Occasional Tales

 I’m getting old? The management still manages to be annoying. There are now so few of us that we really can have our own classrooms. I expected to be left where I was, which is convenient, but instead will be relegated to the room which is the farthest from my office. I’ll mostly be teaching Year 11 as they repeat the course they did in Year 10 because we don’t have anything else for them and because we don’t have the teachers to offer IGCSE English Lit any longer. The whole department has been reduced to the two of us. At least the book will be different. If we had any sense, they ought to do Core in Year 10 and Extended in Year 11, but the management scrapped that perhaps because the pupils who used to do the Core exam were volunteers who had the wit to recognise their incompetence in English. But I’ll also be teaching half of Year 12 after discovering last year that I can’t teach and mark the EGP all by myself even with a reduced number of halfwits. Marking essay answers was ta...

It is a far, far better thing I do now. We’ve already replaced Colonel Blimp with Colonel Blimp Mk. II (i.e., another AP sort with, in all likelihood, no IB experience), hence that post didn’t get advertised. The Screeching Blimpette was meant to be leaving, but with Sarasvati departing, she’s apparently decided to apply for the post of DP Co-ordinator with Colonel Blimp’s backing. (In fact, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this encouragement was quite deliberate; the misguided favouritism of Vlad’s day is still alive and kicking.) This has caused consternation to the point that although I don’t expect to be successful (beyond applying), I’m going to apply for the job myself. Mr Bradford and I have both been talking about doing this, and I’ve had Reggaeman ask me to throw my hat in the ring. As I said, I’m not expecting to get very far, especially if (as I hope) someone with proper experience applies, but the Blimpette’s sole qualification is her belief that she’s qualifie...

Is this stupidity I see before me? Our numbers are way down, but this is, it appears, because of limits on the number of morons the school is allowed to recruit. At the moment, we don’t know whether the IB programme will survive. There are other factors involved and no resolution for the moment. But even if the programme does live to fight another day, the numbers will be tiny because the days of 120+ schoolchildren have become history. In all likelihood, it won’t survive, which is when I have to decide whether it’s worth persevering with an English programme with no official exams, or whether I try to find a post in an international school where the IB programme is a proper sort of affair. (We do try to follow the principles of the IBO as best we can, but in truth, we’re up against because the DP programme only works effectively at international schools; it doesn’t really work with imperial citizens.) I do what I can with my department, but it’s like herding deranged stray cats...

Hats are back in fashion. Too many months have passed since I last updated this blog, but in spite of the second term being short, it dragged more than Long John Silver after he lost his wooden leg. It continued to be busy with Colonel Blimp treating us as if we were a bunch of scattered-brained children who had decided that the start of exams marked the start of the hols. even though some of us still had classes to teach. The first obsession was hats. Everyone has to have a hat, although I already had three and they’re all important. The colonel wanted to take the EE away from me, but Sarasvati wasn’t having any of it, it’d make no sense, and my proposed heir refused the job. I’m also still the teacher-librarian for official purposes even though Mr Droopy was meant to be taking that over, but he doesn’t know what he’s doing and doesn’t understand the honorary nature of the role. Mrs Blimp got one of the other important hats, which attributes to her efficiency, but it could also...

I don’t remember voting for the monkey in the paper hat, but I’m sure I did. When the cardinals gathered to elect a new pope, we thought that Lincoln Green would probably get the job by default. We knew the school didn’t want Ms. Giggles even although in many respects, she was a potentially ideal candidate. (Aside: She might’ve been the better candidate, but we also had no problems imagining rule by diktat under her wise and benevolent governance.) But it was the outside candidate who got the job. Why? Probably because the new pontifex maximus wanted his own man in place even although he (the new pope) has no InterBac experience. [ 30.08.14. I also heard that Ms. Giggles did not acquit herself well in the interview.] In addition to this omission, he’s allegedly rather young. Of course, he may be a natural at the job, but I suspect the rest of us will be there to guide him to the right decisions. I won’t be too surprised if I end up reprising my role in Fuzhou as the wise ad...

The draag. [Etiam sic!] Thanks to our start last Sunday, every day this week has felt like tomorrow, and apart from today, none of them has had the tomorrow I actually want. The first week has been the usual clinging on for dear life because we have little or nothing to amuse the little darlings. We turned up at school last week, but were hampered by being the only people at school. Couldn’t get any large-scale photocopying done because Mr Photocopy wasn’t there. I think that I really need to do something at the end of this academic year so that I have material for the start of the following term and thus don’t need to do anything. By then, I ought to know what I’m teaching the following year. I lost another couple of students to classis inferior today. One should’ve stayed in my class, but the other was probably on my list of C-students who shouldn’t be in classis superior because she is, in truth, shallow and vacuous, and believes that every class should be some kind of...

