I think I shall give up my job

In a way, I am a better teacher than I have ever been. I am very comfortable in front of a class (unless they are being riotous) and I know my stuff very well. I am pretty good at planning a lesson. I feel that the students trust me.

But there are aspects of the job that I hate. One of them is to do with retention. The teachers are leaned on very hard to make sure that all the students take their exams before they leave. This is sometimes impossible, for example, in the case of bereavements - usually one or two a year have to suddenly return to Germany (etc.) in tears and never return. But sometimes it is simply a matter of making a students prioritise the exam over their job, and this is where bullying comes in. I am not a bully. I do not spend 15 minutes in the corridor with a student pushing her into telling her boss that she cannot do her job on a certain day because she has an exam. Especially when she is clearly scared of letting someone down and promises to come on another occasion for the exam. I would rather try to find another session for the "mop-ups".

Even though my boss does it with a kind look on his face, he is actually a bully, and what's more, I think he knows that I think so, just as I know he thinks I am far too soft.

I also hate the meaningless target-setting and the ILP's. I don't like the fact that to get the funding, all the students have to do an exam that means nothing outside the UK. OK, it's an exam, but it has no kudos. I look at the reading test and I think that some questions are unfair - impossible to teach to. I have a degree in English Language and Literature and I can't answer correctly some of the Level 1 reading test questions. The answers are mysterious to me. That shouldn't happen, but I am afraid the tests are not set as carefully as they should be, or indeed, as they used to be.

I like teaching but it's the other stuff - the endless box ticking - and covering our backs for the inspections - that bother me. Most weeks I am thinking: I can't really be bothered with this any more, and I find it weird that my colleagues love it, and will spend hours trying to decide whether to award one mark for pronunciation or not.

New Term

I am taking it easy this term and teaching very little. My evening class last night was a bit of a trial as I now have Level 1s instead of Level 2s and some of them have never learned grammar before; have no idea that there are the present simple and present continuous and have always muddled along with some approximation of the two. I feel sad that I have to break the news that they have so much to learn. Those who have come from Entry 3 of course, at least know the names of some of the tenses, and know what a noun is; what a verb is and what an adjective is. I wrote definitions of these on the board last night. I had not planned to but I realised that this was needed. Actually, I am not a bad teacher, but have to hurry around the class too much .

I miss my old class!

Last night I couldn't sleep - probably woken by hunger and the acorns falling on the roof - I was very hungry as I didn't eat properly in the evening - but I want to lose weight anyway. So I went to F's room and read a lot more of Virginia Woolf's diary Vol 2 - same old cheap edition; the cover has fallen off but I can use it as a bookmark. I am enjoying all the Bloomsbury gossip. She has started to report conversations for the sheer fun of it; it's lovely to read. She is very funny sometimes. She gets very down in the dumps about certain things - feels such intense rivalry with Katherine Mansfield - they all think J.M. Murry is a terrible man but they think he's bound for glory, which galls them, The Woolfs heard that their view at Rodmell was about to be destroyed by a new house being built right next to their garden, you can almost feel Virginia's angst and anger - that didn't happen, (thank God, because it's so lovely now), and Leonard and V. bought the land themselves and extended their garden, so they finally could relax about that. VW has started to be comfortable around Tom Eliot "Eliot's visit passed off successfully, & yet I am disappointed to find that I am no longer afraid of him." - He is rather proud of some poems he wants the Hogarth to print - called "The Waste Land". Then she is still up against her servants Lottie and Nelly. "Refer back to some other scene of the kind if you wish to know how many hours have been wasted; how many reflections upon the lower classes formulated; & how often L[eonard] has approached me before I order dinner with a pained, solicitous appearance, begging me on no account to say this or that, strongly advising me at all costs to make something else plain."

I went to the dentist this morning and now I have another gold tooth - hope it will be comfortable like the others. I have a most expensive mouth.  It has been a terribly expensive month, and this comes on top of Australia, which cost I don't like to say how much. We had to spend a lot on F - buy stethoscope, memberships, warm coat, food, towels, all sorts of things. Then my dentistry. The dentist, Catherine, says I huff and sigh in the chair and she is quite sarcastic about it, finds it irritating although I don't know I'm doing it; I don't feel like a bad patient.

