Gay Nazi Sex Vicar in Schoolgirl Knickers Vice Disco Lawnmower Shock!
« Wine o'clockGoulash at gunpoint »

Class action

  Tue 13th February 2018

A humiliating two lessons yesterday with year 7.

Some of them point blank refused to do the work. Others scrawled all over their papers with felt pen, or ripped holes in it. I would rather teach children who misbehave because of some problems at home or the indirect result of poverty. There is nothing as ugly as an entitled rich-kid teenager who knows that whatever he or she does, there won't be anything to worry about in life until the police get involved.

They need a good bollocking, but that's difficult to administer when they don't respect me in the slightest. I'm losing the school, a class at a time. I was shaking when I came out of my mauling, wondering if the day of sneaking in a bottle of red is that far off.

It's got to get better. I've now got a photocopier. I've asked for exercise books and to be added as a guest user on the other teachers' computers. Why hasn't the school reflected on why two teachers left by Christmas?

For the next four weeks I'm working 9 till 1 on Saturday as well because of all the time we lost during the blizzard. Those mere four hours manage to ripple into tarnishing the weekend.

I got paid on Monday. I was hoping that seeing my bank balance leap into four figures would help the anxiety, but it's undimmed, coming in a diurnal wave. I had to repay my brother and Trina some money they lent me to get me out here, but as from next month I want to squirrel about £450 away somewhere safe, so that if I crack -- at the moment it feels more like "when" -- I can just go to the airport, change my mobile number, and leave it all behind me. Without that money I'm trapped.


Guest of honour at lunch at school on Friday, I was sat in the privileged position at a Kazakh table, midway down its long side, with six other teachers and our Director, to be "treated" -- as they described it -- to the national dish of horsemeat.

It started well, with fermented mare's milk which is sour, refreshing and slightly alcoholic. I cut the horsemeat into tiny pieces and covered each forkful with a piece of carrot or potato. Worse than the horsemeat were the chunks of sausage it was cooked with, which were enclosed in a thick off-white tubing.

But they'd gone to a great deal of trouble for me. There were several toasts and short speeches, punctuated by more mare's milk, which had the great merit of concealing the taste of the food, as I managed its delicate poise on my cusp of vomiting. It was with relief that we turned to the pudding -- deep-friend Kazakh doughnuts, crystallised fruit and pistachios. There was a bit of surrogate mummying going on as cheery comments on my thinness were made about me.


I found out on Friday that the other teachers come out with £340 a month. I'm on more than quadruple that. So belt up and get on with it looby.

11 comments »

11 comments

Comment from: organ grinder [Visitor]

I started in a posh private without training or any realistic plan. Best advice: don’t smile till Christmas & focus on the classroom ritual. Good luck!

Tue 13th February 2018 @ 12:07 Reply to this comment
Comment from: looby [Visitor]

I was quite tired today and a bit ratty so I used it to my advantage by taking some of it out on a class which is teetering on the brink of insurrection, and I think I might have reeled them back in at the last minute.

Tue 13th February 2018 @ 18:23 Reply to this comment

These stories are fantastic. I’m sorry for all the discomfort but it’s great fodder for your loyal readers.

So these are not underprivileged students? I hope you don’t finally snap and kick one of them in the teeth but it’s going to be difficult. What can you threaten them with? What are they afraid of?

Wed 14th February 2018 @ 17:34 Reply to this comment
Comment from: looby [Visitor]

No, they’re not underprivileged. Their parents have got tons of money. I want to make them afraid of me. I’m working on it.

Wed 14th February 2018 @ 21:46 Reply to this comment
Comment from: organ grinder [Visitor]

Tell them you’re a (Lancashire) Cossack. I don’t think the Kazakh hordes ever had much luck against Cossacks.

Wed 14th February 2018 @ 21:59 Reply to this comment
Comment from: looby [Visitor]

Neither am I.

Thu 15th February 2018 @ 05:10 Reply to this comment
Comment from: daisyfae [Visitor]

i think you may have found the key - if YOU don’t give a shit either, you can let your irritation flow. as exile said, figure out what they’re afraid of… clearly, not teachers, or administrative punishment. failure in life? losing their status? becoming less privileged?

sorry you had to eat horsemeat. when i was in Peru, i felt obliged to taste guinea pig. it was bony. if i were going to eat rat, i think that’s what it would taste like.