No, you’re not. You’re self-deluding. I’ve seen the numbers of HL and SL students for next year, and they don’t make for encouraging reading. 77% of the pre-AL students have opted for HL, which means that there are going to be quite a number who shouldn’t be doing HL at all and will struggle to cope. HL students have to read two works of English lit. and do more in the externally assessed exams, but only have the same amount of time as the SL students. Mr Looms suggested that the counsellors are to blame, which might be true, but why would students be going to them about it? I told the little darlings that if they’re likely to get an A or B in the exam, they should consider HL, but as usual there seem to be some self-deluding nitwits. (There were some such idiots this year, but the general criterion for determining the choice seems to have been laziness. A number of [lazy] students who should’ve done HL have been doing SL instead. It appears that this trend has probably not ...

Do you really mean you don’t understand? PreAL α’s Learner Diaries (which I wasn’t really expecting at all) this week made several references to the listening practice which I’ve been giving students every Friday in recent weeks. The comments are either that it’s boring or they fell asleep. New flash! Listening is practical not entertaining, you idiots. I give the PreAL classes listening on a Friday partly because that’s my worst day of the week and I prefer to let someone else take the strain, and partly because they need the practice. I’m not giving them listening because I’m being capricious or lazy, but they do seem to be confused about the purpose of the classes. PreAL α seem particularly confused, but they also strike me as being a particularly arrogant group of little emperors and empresses. I’ll be returning both classes’ exams tomorrow, but with injunctions about seeing me in the office next week if they have further questions about the answers, which I know w...

Does anyone care? Some of the holiday has been spent marking exams. I haven’t done that to the exclusion of other things, but I have maintained a reasonably steady pace and finished off Pre-AL α. The first writing task is (these days) usually a letter to a friend, which is designed to test pupils’ ability to write informal English. Usually the response is full of clichés and witless drivel, and I wasn’t disappointed. But this time something else was noticeable – memorised answers. A particular group of girls, who have possibly seen this topic before (from a certain source on line), all produced very similar answers in that what they wrote suggested a level of English beyond their present capabilities. I don’t know what the official view of such answers is. Perhaps if the answer responds to the topic, then recitation is perfectly all right; if the answer makes no reference to the topic, then there are problems. Most of the letters were related to the topic even although t...

Columns. The Ass classes are meant to be writing a column on gαy marriage. I had Ass β in the computer room  for a double (split by lunch) yesterday. Wise but lazy students posted nothing. Less wise but just as lazy students posted something. One moron wrote one word every two minutes and another wrote one word every four minutes. A third clown posted the entry which he should’ve posted on the first occasion I got them to do some blog writing. There were also two girls who decided that SATs were more important than the class after lunch. No, you cretins, SATs are of secondary importance to all else. Go join an AP programme or go to the States and attend high school there where they matter; otherwise stop wasting class time with something that’s neither relevant nor important. What annoyed me about these two was the excuse that they didn’t know what to write. They have several articles from the Guardian and a list of features which characterise a column. They have pl...

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...

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...

Isn’t quite over. 120 pieces of writing; about 16,000 words; a little over a week. It will haunt me in my dreams tonight as I have pieces of paper chasing after me while I fend them off with a red pen. The average for the Ass classes is probably about 15. That’s probably a little on the low side, but not by much and after all the crap I’ve had to wade through, I’m disinclined to care. I dished out a zero to mute Myrtle for plagiarism, and I’m sure there were others who deserved the same fate. In fact, I think it was mute Myrtle who happened to have an exchange with self-deluding Sid during the course of the exam. (Unfortunately conditions for the writing part of the exam were less than ideal and students had to sit in their usual configuration. I’m sure there was a deal more cheating than I was able to observe. Again, I don’t care because Chinese students are so rubbish at cheating that it does them no favours.) Self-deluding Sid initially seemed quite capable, but has turne...

The writing is gooder; the ideas are worser. I’ve finished going through Ass β’s writing. I haven’t actually given it any marks just yet, but have made comments about the four parts so that I can go back later and do the business. They’re still going to end up with fairly good marks for language, but the marking criteria for SL are so nice that ‘ Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.’ It’s very hard not to get prizes. They’ll also get reasonable marks for message, although I must keep an eye on my comments where I’ve observed that the writing is disorganised. The one part where they could be punished, format, is also worth the fewest marks. Again, the InterBac programme aims to flatter because for the sort of money it charges, it needs to feign results which will please the mummies and daddies who are spending copious sums of money on their imbeciles. However, my remarks about the parts of their writing should leave them in no doubt as to their true comp...

