Eish! London 12 - 13 May

Tuesday, 12 May - YAY I’ve been paid  Hallelujah!!!!

Today I scored nicely with a half day of work at the Academy where that girl was anal about my borrowing her little pen without asking. I covered two textile classes in the morning and the learners were: ‘boys from the hood’, to put it aptly. The first group had drawings and designs they needed to do and I got to create an awesome 3D design whilst they did as little as humanly possible. The second class was small and had some of the ‘ruling’ Year 11 boys in it; they thought themselves quite macho, and I thought it all quite amusing. Fortunately they took a liking to me and were joking around as they practiced the usual ‘work avoidance behaviour’. I took advantage of their interest and negotiated the deal: I answer one of your questions for every mock exam question you answer. The system worked rather well and they didn’t hand in blank pages. I was also stoked (happy) that I managed to confiscate a bouncing ball and play with it for the lesson. Another tactic: Work not done, confiscated item not returned. Perfect. It was a great day with little need to discipline anyone and no need to sit down. Amen!

Wednesday, 13 May

Oh my word! What an atrocious set of learners!

The day began with an hour and a half train ride to get from the north western end of the Metropolitan Line to the south eastern end of the Jubilee Line, then it continued with a walk through a decidedly dodgy part of London, to end at a community high school with huge metallic fencing, massive, heavy duty gates and barbed wire everywhere. Seriously, I felt scared walking into the school; I brought myself towards myself as I raised my head, breathed in and walked through the gates and along car park sidewalk. I marched past fighting, swearing and poorly presented learners who took no notice of me whatsoever, other than a few stares, which I chose to ignore. I looked straight ahead, desperately longing to find the reception. It was in a prefab at the end of my very long 100m walk.

The secretary sent me off to the languages department with another teacher. The school was like a maze and I felt like a trapped mouse. It was bizarre to walk past classrooms where the upper part of the walls were clear Perspex. How do the kids concentrate? How do the teachers concentrate? It was weird.

We arrived at the department a few minutes before the bell. I was taken into a class where the teacher was still there; and she stayed there lecturing the learners for the start of the lesson, which thankfully reduced the time I had to spend with her "top" class. (She told me she was coming back to teach in the second lesson as her invigilation would be complete, so I wouldn’t be needed – Great!).

When she left and I tried to carry on with the lesson on ‘writing a newspaper article’: How different journalists have different perspectives; how biased it can be when journalists edit the information; how editors have the final say-so on what gets printed; how the owners of different media often dictate the content and so on. As it’s a topic I enjoy and know a lot about I was quite excited. Silly, silly me; I only have a degree in Journalism; what do I know?

I was blown away at the arrogance of this Year 10 class. In particular I was ready to perform non-anesthetized surgery on one female who refused to stop babbling at me in gibberish; telling me that it was her "African Language". I made the mistake of telling the class I was from South Africa and this little female starts babbling at me, literally babbling at me, in some gibberish rubbish. I looked at her in confusion (and alarm that a ‘want-to-be-cool’ teenager could be openly embarrassing herself like this!) and she proceeded to tell me:

"I speak African Miss. It’s my African language. Don’t you understand?" which was followed by more gobbledy-gook and ‘hidden’ nudges, winks and giggles with her friend.

How dare she insult such an awesome continent of people? Why would anyone behave like that? Infuriatingly pathetic behaviour from someone who is supposed to be intelligent! {I’m often told: "This is a brilliant class", or: "This is the top set…" and generally that means absolutely nothing! In fact they have become words that immediately put me on guard.} At this level it infuriates me even more that the arrogance is not earned! Sure if you have a PhD in something, then it’s pretty much a given that you will out-rightly know more than I do on your subject, but if you can’t even write a full sentence, then you haven’t earned the right to be arrogant on any subject! And even then, if you still want to be arrogant, then at least be eloquent and appear admirably super-intelligent with it, instead of a MORONICALLY insulting imbecile!