Went to the happiest shop I know - Waitrose in Hersham. Everybody smiles and is happy and chatty. The staff seem to spend all day gossiping but they do run a good shop. They just can't do enough to help you.

Then went to the garden centre for something to cover the seedlings. I bought a sort of kit - a bit like K'nex for putting bamboo canes together, and a big net. Better go and do it now.

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!!!

Christmas fundraiser for Save the Children

When I started teaching English at the Maybury Community Centre I inherited 2 volunteers from my predecessor. They are both remarkable retired women, had been volunteering for some time and are very helpful. V. continues to help me at Maybury and Ginny (aged 80+) stopped and helped me at Bellfields instead for a while, where I had a large class and needed some support. Then Ginny had an operation on her feet, so couldn't come, and then said her hips hurt so much she couldn't get out of bed. Suddenly her G.P. went into action but the specialists found that Ginny's body is full of cancer and she hasn't got long to live.

Until she got diagnosed, Ginny played the accordion and keyboard in a Barn Dance band, and also looked after their bookings. She had been a primary school teacher - hence she has nice clear writing - and she had 7 children of her own. She was the sort of person you can trust with your worries. I did, anyway.

Now she can't get out much, she is trying to raise money for Save the Children by selling cards. I think you'll like the designs: they are really cheerful. Have a look here! There is also a great picture of Ginny. She is now knitting squares as well. She hates not to be useful.

See Ginny's cards here - it's a website where you can order.

Last 2 weeks of teaching -

The trouble is at the end of term you want to go out with a bang rather than a fizzle, but I really have run out of energy: I used to take along party food and party games to the last lesson. I still do games, but this time time it's Ramadan so we're not doing food or even fruit juice. It's a long day for the people doing Ramadan. In most Muslim countries the days are not so long in summer.

Today I had my students do doctor and patient roleplays and a drawing game, and they also had to fill in their self-assessment in their ILP's and their progression form. Some fun was had!

There are some students around but very few, and the library is wonderfully quiet. I wish it was as quiet as this all the time. I am particularly horrible to noisy sts in the library. A large number of staff is leaving the college (on the admin side) and because the college is "restructuring" we can expect even more chaos next year than we had this year. Almost every week there is a leaving "do" announced or a department announcing the departure of some good colleagues.

As yet I don't know if there will be any classes for me to teach next year. I expect to hear about it very soon.
I have a pile of exam papers to mark and hope to get them done over the weekend - Henley was a break at a bad time in that I should have started the marking at least..

But if I don't get much teaching next year perhaps it's a good opportunity to find something else to do.

The History Boys by Alan Bennett

I turned on the telly and found myself watching this film, so I stuck with it. When I watched it before I thought it was about attitudes to education. Do you teach young people to value the treasures of your civilization, or do you teach them to know some tricks of argument and "gobbets of knowledge" that will enable them to impress others, e.g. to pass the entrance interview for Oxford or Cambridge? What about "facts, facts, facts" - is that the right approach?

But this time around I wasn't so struck by the arguments of the educators, I was more interested in what they now call "sexual politics". I don't think it used to have a name. In any group, there is one who stands out as seeing themselves as a sexual "prize" and whom others lust after. And because others lust after that person, he is in a strong position, while those who desire are weak and vulnerable. Being weak and vulnerable is painful for anyone, but for a schoolboy it is surely terrible because it's new. It's a great burden to carry around.

Then the teachers who are in the same (desirous) position can look ridiculous, faced with a strong feeling that they have to master. (Can anyone control their blushes?) Carpe Diem is a young person's watchword, because for anyone in a position of responsibility there is also the need to "keep it in your pants".

