing lacking was a sufficiently genteel tablecloth for the tea table!

Actually, that is not strictly true and the room is only 75% complete.

If the sloping room of the Third Floor is like a glorified lumber-room then the cupboard under the eves is the oubliette of our preserve.

This low level, double-door space is the place where you put stuff which you cannot possibly throw away, but which also is not going to be used from one year to another and will probably only see the light of day when you move house and you realise that you actually possess it.  I hate this space as I invariably, however careful I am, forget my height and smash my head against the slope of the roof which seems specifically sloped to case the maximum damage to a six-foot adult.

Fine linen and embroidered tablecloths together with the china garnered in irresistible sales of Wedgewood Aztec with the Christmas tree and space hungry decorations are all waiting to be assessed, weighed in the balance and found wanting. 

And Toni is in sole possession of the space while I languish in school powerlessly watching a group of year 12 students cheat their way through a series of questions that they have to complete during the week when their normal teacher is absent.

The absent teacher has a Year 12 and Y13-heavy timetable so I am reduced to little more than child minding with my intellectual input at less than zero.  This is going to be a difficult week as my knowledge of Chemistry ended in the third form with the advent of the mathematical element assuming more and more importance so I will have to find something to do in front of the class which is not as obvious as reading to while the time away.

Another period of child minding has begun I will be perfect happy when this week ends if it is going to be as mindless as this.  I would prefer to teach rather than be a mere organic entity with a teaching qualification at the front of the class!

However, whenever I feel that I am not gaining very much from this experience I should consider what the eventual end result of this little foray into supply teaching might gain me in terms of my relationship with the employment office of Catalonia!

I am beginning to thank god for the fact that my visit to the UK is an immutable event which demands my attendance at the festivities of Louise.  It means that however attractive the blandishments of the head of secondary are I will have to refuse.

The staff is delighted at my appearance today as they no doubt feel that it means that there is a sea change in the attitude of the school towards the hiring of people to cover absence.  I am not sure that this is strictly true but I am not one to deny people their moments of happiness by injecting reality into their lives!

I am now in an art class where at least I have been able to distinguish a Lucien Freud painting being copied by one of the students.  My mark has been made!  Quite why I am in an art class I do not really know as the class that I took last period has still one lesson to go.  Though a change is as good as a rest.  I suppose.  And any attempt to make the life of a supply teacher more bearable is OK in my book.

Even though I have been able to do some of my OU work it does not compensate for being stuck in front of a class and not being able to be a real teacher.  But there again, they are paying me!

The Third Floor tearoom is almost up and running and the work desk part has now also been used for the first time.

Now that the OU course is up and running I have sent in a dummy tutor marked assignment to demonstrate that I can use the system and that the system can work with my computer. 

The emphasis on the computer is very different from the environment that I worked with when I first studied with the Open University.  I am not sure that it is entirely congenial for me, but I am sure that I will get used to the system.  And at least I have a proper working space to get to terms with the intellectual challenges that the OU in all its right-on fervour can throw at me!

Working to learn

A rugged determination to continue my swimming saw me get up at a reasonable time, in spite of the “holiday” at the end of my three-day week.  By the time I had come back, done a little light studying of my new unit in the OU it was time for lunch.

Our first choice of restaurant was closed so we tried a restaurant that we had been in only once before.  And the result was good and bad.

Firstly the bad.  When I see a sign outside a restaurant advertising a menu del dia for twelve euros I expect it to be on sale and not, because the day was a holiday, to be given the choice of a meal more than twice the price!

However, I was inclined to get taken by the trick and go with the Halloween Menu that they were selling.  It was exceptional!

The meal was a series of tapas-like courses (including a rather nice soup) with a bottle of wine and a couple of cocktails all included in the price.  Admittedly we paid over sixty euros for a meal that we thought was going to cost us twenty-five – but it was a real experience.  We spent a very enjoyable time trying to work out just how much the whole meal would have cost in the UK.  I think that the element which got to us was the fact that the meal that we had was in an unexceptional little restaurant, but the quality of the food was haute cuisine.  And the sun was shining!

