Occasional Tales

Hotel China. The latest wheeze is that we may here almost to the middle of July. Why? Well, it seems that some muppet in the Local Education Authority possibly thinks that terms should be a certain number of weeks in length regardless of the fact that the year is still 365 days. The first term was ridiculously long, not ending till the 6th of February. Because the Spring Festival is based on the quirks of the lunar calendar, second terms can often be quite short, and this year the second term is even shorter than usual. Nonetheless, by the end of June we will still have done the same number of days that we always do. No time will have been lost, and quite why we’d still have to be here till the 10th of July, I can’t begin to say. There’s also a good chance that none of our pupils would even be here, or so few that classes would’ve become a monstrous joke. We’re hearing mixed reports from other centres. Teachers at two nearby schools would be departing in June, but at on...

HL vs. SL, anyone? There will only be four of us teaching English next year. I don’t think it’ll affect the workload that much [08.06.15. I was right]. I may pick up a replacement for my A2s or, possibly, won’t get any new classes. It depends on whether there are HL and SL classes for the AS students. The intention is to allow only the most academically competent students to enter the IB programme, while the rest do A-levels. It’s possible that some clever, but lazy students will choose to do A-levels instead, but in theory, the A-level students mainly won’t have the brains to do HL. If this is the case, it’s possible the number of classes we have will increase to more usual numbers, but the actual number of classes won’t change. In addition to this, I’ve been told there’s going to be streaming and school exams. This means that there will be at least one class that is, in truth, remedial. Whether they’ll do some entirely different programme, I don’t know, but they’d have to ...

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 b...

I’m nearly middle-aged, but try to keep up, you lot. The past two weeks have been non-stop. Part of this stems from moving on to a new new topic, viz. government. I’ve been producing PowerPoints and worksheets for it almost without ceasing in order to stay ahead of the game. I’ve dealt with the British government and have turned my attention to the American one. Ms Giggles declared her ignorance of the former, which she seemed to think excused her from doing anything, and because she’s fallen behind again, she’s not going to be producing anything about the US government until too late. I think the next time we have a meeting, I’m going to insist on knowing where things are at. Morrigan is more or less at the same stage I’m at; Dmitry and Ms Giggles are the gods alone know where; Mr Bradford may be on track. That means that having started on my next labour today, I’m probably going to have to deal with the structure of the US government by myself. I’m already thinking ab...

It’s four years ago once more. When we became an InterBac centre, English B was extended to the A-level students as a way of trying to counter their disdain for English, which increased in their A2 year to the point that teachers would re-enter the office and announce that they’d seen < insert a number in single figures > students in their class. English B was meant to keep the A-level students from straying because there was an official exam at the end of it. Last year, my combined A2 class managed to attend classes regularly until about a month before the exams when the dimmer bulbs probably tried to make up for their lack of work over the preceding two years by vanishing into various dark corners where they no doubt remained just as cretinous and unenlightened. This year, I’m a little more confident that my A2 class will stick with me. But as for next year, I have less confidence about AS2, who are the most infantile class I’ve ever had. I got so fed up with th...

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...

An early start. I’ve been lax in my blogging, not just here but elsewhere, too, perhaps having reached a point where I have nothing new to say or see no point in saying anything because saying something achieves nothing. Term ended like a slow terminal illness, and died by inches, one millimetre at a time. Apart from one class in the final week, I had no teaching at all for most of June because of changes to the post-exam timetable. There were things to be done, but I got on and did them, and then the term resumed its terminal decline. In fact, it died two days sooner in one of those classic Chinese moments when some student comes and tells us in the course of some unrelated conversation that the final day is Wednesday. My reaction was one of scepticism, but after some research, it turned out to be true, although who knows when we would have been informed. However, knowing what the school can be like, I won’t be at all surprised if we have to work the weekend before the star...