One reviewer pointed out that teaching can be an erotic thing and this is true. It's a sexiness of the mind, I think. On the teacher's part you have something valuable to share, and in response, on the students' part, there should be a striving to impress. As a teacher, you have to be disappointed by bad work and reward good work. You are the judge, standing slightly aloof, whose approval has to be won. Therefore, it is vital not to appear weak and ridiculous. Luckily, I have not been in this position but I am sorry for the teachers who fall, especially the gay ones.

Topics this week:

From memory: the German au pairs are on the Science chapter. This is very good for them as they have absolutely no interest in science, and no curiosity about it either. I was exactly the same at their age but I find it astounding anyway, especially as these are well-educated girls and you would expect them to take a bit of interest in something so significant to the future. I have taught a number of English language classes the rudiments of the greenhouse effect, drawing a diagram on the board, and they have all gawped, because they knew nothing whatever about it - also astonishing. A Thai lady asked me a couple of months ago why the carbon dioxide doesn't escape into space, and this is the first time I have even had a good question about it! You think something is common knowledge and they it turns out it isn't, at all. The advanced ones like grammar. This week they did more advanced conditionals, for example, with inversion.

Science is often scary - for example, Headline in Guardian 8 May: No longer as simple as GATC. Scientists give genetic alphabet a two-letter twist. New code created in lab in replicated by organism. DNA challenged as perfect molecule says US team.  When I showed this to my daughter she said: This is terrifying! and read all the science part very closely, frowning worriedly.

So I showed this to the German girls and they went: uh.

The Maybury group did a reading on caffeine and its effects in order to clarify the grammar of used to, be used to, get used to, which they found difficult to understand, and now I am going to go over narrative tenses with them and they are all going to write about something from their childhoods.

The Level 2s started with a QI quiz and then talked about installation art, they had a listening on the good qualities it has and then they discussed it mainly from the sceptical point of view. Most of them did not know much about art, so it was good for them. An effort to open their minds. then we did verbs of the senses and then we did preparation for writing a report.

The Tuesday group did a reading on teaching a chimp to talk, and their grammar is present perfect simple and continuous. The afternoon was spent on exercises about preparing for an interview. We rehearsed small talk and making a good impression. Next week: tackling interview questions.

Bellfields did target setting, plus a reading on a con-man, and a listening, and lots of phrasal verbs, and that went quite well. Next week : question tags

Anyway: all this planning and changing from book to book and topic to topic is terribly tiring, and I feel I would like to focus on just one thing for a while. I am hoping to get out somewhere this weekend. Apart from that it will be half term soon, and I desperately need it. And the inspectors have STILL  not come!

what makes my job hard

What makes my job hard is that I plan and teach 2 lessons on Monday which are both for mixed level groups, so I plan 2 lessons for each lesson. The first group is one with almost illiterate Bangladeshi ladies together with Upper Intermediates who want to take exams at Levels 1 and 2. So there is a lot of work in teaching them. I drive for 25 minutes breaking the speed limit in order to get to the next venue. The second group is the mums who come for the creche, and get a free 2 hour lesson once a week. They absolutely love it and are great students, but they are a large class and mixed levels (14 students between Pre-intermediate and Upper intermediate/Advanced); they take a lot of organising and the paperwork for them is absolutely irrelevant but has to be done in case we are inspected. And it is all worthwhile because I particularly enjoy that class, especially when even the shy ones open up and talk all about their experiences of childbirth (I have one man too, who takes his day off on Monday especially to come to the class, and he has to hear all about that and in return tells us about horrific accidents at work.) They all want grammar and vocabulary and are particularly keen on homework.