Friday too saw me making my early way to the swimming pool where, as usual, I was the only one actually swimming.

The torrential rain we have had recently has flooded areas in the grounds of the swimming pool that I use and I made the vast mistake of parking under the trees and in sticky, slippery mud.  My laziness in wanting to park near the pool meant that I was cleaning mud from my sandals all day and the carpet in the car is now disgusting!  Still, I do have the little high-powered car vacuum cleaner for just such occasions.  But I will have wait until the mud is dry before it takes more effort to get it off the carpet than I am prepared to make for short-term cleanliness.

This Friday will go down in history as the day when a determined attempt was made to bring order to the chaos which characterises the Third Floor.  With Toni at his most totalitarian we have made the sort of effort which means that the place is in an even greater mess than it was before we started, but it is the sort of mess which can be sorted out in the bright light of tomorrow morning.  Probably.

But tomorrow is to be given over to the name day of all the variants of Charles in Terrassa, so the “final” sorting out will have to be delayed some.

Toni has had the idea of incorporating my grandmother’s octagonal inlaid table into some tearoom concept so that we can sit around the table sipping Earl Grey tea when we have become satiated with our realms of respective study.  He is even talking of buying some sort of tasteful tablecloth to make his concept more convincing.

I remain sceptical, as I do not believe that we can put back in the space of the Third Floor what we have taken out and not put back into any sort of order that I understand!

I am also trying to come to terms with my agreement to do an extra week of supply teaching in our local English speaking school.  I am doing someone a favour and I might well, quite apart from the money involved, be doing something which is intelligently self-interested.  We shall see.

In a shamefaced capitulation to the forces of nature, I have worn jeans and a coat for some time during the day.  In bed I have sought the comfort of the duvet!  I, even I, am having to admit that it is not the summer.

However, today has been fine and we decided to go to our “local” for lunch where we had a superb view of the kite surfers who seem to have descended on Castelldefels in force for some sort of international competition.  They looked picturesque and compensate in some way for the poor service that we uncharacteristically had in our local haunt.

Tomorrow might be the public airing of our new gadgets.  As an iPad owner I rather think that I spurn the new mini-iPads which have been launched on a punch-drunk public reeling from the plethora of electrical stuff by which they are surrounded.  The mini seems absurdly overpriced, but that is not going to stop the dyed in the wool macophiles!  And even I feel pulled in that direction!  Still as a multiple Kindle owner I think I have nailed my colours to the mast!

Tomorrow I must try and remember to make sure that I have a sufficient number of clean, white shirts for my next week of work.

The end of the next part of the beginning of the end

On my (early) arrival at school I met Frank (from the School on the Hill) and had a chat which meant that the morning meeting hit me in the middle of my photocopying and caused a set of Year 7 material to go missing.

The thrust of the morning meeting was an announcement of, or rather encouragement about “Teaching Excellence Awards” which the company which runs the school has decided to institute.  This is a belated initiative following their introduction in England and Wales.  The headteacher emphasised that nominations could be self-nomination or for another person.

I totally reject such messy industry-driven initiatives.  These are out of place in a professional environment and are viciously divisive.  They cheapen the teaching profession and make it tawdry. 

The prize-giving ceremonies are pale imitations of the Oscar shenanigans, and the fact that there are various awards for films and filmmakers does not mean that they are a justification for teachers.  There are “good” commercial reasons for having a whole series of publicity heavy festivals in the film industry.  Education is not an industry.  The commercial incentive is not there and the teaching awards tend to accentuate (vide “Teach as though your hair is on fire”) the “dedicated” individual whose entire life is given over to education.

The link to recognition of pupils’ achievements not only academically but also in sporting achievements as a justification for teaching excellence awards is spurious because teachers are providing a professional service.  To my mind it is akin to instituting best patient awards for those individuals who get better more quickly than others!  And just as useful.  Teachers deal with living, sentient beings where there is a reciprocity of effort and the quantification of that relative effort is difficult.

