Oh just save it!

For around a week now, I’ve been working at a school that didn’t want me back in May, covering a sick leave. They called me directly cause they had been soooo impressed with me back in May and hoped I was available and they were soooo lucky that I was and that I could come in and work with them and they were sooooo bummed that they couldn’t hire me back in May, and oh just shut up or I’ll smack you. You could have hired me back in May. You chose not to, and that’s that, cut the crap! Last week I was mostly swinging between anger and disappointment. Not a good place to be. By now however I’ve reached the point where it became all about the kids and I’m really enjoying working there (as I knew I would back in May) and to be honest nothing else matters. Well, if you don’t count the fact that I can’t stay there and I’ve already managed to get attached to some of them little buggers.

But good news is that as of January I’ll be on a two terms supply contract with one school, which means stability, two terms of induction out of the way and steady professional development, which seriously makes me happy. I was actually offered two such posts, one of which was in the school where vile children make me swear in the classroom, it goes without saying that I decided against that one. But the other offer was also better, so my decision wasn’t based solely on that though!

On being nice

I went for a drink with José the other night – it took some effort to pull him out of his NQT private hell, but then he was as happy to take a break from it all as I was to have a human being to speak to. And José being José, I didn’t have to wait long for yet another immortal quote. He was telling me about a wedding he went to the previous weekend, where he saw a few people from the programme. As they were exchanging information about how they were doing and how the absent others were doing, Naomi filled them in on my potential move to Milton Keynes. To which José said: ‘Good for her, maybe she’ll finally be nice!’. Which didn’t go down well at all. He tried to explain but worried that he did not manage to put what he meant through and hoped that if I had heard about it already, I wasn’t angry at him.
I wasn’t. I was laughing out laud, because I could just see the outraged looks and shocked expressions, and ‘how-can-you-say-that’-s he was describing.
Also because it’s so José to say something like that.
And because I didn’t need much explaining to know that ‘maybe she’ll finally be nice’ really meant ‘maybe life will finally be nice to her’.

And may his wish come true, cause lately life’s been more of a bitch. A shitty week was crowned by an even shittier Friday, culminating with me standing in the middle of New Street in a cold drizzle sobbing down the phone that I missed my train. But let’s not go there – a new week is starting, my batteries have been recharged over the weekend, so I shall brace myself and hope for the best.

Post-holiday mess

As much as I enjoyed having Monday off, on Tuesday I started to feel restless and ended up feeling pretty miserable by the evening. A nice portion of ice cream took care of that, this morning however I felt even worse. It didn’t matter all that much, I told myself, it was going to go away as soon as I got into a classroom. But that didn’t happen – my agent had forgotten to mention I needed to have my CRB (criminal record check) on me so they sent me back home.
By the time I got home, I had figured it all out: I was feeling lonely. I had just spent a week among people who know me and love me, and I’m back here now, reduced to stuffed animals looking at me sympathetically as I’m reading in bed while Paul gets to see his friends (which is good for him, really, it just doesn’t make me feel better). So I decided to do something about it. However, there is only so much you can do when all your local friends had moved away or are in their first year of teaching and overwhelmed by it.
By then it was crying it out or sweating it out, and as the latter seemed more productive I set off to the gym. Once there, I decided to hook my headphones to the news channel thinking that images of people celebrating Obama’s victory would help the process. Unfortunately I was rather emotionally challenged at that point so it only made me cry, and more it made me cry, more purposefully I marched on my treadmill, which did the trick: 10 bloody kilometres and buckets of sweat later, I was feeling much better.
Only it didn’t last.
So the only solution I had left at that point was to get myself a drink and dig out my long forgotten Tori Amos cds. And I find it both disturbing and comforting how I still know all the lyrics.

Obscenities

I’m hot.
A simple solution to that problem would of course be to turn the heating down but that can not be done as heaps of clothes I just washed are drying and need to be dry a.s.a.p. cause I’m packing! One more day of cheeky brats and then, after a brief stop in MK, it’s all wine, cheese and sunshine – although some of you did not fail to point out that it’s actually raining out there right now. Well, if I’m to trust Metcheck, I shall bring you sunshine!

In the meantime, here’s a funny one for you:
I’ve spent last few days at a school specialising in languages, although I mostly taught English, but that is not the point. As many other schools with the same specialism, all signs inside this one were not only in English but also in other languages spoken/taught in the school. One of the languages this school included in its signs is Polish – not that they teach Polish or that I’d have encountered any Polish kids, but that, once again, is not the point. The point is that this morning, as I was walking through the building, I noticed the signs on the languages classrooms and stopped dead before starting to giggle uncontrollably: the sign said ‘languages’ ‘langues’ ‘Sprachen’ ‘lenguas’ and the same thing again and again in other languages unknown to me, but next to all that I read ‘grubiaństwa’, which is Polish all right, but means… ‘obscenities’.
I can’t help but wonder if it is a result of a failed attempt on translation by someone who didn’t actually speak Polish or if someone played a practical joke on the school.
I’m also trying to decide whether I should tell someone in the school or leave it for other random Poles to enjoy…

On swearing in the classroom

I said ‘shit’ in the classroom and I sincerely hope that you can’t get sacked for that.
It was the last lesson of the day, and just after I had texted Paul saying that if the last lot I had today was to be half as bad (rude, disruptive, disrespectful) as the four I had before, I was going to cry.
It was much worse.
And so I said ‘shit’.
I said: ‘Why would I care how you feel if you don’t care how your behaviour makes me feel and you obviously don’t give a shit?’
‘Did she say the S WORD???!!!’
‘Did she actually say S-H-I-T?’
‘Miss, you can’t swear!’
‘I will tell that you swore in the classroom!’
Sure you will sweetheart. Cause you’re dumb enough to hope it will get you out of the detention. And cause you’re petty enough to want to get back at me for that detention, even if you’ve deserved every single minute of it and even more, and you know it.
I hate supply teaching. I really do.
But I have to do it for now, so I will light some candles, pour myself a glass of wine and think happy thoughts.