Last day of term

I went in at 9 as I wanted to prepare for my performance review with our line manager. I wanted to try to talk about all my failures; the end of Maybury, the problem with Carla and so forth; these things matter to me very much and cast me down, but M. never dwells on these things. In his mind, none of these things are my fault and the problem with Carla was a mental health issue (hers) that could I should not be expected to deal with. To my mind, the problem was caused by my failure to manage expectations in order to keep everything calm and sweet, and every professional person knows that managing the expectations of the clients is key. So I really wanted to tell him what lesson I had taken away from the experience and I couldn't tell him because that is not the way his mind works.

But when I went into work I found that the top priority was to mark the re-takes for the great marking session this afternoon, and I had three writing re-takes to do (2 of which were only done last night), so I had recourse to large amounts of coffee and did the marking. Then I had the performance review which took a long time because M wanted to explain so many things. He is a really good person to work for, for example, he always supports his staff...  My colleagues were all coming in and out all the time, in high spirits because it was our last day.

I was due to do a picnic with the Level 2s and I had not prepared anything even though I said I would bring a pie (I made a practice apple pie for our friends who stayed at the weekend and it was pretty good) so I felt madly guilty and I just had time to drive out to the nearest garage and get some soft drinks - normally I would get fruit juice but there was none to be had. So armed with some suitable goodies I went to the lesson and had to break the news to A that she had failed her listening test and needed to do another. She was almost outraged as this was the most strange result of all my exam results. A's English is A' level standard. I had, of course, tried to warn her by sending an email but she doesn't seem to get my emails. However, she took the blow because she knew she could pass a re-take, but clearly the pressure was on me to get it done because my colleagues were at that moment holding their examiners' meeting and they needed to check it.

With that Level 2 class, even though it was the last lesson, they were up for learning something, unlike last night's class - I didn't know what to do with them. This class gave me a hardback book as a present - a book about Trotsky in Mexico, called "The Man who Loved Dogs". One of the students had written a review of it as a task and I had said that I would love to read it, and indeed it must be good, so with Lidia's present as well I have 2 books translated from the Spanish.

 They had had a Dorothy Parker short story for h/w and only one of them had read it. So they acted it as a dialogue and then did the comprehension, discussion and vocabulary. Then they went outside for their picnic, I did the re-take with Aga, and then I ran to the car-park and got the cups and  fizzy drinks and I was keen to pour out the drinks for them ... and sprayed 7-Up all over them! No Formula One driver, armed with a bottle of champagne, has managed to douse his friends so liberally. Oh,  that lemonade came out like a volcano. Theresa was seriously annoyed and as she was pretty much soaked with horrid sticky liquid I could not blame her for her sense of humour failure.

The students had brought proper food; salad, cheese dough balls, potato cakes, and a lovely tortilla. One had brought plastic plates. it was a good lunch and I enjoyed it but felt sorry for R who was still doing Ramadan!! Oh, the insensitivity of the rest of us as we raved about the food. How very difficult it is to be inclusive.

But they had decided to accept me, with all my shortcomings, and that was very decent of them, and I know I have made two new friends with whom I look forward to spending some time.

R has failed her reading exam twice so I took her to the office and showed her how to practice and how to review her answers.

The last thing I had to do was the destinations - put everyone's future plans into a database. And for some stupid reason the database had been closed and I was too late!!!