I have class from 8-10 on Thursday morning, same group of kids for two hours. It was a nightmare. About halfway through, I melted down on them and started screaming: "Listen, you either say 'I don't understand the question' or 'I don't know the answer to the question,' but I can't stand any more of this staring into space! This two hours feels like two YEARS, this class is torture, and if you're going to sit there like lumps, I have better things to do with my time." Then I pulled out a stack of papers, started grading, and ignored them for the rest of the class.
At the end of class a girl came up to my desk to explain that she didn't have her assignment to turn in (a one-page journal entry on the person she most admires), because, as she said, she couldn't think of anything to say and anyhow, we just keep doing the same thing all the time. "That's interesting," I said. "What do you mean?" Then she said again, "I mean it's like a wheel that turns, we just repeat the same thing over and over." I asked her several times for clarification, but she couldn't explain it to me and finally changed the subject to her aunt who lives in Cape Cod. "So write about that," I said. "I don't care, just write something."
After this I have a three-hour break. If I had a car, I could go home, have lunch, relax, but with the buses being as fabulous as they are, I just sit at school. I made some copies, graded some papers, then went to the cafeteria. I sat by myself at lunch because none of the other teachers talk to me; I swear, it is like living high school all over again. I had turkey with some sort of gravy-ish stuff, peas, and two bites of quiche before I thought I'd throw up and left. I get disapproving looks for eating my lunch in twenty minutes, but it's pretty nasty, so I don't feel the need to linger.
I wandered back to the teachers' room and met our new English assistant. Yes, the new one. If you'll recall, the American assistant quit before she even got here (smart girl). Then they hired the 60-ish Scottish lady, who quit after two weeks. Now we have a forty-something lady from Chile as our English assistant. (I suppose this should surprise me, but these days it takes a lot. Remember, our Spanish assistant is from Israel.) The Chilean lady asked me how the kids' speaking level was, and I told her I had no idea since I can't get them to talk. Ever. She said, "Well, I have 13 years' experience, and there are special methods you can use to engage them." Her tone was so condescending that my first instinct was to bitch-slap her snotty Chilean self, but instead I just smiled and wished her the best of luck with that. I might have even meant it.
At one o'clock, classes resumed; I had my obnoxious junior science students who were... obnoxious. I managed (barely) to get through the lesson, then I had my senior science class, who mostly just ignored me. After that I had my class of four sophomores who speak more German than French. They copied some questions off the overhead, answered them, and we left.
Then I sat around the teachers' room for another hour until the Big Meeting for my senior misfits class. They're so bad that we had to get all of their teachers together-- and the principal-- and essentially go down the list and determine who would go before the "discipline council," who would get brief suspensions and who would get threatened with brief suspensions.
Now, the fun part was before the meeting started. The class's boss teacher organized the meeting, and at one point she was fretting because everyone was waiting and the principal was... walking in the opposite direction. So after a few minutes, the boss teacher left, then came back all flustered because the principal had told her, essentially, "I'll be there when I finish my cigarette." The boss teacher declared this "scandalous and indecent," at which point another teacher argued that the principal should be allowed to smoke if she wants to, and the boss teacher countered with, "I don't care if she's smoking. I care that we're waiting. If she were standing out there eating a croissant I'd still be pissed off."
Frankly, I think I'd be much happier here if I could spend all my time listening to faculty members complain about each other, rather than wasting my time with these water-carbon lumps known as students. The teachers here are bold, they absolutely crack me up.
When the principal came into the meeting, she immediately started mocking the assistant principal (who wasn't there) and did an impression of his address to the dorm students after one of them threw a bottle from his window and hit a construction worker in the head. (For the record, the kid did it on purpose.) She recited the entire speech and then, while the other teachers were gasping for breath between peels of laughter, she dismissed the man with, "It's like he thinks he works with four-year-olds!"
Other tasty tidbits from the principal: "So is there anyone in this class who does more than warm a chair?" "So why is she here? We're the only school who would take her, aren't we? I knew it." "Ah yes, Lycée Sud, where previously docile children learn to be insolent and disrespectful. Well, at least they learned something."
So we finally end the meeting at 6:23, and I sit in the cold and dark until my bus comes twenty minutes later. I got home at seven p.m., having left the house at seven a.m., and if I weren't off on Fridays, I would be suicidal.
And despite the fact that I had been asked twice to meet with this principal during the week, she didn't say anything to me at the meeting. It's quite possible she has no idea who I am. Wouldn't surprise me a bit.
One more week down. Hang in there!
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