Occasional Tales

Even though we don’t have the time to do it. With the re-accreditation in progress, there are even more demands on us than before. Our long days are even longer on Mondays and Wednesdays because of the meetings we have to have after school dealing with the IBO’s interminable paperwork. The one thing that will probably be all right is the paperwork, but the other things such as the library and the website have gone nowhere. The order for books seems to have got no further than some useless Chinese supplier, who either marked our choices as not available (which I take to mean, banned in the inGlorious Motherland), not checked, or, well, nothing. Why couldn’t we have gone to Amazon? (Simple answer, the people in charge are probably looking for cheap copies of the books and pocketing the difference.) The main school killed off the idea of a website for our programme, although I think permission has now been granted. We’re meant to be incorporating CAS into class time, but have h...

Horrible to see you again. The conference really was a repeat of every other conference we’re had for the past five years with nothing memorable actually coming out of it. Or now, three weeks later, I can’t recall anything, which I take to mean that nothing meaningful was said. I do remember I had a very very bad Saturday headache which lasted at least 14 or 15 hours. My original timetable was a nightmare of six classes a day Monday to Wednesday, and a total of three on Thursday and Friday. The new version ended up being much like last year’s with all too many classes at the end of the day, although it is at least better spaced out. I got an extra IB2 class as expected, and an IB1 class I wasn’t expecting. No AS classes for the first time ever, but that’s not such a loss. It means that I’m more of an IB teacher than an A-level one even though I’m ostensibly employed as the latter. My original IB2 class has grown because I’ve inherited refugees from Ms Giggles. My new IB ...

And it began early. It’s not even term time and already we’re back at school till half four every day this week. There’s good, bad, and ugly. The good is that Vlad is not such a bad chap. The bad is that the timetables were revised, and mine got worse, with classes to the bitter end four days a week. Since then, the timetable has had to undergo further revision, but I’m not holding out much hope that my timetable will change significantly and for the better. The ugly is the bullying headmaster. During the holidays, I heard that the parents had to give him a smack or so because he’d gone and signed a contract with some other company in spite of the present contract having another three years to run. Of course, someone has to be punished, and we’re the whipping boys. I assume that the contract has always included some statement about school hours, but it’s never been rigidly enforced. We’ve even had an informal agreement with the school that let most of us go a bit ear...

Class now? Since when? I normally see Pre-AL α 8th period on a Monday. I’m sitting in the office lamenting the brevity between periods when one of the students arrives and informs me that we have class. In spite of checking the revised timetable later on, I find that there’d been no such change indicated on my copy. It appears that some of this year’s Pre-AL students are as overwrought about test results as their contemporaries were two years ago. I can see that the speaking exams are going to be a trial for some of them. It was all happiness in the office. Mr T was sick again (making me seem the model of healthy vitality) and complaining about the absence of café culture, and the perceived unfriendliness of the locals. Mr B and the Cyberman were devising parodies of songs to mock the shortcomings of the city. Mrs S was pissed off at Mr S for being a dick when she needed him to be helpful. In other words, it’s the shit which happens at about this time of year when th...