I sometimes feel rather happy after this has gone well, and go to work at college to do the registers, answer emails and think about lessons further on in the week. In the evening I do yoga. On Tuesday I have to be early at the college to get a parking space and I teach in the morning and in the afternoon. My class is made up of unemployed people, who are sent by the Jobcentre, but in spite of this they are usually co-operative students. There is only one who really seems to be wasting our time deliberately, but one is wasting our time accidentally, one has an addiction problem and is unreliable, one has a youth-related problem and seldom attends, and one is a full-time carer with children who is often called away. So they do have all kinds of problems but I teach them as well as I can and try to get some rigour into them. But I have them for 4 hours (used to be 5 hours twice a week) and I make it as interesting as I can. they also need some employability taught every week, which falls to me, and some of them are taking exams, and that's difficult to organise. Also new ones arrive all the time. We had 6 more in the last 2 weeks. But when it all goes well it does give me such a high! The unfortunate thing is that the teaching takes a lot of adrenaline and afterwards I am very tired. After 2 days of adrenaline my eyes are smarting and I am soooo tired, but I also teach from 9 am until 9 pm on Weds. Then I have a day off and then I teach on Friday a.m. - a different place. Then I have to start planning for the next Monday and Tuesday. The planning takes a long time usually because of the mixed levels.

 The unfortunate thing is that when I am observed the assessor always comes to the evening class, which is maddening, I am too tired for it really, but I have got something quite good planned for my next observation. Which was meant to be taking place tomorrow and now it isn't, so I have to plan something else, but I am frankly toooooo tiiiiiiired. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2 more weeks of term and

I already feel as though I am winding down. This is no good as there are a lot of threads to draw together at the end of term and a lot of targets for the students to achieve. Then there are the exams - some students missed theirs and some messed up, so I need to take steps about that.

I have bought the Bellfields ss a chocolate Santa each, because I have enjoyed teaching them and I think their classes have gone quite well.

So while I am thinking about Monday and Tuesday and trying to achieve, I would like to get on with my work, but my old mum will be hoping that I'll take her out today because it is a lovely day, and I must also do that, slowly and nicely and not trying to rush her along.

Also tomorrow there is a dinner which I said I would cook for: have to buy the ingredients for apple tarts for 16 people.

Also I am not actually finished until 18th December!! But the last week of term should be fairly easy. Here is the poem of the day, which is rather glorious. I do love John Donne.

Death DEATH, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so: For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me. From Rest and Sleep, which but thy picture be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow; And soonest our best men with thee do go-- Rest of their bones and souls' delivery! Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell; And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?    One short sleep past, we wake eternally,    And Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die! John Donne More poems from John Donne

Too much to do

Sometime in the last couple of weeks I started a post with the above words and what do you know, I never completed it. I had too much to do. I was also very nervous about being observed by our manager which even made me slightly paralysed - unable to decide what to do.

Today I was planning a very complicated lesson because I thought I had a volunteer to help me, and I suddenly realised I couldn't really split the group because the volunteer can't come, and actually it makes it all much simpler, because I can only plan what I can manage to oversee myself.

Most of next week is exams, which bring their own problems (the marking) but doing them is slightly easier than teaching.

Teaching again

It all went pretty well last week but I am worried about Maybury, where I have a class of only 7, and only 3 of them are level 2, and one of the Level 2's is going to struggle horribly with the reading and writing exams. Bellfields, my supposedly disadvantaged class of mums with children in the creche, was popular and fun, and well-attended, I got a good buzz from that class, and I have them again tomorrow. Routes into Work was a small class - a group really - but we had a funny bunch, with M from Turkey who is young, handsome and cheeky, and S from Iran who is older and has strayed from dementia towers without quite knowing why, and 2 ladies from Iran and from Spain who have no particular problems, but must be wondering what on earth they have got into. Luckily I have a volunteer for that class, who really helps me to manage them. My level 2 class is a huge roomful of 18 young adult students who are all (nearly all) very fluent in English and have plenty to say. They can be great fun (they barrack each other) and the thing is to get to know them as individuals (not easy with 18 of them) and at the same time keep the lesson moving along. No volunteer; and I have never taught that kind of group before (3 hours) so I hope to get a bit of advice from my colleague Sue on Tuesday.

This term

My line manager sent me a tentative timetable of classes that I would teach, including Weds evening, and it looked pretty daunting. However, we have been having enrolling sessions and it may be that I don't have enough students out in the Community to make a class. You never can tell!

