As the train comes crawling into the station
Next stop, the holidays.
It’s now February and we’re still at school because Chinese New Year is probably the latest it’s ever been. Under normal circumstances, school would’ve finished a week or two ago.
Thus, this term has been over five months long (with all the breaks at the start of term apart from a couple of extra days for Christmas and New Year). Next term will feel very short because we’ll have the individual orals and the mocks in March, a normalish sort of April, and then exams across May and June.
A possible consequence of a short second term was its extension into July, but that threat seems to have vanished. Such a proposal seems to have been based on the notion that… I don’t know. Has the length of the year changed? No. Would the end of term at the end of June mean that we’d had less time at school? No. I can only assume that because of the rigid thinking which affects the Empire, the aims of the first and second terms are restricted to those terms and their boundaries cannot possibly be adjusted.
As for our goal of trying to complete the first-year programme by the time of the monthly tests, we might just do it, but I think that that’s been a piece of tomfoolery that we didn’t need. It overlooks the fact that the IB1s don’t have any official final exams and it overlooks the text types which need to be done at least monthly.
The text types are going to be done differently next year. Last year, we’d have them write a text type ahead of time as part of the monthly test so that we wouldn’t be inundated with marking. It worked quite well. This term I’ve been getting classes to write the text types as homework, but that has meant trying to mark them and the exams as well.
On top of that, I’ve had to create lessons for new material so that it’s seemed that I’ve been doing nothing but school work from one week’s end to the next
Instead of doing this (if I can’t persuade Dmitry to go back to the old system), I’m going to have students do the text types as homework in the months when we don’t have exams, or I’m going leave such matters until the exams. The problem then is that some pupils will choose one text type, and some a different one; and there’s always the problem that an entire class may all do the same task (as my IB1s did this term). But if I don’t do something, I’ll be spending another term doing incessant marking.
The word on the street is that we’ll probably have about forty IB1s next year. The current year 1s have a reputation for being thick and arrogant. While I’m hoping to continue with English B, I may not be able to avoid the Camp Runamok English Programme (Camp Runamok Anglo Programme? Geddit?) which has been mentioned a few times. (And who’s going to devise that?)
Quite a lot of teachers are leaving at the end of the year, roughly about a third or so. Most of our office is departing, and most of science is going, too. As far as I’m currently aware, maths will remain unchanged, which would be a first for several years.
Ms Giggles will be leaving, which is a huge relief. She’s not hasn’t endeared herself to anyone over the past two years. Her insistence on reading out the inane, unfunny sort of rubbish that her pupils write and then shrieking with laughter is not appreciated, especially when I’m tired.
As for Dmitry, his tenure as Englischführer has hardly been distinguished. We should’ve had a good many more departmental meetings than we’ve had, and we’ve lacked cohesion. Ms Giggles has her own agenda (her way or the wrong way) and Dmitry never asks about English B. Lincoln Green is less concerned with English B than he is with IGCSE, and is forever getting PowerPoints off me. Morrigan and I have been trying to co-ordinate to some extent.
However, too much has come from me, which is not a good thing if I’m pressed for time because it all becomes a bit mechanistic. Contributions from others have been been few and far between, although I’m sure Ms Giggles has been re-editing my efforts. Still don’t know what Dmitry does, but he never talks to me about his classes. He just gets the next handout and, er…
Another week and we’re done. In fact, we’re overdone.
Comments