As fate would have it,
Battling idiocy on a daily basis.
This post is a follow-up to my post about O on 9 June 2004.
Despite the death of his mother the day before exams began, he made it through all of them (grammar, translation, dictation, oral and correspondence all in both English and French as well as the Cambridge FCE exam), passing his final oral one at 11h today. I was on the exam jury and I think it made a difference (the other members were Bossman and Bosswoman). He started off slowly, looked at me and I smiled at him to let him know that everything was alright (we hadn’t planned that in advance). I tried not to write too many things down, because I could tell it made him nervous when BM and BW did. During his ten-minute presentation, he glanced at me quite a bit for reassurance, which I provided by a kind expression on my face. After the question part of the oral exam he left so that BM, BW and I could decide on a grade for him.
BM and BW are perfectly well aware of what he’s been through the past few weeks, and we all commented on his courage. He could have easily had his exams deferred due to the death, but didn’t want to. None of us thought he would…it’s just not O’s style. We discussed the fact that both BW and I knew he could have done better (BW had been his translation teacher), but could only grade him on what he did today. We decided on the grade (a bit lower than he was capable of, but still good), called him back into the room and told him the result. We could tell he was disappointed by his performance, but he agreed with us that he could have done better.
After signing the acceptance of the grade, he told us that making it through exams had been very difficult. He said that he had had trouble concentrating on most of them, which is why all of his exam grades were slightly lower than usual. I extended my hand and shook his, BW did the same, BW gave him a hug and he went home to pack. He leaves tomorrow for his two-month job in Switzerland and starts on Thursday.
O and I actually said our informal goodbyes yesterday. I was on a long break in the teachers’ room when he walked by, so he came in and we chatted for a while about he past two years, about exams and also about the future. We exchanged email addresses and are going to keep in touch, hopefully meeting for lunch from time to time after her returns to our country-not-to-be-named - distance, time and funds permitting.
As I’ve been sitting here typing this, I’ve (selfishly) grown a bit sad realising that O has left our school - students like him are few and far between. We’ve just graduated a fine young man and have unleashed him on the world. Days like this are really what being a teacher is all about.
In the country I come from, they are viewed as hard workers who do a thankless job.
In the country I resided in before the-country-that-won't-be-named, they are viewed as well educated people who make their students work hard.
In the-country-that-won't-be-named, they are viewed as lazy people who work very little and like long holidays.
I got to work today and was eager to find out what happened to my classes while I was out sick. I checked the log book for one and saw that Incompetent Colleague had taught it and had written "book confusing" in the log book, meaning that he didn't understand it, even though the name of the book I used with that class was clearly written, as well as the page numbers we did during the last class. Not to mention the fact that I sent the following email to Bossman for whomever taught that class (IC confirmed that BM gave him the email before the class):
Room # 515. Whoever teaches it can just continue on in the [name of book] book - we finished up to page 39 (inclusive) last class. There will be a visitor from my Monday class, [name of student], who won't have a book (his class uses a different book), but I made photocopies for him yesterday. Please mark his attendance on the Monday class' records.
Sorry, but I find the above message to be crystal clear. I gave him the name of the book as well as the last page number we had finished. What more could I have written? Also, IC didn't mark the visiting student's attendance on the Monday class' attendance sheet, he put the student as a guest in the class.
New Guy taught my other classes and as far as I can tell, everything went well.
Show me a teacher who doesn't almost lose his or her mind sometimes, and I'll show you a teacher who's not trying.
On 10 April, I signed my blog up for International Webloggers' Day, and have been looking forward to it ever since. I know exactly what I want to post, and had planned on staying up until midnight tonight to post it.
I checked the IWD website and saw it had been revised, and that I have been left off of it. I wonder what's up? As far as I can tell, all the others who found it off my blog are still on it, but not me. Perhaps my blog isn't interesting enough (which might actually be true). I've emailed the proprietor.
In an elementary level class, we were talking about the Olympics and a student formed a sentence that said, "The teams wons medals." Realizing that he might not know that the word won (which is actually the past simple tense of the verb "to win") was the same in singular and plural, I said to him, "What is the plural form of "won"?" He replied "Two." The entire class, including me, burst into laughter.
I couldn't argue with him.