At our enrolling session last evening there was an elderly woman from Nepal - in traditional dress - who came with a very old lady and some children, with a young son to translate for them all, and the lady didn't speak a word of English. There were 5 Spaniards and Portuguese (lots of these at the moment) with low level English, some Pakistanis with quite good English.

I have never taught English from scratch and I don't know how to do this, but I might really enjoy it! I wonder if that will fall to me.

What I really want to do is a Masters degree in Linguistics.

Half term

Like all teachers I suppose, at this time of year, I have a pile of exam practice papers to mark, and I am loath to get on with them because I feel I need a break, in spite of the fact that it has been raining all day. So I have not done anything workwise today except, I hope, get my sts onto the admin list for the exam and reassure, by email, student A that student B has not been complaining about him/her. Student B is just awful. He/she falls out with everyone else in the class and has been running a bitching campaign against me - I think not out of animosity but out of boredom and possibly jealousy and frustration. Naturally I feel for student A because I myself have been through exactly the same feelings of self-doubt and being undermined. Some people (like student B) are clever but in a bad way, getting other people to pass on their poisonous messages. So for two weeks I have had the stress of the mock inspection, then a big confidence crash involving the class I see most often, and a big struggle to get up and be positive again.

The person I confided in, apart from my family, is Ginny, who is a volunteer in one of the classes, and is 80 years old. She is gorgeous in a white-haired, crinkly-skinned way, and an ex-teacher herself. She is a self-taught musician who talks about doing "gigs". Both of my volunteers are lovely and encouraging, but Ginny said, when it comes to teaching we all have our own style (mine is a quiet style) and you are never going to please everyone. You can only do your best! And I just need to make sure I am doing my best, and not falling behind the game.

I need adrenaline to teach, usually, and all those surges and falls of adrenaline make me terribly tired, so today I recovered, but ate far too much sugary stuff, which is another drug to make up for feeling flat and down. Now I am drinking a really nice French red wine.

Crash, part 2

I felt terrible this morning and I couldn't think what to do with my class this afternoon. But although they were bored to start with, I branched off into something that really took their attention because they didn't know it, (gerund or infinitive) and it seemed to answer some questions for them. So teaching them grammar, which I am not really meant to do but I squeeze it in when it seems opportune, is actually very worthwhile. It also introduces other topics for conversation.

I was also pleased that, last minute, I had made a good decision about which way to take the lesson. They were drifting off into boredom but I pulled them back again in the nick of time.

Employed at last!

I went back to the College of FE I had visited before Christmas. See previous post: I am a teacher. ESOL = English for Speakers of Other Languages.

The guys who were my students for the micro-teach pretty much offered me a job straight away. I was so relieved. I go from apprehension to delight, but generally, I am glad to be employed at a proper College again, and if I am bombarded by work-related emails I am happy with that too! I am looking forward to meeting my colleagues.

Also, we were broke before, and I shall be glad to make a contribution towards the expenses that keep cropping up.

I am a teacher

I went to be interviewed for another job yesterday. It took a vast amount of courage to do it, because it is a long time since I taught, and I am rather out of the habit of thinking of myself as a teacher, and more in the habit of thinking of myself as working through a business process in order to achieve outcomes.

I had to teach the Head of the Department and the Head of Curriculum the grammar point Wish plus past tense. I taught them pretty much as I would have taught a class but I forgot to get them to do a production task (writing their own wishes). But it was a textbook lesson and included some Powerpoint slides to make in interesting and I had also made some exercises which they enjoyed.

I wish I had got the job!

They gave to job to someone who was already working in the department! But I was a very close second and the thing was, I remembered that I enjoyed being a teacher and the sense of responsibility and performance. But afterwards I could not sleep and that's what I don't like about it - the adrenaline comes and goes and the end result is that one feels terribly tired. That's why teaching suits the young. When I was at College I explained to our tutor that I couldn't sleep at all after evening teaching - that I couldn't wind down afterwards whether it had gone well or gone badly. And she said she was exactly the same! Even with all the confidence and calmness she exuded.