Thu 15th February 2018 @ 12:00 You are currently replying to this comment
Comment from: Leslie Philips [Visitor]

All you need in teaching,( it was once put to me) is a loud voice and a straight face. So I think the notion of not smiling is a good one.
Hard to do, but, do what your enemy least wants you to do. This may mean befriending the leader of the group, getting them on your side and the rest will follow. I was once called a £nut by one of my charges. I didn’t react when it happened, but when the session finished, I called him back and face to face with me and alone, he burst into tears.
I taught some real bastards in my time, and I know what it’s like when there is no backup. However, you are far more interesting and intelligent than most of the people teaching them and they know this.
Great blog.

Thu 15th February 2018 @ 15:00 Reply to this comment
Comment from: looby [Visitor]

I don’t give a shit about the fate of the children or how I’m contributing to it, for good or bad. When, as a teacher, you start thinking that way, then it’s time to leave the post you’re in. I’ll see it out till the end of the year – or at least until I next get paid – but the prospect of coming back here in September…I can see myself ringing them up on 30th August saying my mum’s died or something.

Thu 15th February 2018 @ 22:50 Reply to this comment
Comment from: kono [Visitor]

It is comforting to know that students are the same everywhere, lol!! I’d listen to Leslie, there some good points up there… oddly people always thought i’d be a great teacher, they say i relate well to kids well, i just treat them like people and take no shit, of course being 6′4 i’m sure helps haha!!

Sun 18th February 2018 @ 20:03 Reply to this comment
Comment from: looby [Visitor]

Yeah, 5′8″ doesn’t help :)

Mon 19th February 2018 @ 07:19 Reply to this comment


Form is loading...

looby, n.; pl. loobies. A lout; an awkward, stupid, clownish person


M / 59 / Bristol, "the most beautiful, interesting and distinguished city in England" -- John Betjeman [1961, source eludes me].

"Looby is a left-wing intellectual who is obsessed with a) women's clothes and b) tits." -- Joy of Bex.

WLTM literate woman, 40-65. Must have nice tits, a PhD, and an mdma factory in the shed, although the first on its own will do in the short term.


There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately. Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades.
Sergei Korovin, quoted in Pavel Krusanov, The Blue Book of the Alcoholic

I am here to change my life. I am here to force myself to change my life.
Chinese man I met during Freshers Week at Lancaster University, 2008

The more democratised art becomes, the more we recognise in it our own mediocrity.
James Meek

Tell me, why is it that even when we are enjoying music, for instance, or a beautiful evening, or a conversation in agreeable company, it all seems no more than a hint of some infinite felicity existing apart somewhere, rather than actual happiness – such, I mean, as we ourselves can really possess?
Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

I hate the iPod; I hate the idea that music is such a personal thing that you can just stick some earplugs in your ears and have an experience with music. Music is a social phenomenon.
Jeremy Wagner

La vie poetique has its pleasures, and readings--ideally a long way from home--are one of them. I can pretend to be George Szirtes.
George Szirtes

Using words well is a social virtue. Use 'fortuitous' once more to mean 'fortunate' and you move an English word another step towards the dustbin. If your mistake took hold, no-one who valued clarity would be able to use the word again.
John Whale

One good thing about being a Marxist is that you don't have to pretend to like work.
Terry Eagleton, What Is A Novel?, Lancaster University, 1 Feb 2010

The working man is a fucking loser.
Mick, The Golden Lion, Lancaster, 21 Mar 2011

The Comfort of Strangers

23.1.16: Big clearout of the defunct and dormant and dull
16.1.19: Further pruning

If your comment box looks like this, I'm afraid I sometimes can't be bothered with all that palarver just to leave a comment.

63 mago
Another Angry Voice
the asshat lounge
Clutter From The Gutter
Crinklybee
Eryl Shields Ink
Exile on Pain Street
Fat Man On A Keyboard
gairnet provides: press of blll defunct, but retained for its quality
George Szirtes ditto
Infomaniac [NSFW]
The Joy of Bex
Laudator Temporis Acti
Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder
The Most Difficult Thing Ever
Quillette
Strange Flowers
Trailer Park Refugee
Wonky Words

"Just sit still and listen" - woman to teenage girl at Elliott Carter weekend, London 2006

5:4
Bristol New Music
Desiring Progress Collection of links only
NewMusicBox
The Rambler
Resonance FM
Sequenza 21
Sound and Music
Talking Musicology defunct, but retained


  XML Feeds

Complete website engine
 

©2024 by looby. Don't steal anything or you'll have a 9st arts graduate to deal with.

Contact | Help | b2evolution skin by Asevo | Open-Source CMS