Occasional Tales

Day off; day on. I thought, for a moment, that someone here had seen some sense. Friday has been cancelled, which is a relief because that’s my other worst day with endless classes in the afternoon. I had thought that someone was finally recognising that this term has dragged on and on and on, and had been made worse by the eight-day week after New Year. I also thought (but as a weak jest) that we’d have to come in on Saturday because we couldn’t possibly have (unofficial) time off without it being stolen off us. It turns out my feeble joke wasn’t a joke. Although most of us are off on Saturday, the main school is coming in on Sunday. It seemed that the shoots of humanity might be beginning to sprout, but someone poured weedkiller on them; and pissed on them; and ground the remains into the dirt. On the other hand, we’re not going to be teaching until the 20th. I’m waiting to be informed that we’ll have to be back in a day early. The term is ending messily. A whole bunc...

A Tale of Idiocy. Between one year and the next there’s typically a difference between the two pre-AL classes. Often this is a matter of ethos since they usually end up being fairly equal academically. There was almost no difference last year, and in previous years, there’s been a gap of about 2 to 3%. This year, though, it’s 5% and would be worse if pre-AL β didn’t have a real, live native speaker of English in the class, who is worth 1% or the class’s average. I’m still getting applications from students for summer programmes in the States even although the deadline was a week ago. More recent requests have come from cretinous Carlo and, today, lame-wit Lesley, who can’t string two brian [sic!] cells together between them. I’ve been rather too nice about some of the students I’ve written references for, but cretinous Carlo, who chatters to lack-wit Lesley all class, does nothing, and has a string of appalling exam results, was a dolt too far, and I wrote pretty much ex...

A student’s guide to speaking class. There has been another repercussion of Mr Bradford’s departure, which is the acquisition of some new students in the unwelcome speaking class that we do with the pre-InterBac students. The problem now is that not only is the class too large, but the boys massively outnumber the gormless girls in the group. I don’t know how I got lumbered with this class, but someone somewhere seems to have decided that instead of doing some CAS activity with the InterBac students themselves, some of us should have to take care of these lemons. “Let students take the lead,” we were told. Have they led? No. Not even slightly. I have to devise something for them every time. They’re not even my students; I have to suffer them last thing on a Tuesday; they’re an extra class which sucks time out of other, more important things and ensures that my hourly rate of pay (if you wish to calculate it in those terms) drops just that little bit more. Once again ...

Flat Allergy. It’s a real condition. The weekend did little to make any of us feel refreshed and revitalised. My eyes were worn out this afternoon as I dealt with five more of those blasted ΣΙΓ forms, which are meant to be in tomorrow. Thanks, kids, for letting me have them well ahead of time. I admit that I wrote some arrant crap for these ones: nothing that would be detrimental to their applications, but I really did write complete piffle. The news this morning was that Mr Bradford has scarpered. Claims to be allergic to his flat, and is now in Shenzhen. He only had another two weeks and could’ve had an honourable discharge. Apparently he left a bunch of stuff at Mr Looms door, including his bike. That had Mr Looms roaming around the office complaining about all the complications of owning a bike before more or less announcing that he would ride one. In the wake of Mr Bradford’s departure we have to babysit the Scions of Evil. There were three of them in the classroom ...

At least think of the children. China isn’t just a rather unpleasant authoritarian empire that resembles a coop full of retarded chickens. It’s also one of those countries in the world where human decency happens to other people. My first National Day Holiday here was preceded by an eight-day week, but the key word is “preceded”. We had a few days off over New Year, but because of the miserable, puritanical attitude of the empire’s tyrant overlords to time off, we lost last weekend. I can well remember that first eight-day week and how trying it was, but at least it preceded the holiday. This one followed, and the benefits of having a few days off came to nothing before last weekend was even over. We also had exams this week, but the combination of marking, dull, tiresome invigilations, pointless babysitting classes, and general end-of-term ennui was enough to have us wilting. I hate to think what it was like for my students. And at last we look out over the plains o...

Well, sunshine, that isn’t you. It’s that time of the year when students come wanting references for programmes at American universities over the summer. These are the sorts of programmes where the capacity of mummy and daddy’s wallets to vomit money outweighs the academic mediocrity of the little blots who are applying. I often use the comments section to write missives to pupils about their performance in class, although I am assuming that they even bother trying to read what I write. There isn’t so much blottery this year apart from one of the indolent numb-skulls in pre-AL β who seems like he’s permanently stoned. He is, I think, one of those pupils who grossly overrates his academic abilities, and who is likely to say things such as “It’s too easy”, but only get 51% in tests. The pre-AL students are easy to deal with, but I’ve had one of the Ass students want me to write a reference of up to 500 words for him more or less today. 500 words is not that much to me, but...