The loud screeching may have gone

But there are still stones in my sandals.

It’s so much nicer to be in a giggles-free office this year. It can still be a bit noisy because of our North American friends, but there isn’t that underlying sense that one person has to be the centre of attention and that all business is her business as well.

That’s not to say there aren’t issues. Dmitry still isn’t show any real leadership skills. We haven’t had a departmental meeting since the first or second week of term. It’s clear that the Americans aren’t interested in co-operating beyond occasionally asking me about how something is done. It’s clear that the Lone-Star Kid is doing his own thing, which appears to mean that he’s wasting time reinventing the English B wheel.

When I told Dmitry that I was moving on, he said that he was doing presentations, although he didn’t elucidate. I get the impression that presentations are a.) a lazy way of teaching and b.) a veneer which is the vanguard to the delusion that is student-centred learning. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that pupils may occasionally instruct each other to their profit, but when it comes to EFL teaching, the ignorance of one is likely to quell the knowledge of another unless the abilities of the two self-learners is fairly equal.

Once again, the Americans seem to be pursuing their own agenda.

We’re also back to the book-is-boring school of thought. I’m well aware that the book used by the IGCSE students is inadequate and dated, but neither of the newbies knows what they’re doing, which is why they keep resorting to their own agenda.

The other day, the Lone-Star Kid said that he and Dmitry had been talking about SAT English, although I don’t know whether the intention was to do it on top of everything else or to have extra classes in it. I assume that it’d be optional.

It’s a frustrating topic because when we did something like this about five years ago, I thought that it might actually be sufficiently welcome to hold the attention of the A-level students, who had previously had an appalling record of attendance in their A2 year, and a fairly appalling attitude towards English in general. Sad to say, it didn’t work probably because it demanded a level of English that was well beyond them at the time. It was also the year that convinced me that what they really needed was a general, intermediate-level EFL course with an exam at the end.

The Lone-Star Kid is the anti-Giggles in that where she complained about being cold, he keeps turning all the fans on in the office, and the air con, which he sets to about 17° or so even though it’s now reached that time of year when it’s not warm enough to need either the former or the latter. Even Dmitry isn’t too chuffed about it.

What can I see in the future? Problems because the boys think they know best. If her Ladyship was here, she’d be making sure that we were all singing from the same hymn sheet, but I’m already ahead of the others simply by being where I’m meant to be. Like Ms. Giggles last year, they’re too busy wasting time that isn’t there to waste.