Welcome to the World of Work

The alarm clock sounded at 7h this morning. I was instantly wide awake; getting up wasn’t a problem. I got dressed – outfit number 1 – beige skirt and purple checked shirt, I had breakfast and watched the BBC1 breakfast news – Weston-super-Mare’s pier was in the process of burning down and severe weather warnings were being given out for the south of England. At 8h15 I left my apartment/flat – call it what you will, and walked to work. When I walked into reception the receptionist looked at me. I told her I was due to start working there today. She took my name and went to tell the principal. I was then taken up to the staffroom and introduced to another teacher who was to induct me. This was news to him. The staffroom was fairly hectic – the majority of people were crowded around the notice board which, I later learnt, displayed the timetable for the week. It appears that, due to the recent number of changes, you don’t get your timetable until Monday morning – about 30 minutes before you start teaching! The teacher inducting me was pleased, and somewhat surprised, to be inducting me as this meant he had no classes today. After the crowd had cleared from around the notice board I was able to see I had been allocated an S5.0 class which is a short course level 5 class of which there is only one. I later learnt that a level 5 is pre intermediate and I wasn’t due to start teaching until Tuesday. I spent the morning being an examiner for the placement tests which, believe me, sounds more glamorous than it is (not that it sounds particularly glamorous anyway). I basically spent my morning sat in a silent room watching students take an exam. As the seconds turned to minutes I realised that time hadn’t come to a stand still and by 11h30 we’d finished. We then had the, by comparison, deeply interesting and challenging job of very quickly reading the writing tests and sorting them into levels. By this time it was lunch time. Back to the staff room to be surrounded by flustered teachers not knowing what they were doing or where they were going – well that described half of them anyway – the other half were somewhat more relaxed and discussing the weather and Weston-Super-Mare’s pier amongst other things. As lunch time drew to a close people began crowding around the notice board again and consulting the white board which displayed any changes to classes or rooms – and believe me there were lots of changes. When the bell rang and the staffroom emptied I made my way down to reception to get a photocopying code as I’d discovered the photocopier wouldn’t work without one. I had a whole hour and a half of the staffroom to myself to prepare what I was going to do with my class of S5.0 tomorrow morning for the 3 hours I’ll have them. I, at this point, had no class list. But, consulting the notice board, found that the timetable and class lists had already been replaced by more up to day ones! My word this place likes to keep you on your toes – the ‘old’ one, if it can be called that, had only been there 5 hours! I could now see that the names of the students who make up class S5.0 had been listed. A quick look led me to believe that I had 8 students in my class. A closer look led me to believe each student had a twin of the same name… putting my brain into gear I realised that no, the list had just been published twice, there were in fact only 4 students in my class. Somewhat smaller than I’d have liked but never mind. They are at least my class and I can do what I like with them. They are a short course which leads me to believe they are at the college for 4 weeks but, looking at the list it says they are only staying until August 8th – wouldn’t surprise me if it were a typing error… I also noticed that the room for my class had changed from 13 to 16. But that’s ok, I mean, at least I have a room, which is more than can be said for my afternoon class – a L5.2 class (a long course level 5 (so pre intermediate) class of which there are two) – no classroom has yet been allocated but that’s the least of my worries. The afternoon teacher of a class is supposed to liaise with the morning teacher so that they don’t repeat the same work as the morning teacher has done. That’s all very well and good in theory but of course it totally depends on the morning teacher knowing in advance what they are doing with the class. And of course they don’t. So, any liaising has to be done after the class has been taken but before I take the class – lunchtime then. And I also have to communicate with last week’s teacher of this class (they are a long course class so have been around a while) to make sure I don’t repeat what he may have done with them last week. And, just to add to the complicatedness of the afternoon, there is no set programme or set of resources for this particular class. On the upside there is a designated course book; on the down side this has been missing for sometime. I won’t hold my breath on it turning up. Not after seeing the unorganised chaos of the shelves of books which encircle the edges of the staffroom anyway!

What’s quite sad is that the teacher’s don’t seem to care. Why are they teachers? They clearly don’t enjoy the job, they don’t care about the students, they are there for the money. It’s a job, it’s meaningless to them. I was told that usually you have your timetable the Friday of the week before but well, I was told, you don’t spend all weekend planning, we’re not paid enough for that. And then there’s the teacher who told me I was lucky as my course has a designated text book therefore I needn’t plan a thing. But have you seen the textbook? It bored me just looking at it, goodness only knows what it’ll do to the students to work from it. Oh and my textbook comes minus the teacher book which can’t be located in the staffroom of unorganised chaos. I mean, that’s presuming someone hasn’t walked off with it forgetting to bring it back. So I have a useless textbook and am teacher book-less. But it’s ok because at least I wasn’t one teacher who was told as the bell rang that she was covering a lesson only to get 10 minutes into the lesson and have the usual teacher turn up. When she got back to the staffroom she was told to do one thing but as it turned out she was supposed to be doing another.

It was all quite incredible. I have never seen anything quite like it. All I can say is that if this is how the world of work operates then you can keep it and I’ll stay a student forever – MA and PhD here I come!