There will be some notting. We had a staff meeting during morning exercise time, which is far more sensible than having meetings at lunchtime. It was a repeat screening of yesterday’s departmental meeting. Students shouldn’t be allowed to sleep in class. True. I think it’s rude of them to do so, but Chinese students are so stupid that telling them not to sleep is only effective for the brief period of time it takes them to forget that they were told not to do so. Then they must be told again. “This class is boring,” they’d like to say. Perhaps if they participated actively and displayed some degree of self-motivation instead of cabbage-like idiocy, they’d find it less boring. By the same token, not every class is going to be screamingly interesting. Most never are, but are pedestrian steps on the way to some end. We should give them homework once a week. I have given them some homework over the past couple of weeks, but have only been gradually clearing it away because o...

Who cares? I got exclamation marks!!! I was waiting for the lift when I remembered I’d left today’s Powerpoint presentation on my laptop, but had no way of getting back inside, restarting the machine, and copying the file without losing too much time. It didn’t matter. I did the whole thing manually. Got to school and Mr Foucault is reminding us that we start at 7.25am. “No,” we said, “we start at 7.30.” No, it’s 7.25 . “There was this other mail message which not everyone got.” After some running this way and that, we started at 7.30am. Forty minute classes really are too short. I’d planned the timing quite carefully, but could not get everything done. I’ve started showing the Ass classes The Social Network, but thought I ought to check the English subs beforehand. Oops! They were not done to a professional standard. No subs for the Asses. I expect all the little darlings will be watching the film with Chinese subs and ripping reviews off the Internet for Friday’s writing. ...

Less lunch. We were supposed to have switched to our new timetable this week. After last night’s meeting, Mr V gave me my new timetable, which was new for less than 24 hours. The time of the first class has now been restored to its usual insanely early hour, but it also means that ten minutes have been lost from lunchtime, which is annoying because the actual time available starts looking quite cramped once I lop about five to ten minutes off just to get back to the office. In addition to that, I’m going to have two extra classes a week to make up for the time lost because classes are now so short. I don’t have a huge problem with that apart from the extra classes being a.) last thing on Thursday and Friday, and b.) standalone classes. Forty minutes is enough to do very little at most. I certainly don’t want pre-AL β last thing in the afternoon. It was observation day today. I thought, overall, that things went a little better, but I’d say the vegetables did nothing when...

It’s enough to send a chap east. Yesterday one of my colleagues who, in spite of the brevity of the term so far, has been vocal in his inclination to go to the airport and leap straight on the next plane flying out to Sanity, hinted that he’d made up his mind that enough was enough. Today he officially announced that he was buggering off at the end of term. His two reasons for departing were inadequate remuneration and the utter hopelessness of teaching the Upper Sixth. It seems that Mr Bradford has expenses and that what he’s paid doesn’t cover it. I can understand why he’d find the Upper Sixth soul-destroying. That’s the reason I won’t go near them. Do we not get paid enough? Frankly, no. I may get paid a Western salary, but I’ve just reached the average salary in the UK and if I did have expenses, I wouldn’t be earning enough. I also feel insulted that it’s going to take me another six years to earn what my colleague who teaches economics is currently paid. It’s not that ...

Are we feeling thick today? When the vultures… I mean, AQMs descend next week, they’re meant to be observing Ass 2. There are some good students in the class, but as a group they’re a bunch of lazy asses. I’m trying to guide them through review writing in such a way that they’ve done a kind of first draft before they… All right, I won’t pretend that their first draft won’t be all glued together in pretence that it’s also their final draft. But the idea was that they’d build up an article step-by-step. They’d do all the donkey work first, and then give me something which rises above the usual level of idiocy which classes seem determined to produce. I do have one other “trick” up my sleeve, but I’m not sure it’ll really work. But that’s not going to happen even although I’ve warned them that this particular type of writing is going to be in the test.

Thou which art so annoying. In theory, I’m meant to be objective when I’m marking students’ writing. I do try to be as objective as possible by not letting student A’s odious tickdom blind me to the merits of their drivel. I try to give all of them advice which will lead to their improvement even although I have no vested interest in any of them doing well and succeeding. I have a colleague who admits that she has to stop marking writing because the cretinous nonsense which she sees infuriates her so much that if she doesn’t stop, she’ll go apoplectic. I know how she feels. This afternoon I persisted in finishing off some writing so that it wouldn’t be hanging over my head this weekend. I really wanted to go home, but I waded my way through the lack of a decent opening sentences, an absence of evidence, and want of appointment decorum to get these gems out of the way. Perhaps my expectations are misleading me. One of the two Pre-AL classes is quite good, and the other, a...