Do we really want payment by results?  With the sophistication of statistics we are now given a series of predictions at Year 7 level which indicate the probably performance at Year 11.  With the use of “Value Added” assessment we can tell if a school is performing according to the outline direction and make adjustments – awards in this context seem at best irrelevant and at worst positively destructive.

Superlative individual teachers are wonderful human beings and their reward, surely, is the reaction of their pupils and in the way that they learn.  I am much, much more concerned about the sturdy professionalism of the majority of the profession who do a good job and also have a life outside education as well.

The presence of teaching “saints” in a school whose hallowed status is recognized by an award automatically turn the rest of the staff into a bunch of second class citizens and create conflict where a collegiate should exist.

And, to the question about what would happen if no member of staff nominated any other member of staff for an award, the headteacher said that he would nominate teachers himself.  A more certain way to sow discord I cannot imagine!

As one person perceptively pointed out in the meeting, she was more concerned about a general pay rise rather than the recognition of a single person or small group of persons.  Too bloody right!

My OU teaching materials have finally arrived and I have started the annotation.  The web sites are up and running and there is some communication between members of the incredibly disparate tutor group that my tutor, Roza, has to cope with.  So far, apart from residents of the North of England, I note that there are people in Malta and Italy as well as my good self in Spain.  I do not think that the tutor’s hope that we will meet soon is likely to be realized!

Today, Halloween is one of those depressing days when the rain and overcast nature of the weather make you think that the sun will never again shine.  However, I have faith in the way that the Spanish climate works and this cold snap must have its end soon – even if it is winter!

I have been told by the school that my presence will be needed next week so I will probably be here for another four days.  Not five.

Today, to add to the jollity of nations, there is a bus, underground and taxi strike.  Next week on Wednesday there will be a General Strike - hence my four-day week.

This school, like the School on the Hill will probably be open in spite of the horrendous conditions that will probably prevail.  In my view the school should be closed purely for Health & Safety concerns but, as David always took great delight in reminding me, “Remember Stephen, this is not Britain!”

Many of the kids have dressed up in various versions of what might pass as costumes for Halloween with some inventive and effective attempts – especially in the area of face painting.

My single student for my lesson second period is now ensconced in the IT room doing first hand material gathering from the web for a case study on cyclones and I with, I have to say an uncharacteristic selflessness have released a colleague from the durance vile of supervising the study area for the sixth form.  Her expression of astonished delight was something to witness when I actually had to encourage her to leave!

The only two other classes that I have to take today are, as far as I can work out, are during the parade of Halloween which should see me sitting pretty and doing very little.  I feel I deserve a little space after giving of myself so generously!

I did not, of course, have that little space.  I was dragooned into being a judge of the Halloween Parade which took over two of my teaching periods and was, I have to admit, very enjoyable.

The key factor in the whole enterprise was the control and restraint of the kids – high as kites at one moment and then brought back to reasonableness the next.  I shudder to think what the whole experience would have been like in an inner city secondary school in Britain!

My three-day week is now over and I am as exhausted as if I had been there since September!  Today has been one of those complex days when various things happen any one of which might have been sufficient to make the day interesting.

Firstly I have agreed to go back on Monday for a full week of supply.  This was certainly not my intention when I went there this week, but the request was made and it would have been churlish to have refused.  I think.

I also made the acquaintance of a part-time teacher was is a published authority on Art History and who has publishing links with David Hockney and who could talk about art and did.  She latched on to the fact that I could string together a few sentences on major artists with the sort of avidity that I would have shown if someone had said that they had been a fan of Nielsen’s orchestral music!  It was a delight to talk about art with someone who had worked in the National Gallery and who had also seen that precious jewel in exhibition terms, “The Post Impressionist Exhibition” in the Royal Academy.

My conversations with other teachers were valuable and refreshing and I feel as if I could have a place in the school – but an extra week will be more than enough.  And, in any case, I am off to the UK a day or so after the General Strike which is now in about a fortnight.

I even managed to get a scrap of learning done by making a few brief annotations in my first course book!

A day well spent.

Now to gird myself up to luxuriate in a four-day weekend!