Fight!

Today I attended that event dreaded by all teachers, the departmental meeting. I don't know why they wanted me there; there were two items on the agenda and neither concerned me. The first had to do with our new assistante. I'd been looking forward to the arrival of the assistant since the beginning of the school year. Typically, an assistant is a recent college grad who gives conversation classes in their native language. They work 12 hours a week and get paid enough to prevent starvation. This is the program I did in Tours seven years ago, and after a rocky few months, I loved it. (Let's hope that cycle repeats itself.) At my school in Tours, we had two American assistants as well as an Italian, a Costa Rican, a Brazilian and a Russian.

As further evidence of my school's general dysfunction, our Spanish assistant is from Israel (huh?) and our American assistant quit before she ever got here. That's all we've got. So I've been pretty disappointed about that. Then today Stéphane introduced me to our new assistant, who kind of appeared out of the blue. She's 60 years old and Scottish, so to say I was a mite surprised is an understatement. She's lived in France for at least 10 years, and she can only work at our school on Tuesday.

So, since I only have two classes on Tuesday, there's no way I can use her. A couple of lucky teachers have a full load on Tuesday, so they benefit enormously. (I'm trying hard not to be bitter, particularly since these teachers also have the post-grad classes who leave to start internships in a couple of weeks. So their teachers will just be free. And getting paid like they're still working.)

Anyway, the best part came at the end, when there was a huge fight about who should be the department chair. I've missed out on the backstory so I'm not really sure what's going on, but I know that voices were raised, doors were slammed, all while I sat in the corner drawing stick people and wondering how soon I could leave to catch the bus home.

Good times!