Occasional Tales

Examinations Law. It’s true. I finished the second-year options some time ago and have been trying to find ways of filling in time. So far this term, that hasn’t been difficult because we’ve had various interruptions. The mocks, for example, were stretched out to over a week, and then there was Qingming, but that leaves three weeks of time filling. I used this week on a deliberately long quiz about the text types because they’re the thing that needs the most revision. I’m going to do a text type-of-the-week kind of thing, focusing on the more common ones. The biggest bother is the HL class because that has two extra periods a week. They’re already a group of pupils who will rapidly be consigned to the dustbin of history as one of the generally more obnoxious and pointless classes that I’ve ever had the misery to deal with. In one period last week, I tried to get the feeling that they weren’t such a bad lot, but failed to produce any such sense. Some of them are smug, some of...

Or perhaps we just spoon feed you instead. It’s only the second week of the second term, and I already feel like I’ve been here for several weeks. It’s that time of the year when various assessments in ToK, music, and English start coming due. I’ve been spending inordinate amounts of time on written assignments. There have only been a few instances of copying, and a few where turnitin gets a bit too excited. A lot of it is formatting such as page breaks, font faces, and the bibliography. House style here (well, my house style) is to put the rationale on the first page and start the task on the second. In spite of showing my classes how to do this by inserting a page break, it’s amazing how many of them belong to the school of Bash the Enter Key. Sigh. Centring or right aligning text? Bash the Space Bar. Sigh. Then bibliography has also been a fraught business, especially for the A2s. Even some of the HL class, whose bibliography is a single item, whose bibliography I...

As long as it lasts. It’s no secret that Dmitry wants to be his own petty tyrant, and with posts for local despots having been announced, he’ll be applying for at least one of them. But what’s Vlad going to do if his favourite lapdog departs? You’d think this might be the moment I should’ve taken about three years ago when I was offered the HOD post, but declined it (didn’t want the stress, and was sure the High King of the Petty Despots would never allow it; still think this is the case), but I’ve been told Vlad doesn’t want me to be HOD. That’s probably because I’m too academic and not sufficiently shouty for Vlad’s liking. Assuming Dmitry gets promoted (which I doubt, but you never know), that’d mean we’d have to have a new HOD. That buggers up my plans because I was thinking that I might throw my hat in the ring once Vlad and Dmitry have gone. If the latter does leave, that’d put an end to my plans for at least another two years. I could only hope we had a proper HOD, wh...

Insightful guesses. I had hoped that we’d be seeing the last of Vlad and Dmitry this year, but it seems our hopes are to be dashed. The word is that Vlad got his promotion, but (and this is the guess) he has to complete the current IB review to get his feet under the desk in Shanghai. I’ve also been told that Dmitry isn’t going anywhere for another year. Here (we guess), he’ll be elevated at the end of that even though he’s not really that competent. As a consequence of the rumours, Shylock has definitely decided not to return, but I’m not sure about the Lone-Star Kid who (just between ourselves) wouldn’t be missed. There are others departing as well, some willingly (most recently, Mr Windbag) and some unwillingly. I wonder whether Vlad caused so many people to leave annually from his former domain. I suspect that there were a lot of sighs of relief when he did depart. The review itself is going to be a huge pain in the arse because frequent changes in management mean th...

At least in the mind of a sheep. The sense I’ve had of headmasters for some time now is that they’ve lost sight of the difference between their staff and schoolchildren. To them, everyone is merely a pupil waiting to be chastised. Vlad had another tantrum at us on Monday, which was entirely unnecessary if he was half as competent as he likes to think he it. If he’d had the HODs to dispatch a few forget-ye-nots about things that we have to do on a regular basis, we might not be in a position of having scramble desperately to catch up. Better still, he might recall that we lost quite a few old lags last year, but he seems to think that a bunch of jet-lagged newbies will recall what they should be doing, having been told about it a single time. He also seems to forget that the notebooks are unwieldy things to have to deal with. The plastic covers are probably the worst part, but the size (A4), the spiral binding, and the weight don’t help. B5 (B4? Not quite sure about B-siz...

Walk all over me. Beware of ambitious people. Vlad is apparently angling to be appointed to the Politburo, which may account for last week’s tantrum about his pet database on line, which had us all scrambling to find things to add to it to satisfy him. It may also account for all the extra work that’s hovering over us, which has the potential to cut into time for planning and preparation. I’d already started adding things slowly to the database, but I’ve also been keen to avoid a repeat of last year when whole months disappeared in an endless sea of marking. Unfortunately, it looks like that’s going to happen again or I won’t have time to finish one thing off before another surfaces. The latest initiatives have also come in the midst of marking, which is the worst possible time to be lumbering us with more to do. It was cooler here today. What did the Lone-Star Kid do? Switched on the fans and opened the window, and then opined how pleasant it was. Yesterday, Tonto d...

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-ce...