Something Old, Something New


I have a new job. It's also an old job. I hate it already and I haven't even started it yet.

In 2011 I spent six weeks as a summer teacher for Cavendish. It was a standard piece-of-shit language school, complete with:

* Insane idiot manager at head office
* Nice but useless manager at local office, too weak-willed to resist the insane idiot
* Resources extending to one whiteboard marker if you were luckly
* Requisite teacher with alcohol problem
* Requisite nervous newbie teacher
* Requisite intellectual teacher who wants to have learned discussions about world music with the class
* Popular teacher with collection of Dr Who videos (me)

After five weeks the insane idiot manager finally realised her daily incoherent emails were being ignored. She fired the entire staff. And got sued for non-payment of wages.

Last friday, Cavendish phoned me, desperate for teachers. To start on monday. Urgently, and did I mention they're desperate? How desperate? Desperate enough to pay my travel costs.

Different branch, different town, different manager, same piece-of-shit school.

Today (sunday), four of us TEFLers sat for five hours in a boiling room, listening to an "induction" on the labyrinthine rules for:

* calling the class register
* assessing the students
* getting assessed by students
* filling out plans for the day's leeson
* filling out different plans for the week's lessons
* filling out forms for what actually happened in each lesson
* ...and which part of the whiteboard is officually approved-of by inspectors for writing the date on.

So, starting monday I wake up at 4am, take a two hour train journey, spend four hours in a classroom, take another two hour journey back, sleep, and use the remaining hours for real life - pretending to plan lessons that don't need planning.

The question is, can I tolerate boiling hot classrooms, students hungry and exhausted for ramadan, and filling out mountains of paperwork giving meaningless answers to absurd questions...for six weeks?

Well, the money's pretty good, I generally get on well with students, and all that train travelling gives me a chance to catch up on a small backlog of six hundred podcasts I've got saved.

Life is all about priorities.

1 comment:

  1. Buy some shades and a hat so you can sleep the two hours on the train (when you're not reading or podcasting that is).

    I've done short contract/temp jobs like that and the only thing that kept me going and motivated was the money and counting down the days til I was done! Also, I took some time to enjoy the new temporary location til the job was over.

    Best of luck on the new/old job. Hope for the best and be prepared for the worst.

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