Occasional Tales

Mistress of none. Ms Giggles continues her annoying ways. She is so loud that she cut through the noise at one recent social gathering, and on the street a few days late, I was able to hear her three to five metres after passing her. She continues to announce that she’s tidying her desk (no one cares) and that she’s going to have to come in at the weekend (again, no one cares). I often have to do work-related things at the weekend, but I don’t announce it as if everyone should be praising me for my virtue. I realised on Friday that Ms Giggles is one of those teachers who thinks that she must cover absolutely everything in class. If the syllabus says “Jump”, her response is “How high?” She also insists on doing extra stuff in class, which seems to do little apart from vacuuming up the time which should be being used for what we’re actually supposed to be doing. Sometimes I do waste time in class. I managed to drag out a couple of lessons last week, which might’ve taken a sing...

And no, you can’t use class time to revise. I had eight pupils missing from class today. I know that one or two have had official permission to be absent, but this was one of those occasions when several took it upon themselves to disappear. A mail message this afternoon informed us to be nice to this particular group of egos because they’re off to do their SATs on the 5th of October. I still don’t understand why Chinese school children do SATs on top of everything else. It’s an exam for American school children who have been through the American school system. While Chinese pupils may get 100% in the maths exam, they usually make arses of themselves in English. (That said, some of them still get exceptionally good marks overall.) What I’d like to know is whether American universities are even remotely interested in the results Chinese pupils get in SATs. I’m not convinced that any of my pupils need to do this exam, and suspect that this belong right up there beside the fall...