If that female ever reads this book, I hope she remembers herself behaving as she did, and I hope she is embarrassed for behaving like a moronically insulting imbecile. Unfortunately similar, yet not as personally focused bad behaviour from some other learners aggravated my temper even more; I hate it when my blood boils like that. It’s even worse that I could have spent my time helping the few intelligent learners who were genuinely interested in my journalistic knowledge, instead of dealing with the imbecilic behaviour I had to. Highly infuriating!

Fortunately I did get the second lesson off to cool down; and, although I didn’t know it at the time, it was time to become relaxed enough in my mind not to kill anyone in my next two lessons!

Lessons 3 & 4 involved learners who were:

- Spitting paper at each other,

- Throwing themselves on the floor,

- Throwing ghastly (non-repeatable) insults across the room,

- Running out the room in fits of anger and claiming to need counseling {which I vehemently agreed with},

- {And the most degrading ultimate:} Being visited and ‘disciplined’ by the deputy head; who had very little effect whatsoever.

The language was gutter-style and the bad-attitudes rife. One of the learners even has the lifelong goal of becoming a gangster; apparently, to him, this is his great life ambition. I was trying to motivate him to do his work and improve himself. So I asked him: "What do you want to be when you leave school?" With the idea of using his answers as a back-up to my reasons for him to get on with his work.

His answer: "I want to be a gangster, like my brother."

Yes, well, alright then; what could I possibly say to that?

Would better English improve one’s ‘gangster status’? I have no idea.

The learners had no inclination whatsoever to improve themselves or even try to be decent. I was appalled; I asked one learner, who had been throwing insults at a young girl, if he was a boy or a man?

He smirked in reply, with his body lounging back and chin tilting up: "Miss, I’m a man."

I looked him straight in the eye, and in a very low voice just between him and me, I said: "Well you’ve fooled me. A man has pride and self-respect. A man treats women with dignity and decency. If you want to be a ‘man’ then you better start acting like it."

I didn’t show it, but I was shocked that he was shocked. He nodded and kept quiet from there. He actually looked like he was thinking… I walked away. Surely what I had said was logical? Surely someone is telling these kids that whatever they say and do is how they show the world who they are? Surely someone is telling them they can choose to have personal pride, self-respect and dignity no matter where they come from? That circumstance does not dictate how you choose to handle a situation? Surely…?

The last two lessons I was supposed to be helping Year 11s with their GCSE revision, but another teacher decided he wanted to show them their year trip video and photos. After the trip visuals he went on to play You Tube stand-up comedian extracts for them. This other teacher basically hijacked the entire two lessons and I sat at one of the desks quietly observing the learners and drawing on scrap paper. The whole time I’m thinking: Why am I here exactly? This is pointless and actually a little weird.

My observations: The girls were really ‘trashy’ in their appearance and behaviour. Unfortunately, sadly, that is literally the only word I can find to accurately depict my observations. I thought their hairstyles were a joke, but then what do I know? Can you imagine beehives that have exploded? Well, then you are on the right track; or maybe trees with squiff and broken branches? Clearly I’m really not up with the fashions because they were prancing around with mirrors, giving themselves that impressed I-love-the-way-I-look-in-this-mirror nod… whatever! The other ‘trash’ part was tumbling out of their mouths as they were play fighting with each other. The teacher? He sat at the front feet up on the desk, looking ‘cool’, and chatting to a few of the learners who were interested in the year trip video. It was all very strange and surreal to me.

Finally the bell went and I got up to go. Another Year 11 was walking in the doorway as I was going. He stopped and checked me out. A few seconds passed as his expression changed to confused… then the ‘cool’ teacher said: "Good Bye Miss."

I turned my head towards him and nodded whilst keeping my bag between myself and the learner blocking my way. The learner bowed his head, grinning, seemingly a little embarrassed, laughed and then smiled: "I knew you weren’t in our year."

I swiftly negotiated my way around him and out of the classroom. I hightailed it back to reception (where the agency had left no time-sheets – irritating! So I used my last spare one), and I got out as quickly as I could!

{Admittedly rather chuffed that at 29 I could still pass as a Year 11. Awesome!}