Jack of All Trades

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 single class or even part of a class, but I wanted to take a double. When I run out of time, I simply move on to the next topic because the class ought to have covered enough of the material not to need to do all of it.

Ms Giggles goes to the bitter end, not, it seems, even considering that there may not be enough time for everything. Our syllabus last year was hugely ambitious, and there was a lot of it for which the time was simply not available and we simply abandoned it.

She also insists on vacuuming up her limited time with extra-curricular activities which might be described as worthy. I may have been reminded of NaNoWriMo this afternoon, but I’m the first person to admit that I just don’t have the time for it, or the energy. If Ms Giggles wasn’t so busy with other things, she’d probably try doing that too.

Some of this comes down to Catholic guilt (and I do mean real Catholic guilt). Some of this appears to be multitasking. When I try it, I recognise how inefficient I am at the task on which I should be focusing. Ms Giggles is like a Chinese bank teller. Someone else barges up to the window, and she starts dealing with that person instead of telling them to wait their turn and to stop delaying everyone else. There was an article in the Guardian a few years ago (probably longer than that) about the inefficiency of multitasking, and Ms Giggles is ultimately inefficient because her attention is divided by so many things.

I admit that I should probably get mechanical about my teaching, scheduling certain classes for particular things each week. But I wonder whether it would be possible to cover everything adequately or it would all be relatively superficial. Writing, for example, has been treated in just such a fashion. We tell students how to do a piece of writing and leave them to do it. We don’t have time for multiple drafts to help them improve their responses to the task. As the final exams near, we should probably revise all the task types, but that won’t be more than a transitory reminder.

There are other interruptions as well. This week, for example, there are the first of the official speaking tests, although these are a special event. Nonetheless, this cuts into about half the lessons and is an interruption we can add to the monthly tests. I probably ought to be dealing with the next text types for classes at both levels this week or, well, sometime.

I suppose my philosophy of teaching is to do what I can in the time available and not to get fussed if some things have to go by the bored… Sorry, board.