Whilst students across the country have been winding down and getting ready for the summer, I have used the past couple of weeks to renew my working activity. Rather than slowing down, I have been cranking up for the year ahead by spending time in a primary and a secondary school in preparation for the PGCE. Basically, work experience - something I am an expert at.
I have a theory about the fine balance required for a successful work experience placement; it's nestled snuggly between arse-licking and complete disinterest. I decided to voice this theory to the Modern Foreign Languages teacher I was introduced to on my arrival and who was to show me around and guide me through the week. By omitting the word 'arse' and yet keeping the theory intact, I thought it would serve as a sort of amusing ice-breaker. I conveyed it not without an awareness of the conversational risk I was taking. But she took it well. In fact, she was refreshingly cynical compared with the teachers at the school I had visited the week before and was very honest about the kind of experience I was to have - it would be challenging. But she seemed to take it in her stride so I relaxed and attempted to adopt her laid-back attitude to teaching angst-riddled, street-wise teenagers by strutting along the corridor and into my week of new experiences.
Now, it was a hot week. A sandal week. A put-your-sandwiches-in-the-fridge-within-five-minutes-of-arriving-at-work week. This done, I walked purposefully to my first lesson. I had a timetable, which made me feel useful, important and required. And, of course, I was once again wearing my work clothes. It felt very good indeed. Until, that is, I stepped into the classroom. If it was a summery, balmy heat in the corridor, inside the classroom the air fizzed with sweat. It was horrendous. I had forgotten how much body heat thirty hyperactive teenagers could create. I tried to hide my appalled reaction (something friends have told me I'm not so good at) and I took a seat at the front, in the corner. By force of habit, I pulled my notepad and pen from my bag and just concentrated on breathing whatever stale air was available to me. I expected that, once everyone had settled down, the air would cool and we'd all be much happier. But it seemed that I was the only one aware of the heat. When the teacher pronounced her morning greeting, there was no quiet, no calming down - instead, there was more movement. Scuffling, shifting, talking, moving. The teacher, becoming exasperated, began to shout. And then that was it. Taking each student at a time, she dealt with their issues, crises, complaints, disobedience but, despite her efforts, all she could manage was to get them to find a seat and sit in it. The talking continued but the lesson started nonetheless. "Jamie can you concentrate?" "Shhh." "Don't call out, put your hand up." "That's your last warning." "Get out..." I felt dizzy. It was almost impossible to communicate any information in between the crowd control. Needless to say, the rowdiness was an unwelcome accompaniment to the heat and I began to feel faint. I have never fainted but I was sure that if it was going to happen it would happen in there. Then, one boy answered a question. He got it right. A flicker of interest at the front. I listened and was relieved. My head cleared a bit. Then five minutes later he was shouting again. Someone else needed the toilet so the lesson stopped, a note was written and he escaped, to the teacher's evident concern. I stared, bemused, at a sign on the classroom door that read: "Enthusiasm and hard work are indispensible ingredients of achievement." - Clarence Birdseye. I looked at the clock. Thirty minutes in and I wanted to leave. I wanted to get out and sit on my own in the playground. Anything but be in this ugly situation. Another half an hour and the lesson had ended. Although a useful chunk of the Spanish language had been covered, very little appeared to have been absorbed and the class fell out of the room, relieved. I began to wonder if the expression 'pulling teeth' had been first used by a dentist who had moved into teaching. I decided that pulling your own teeth out would probably be easier than teaching Spanish to over-heated teenagers.
Admittedly, my reaction to my first lesson had been fairly extreme but it was a good initiation and I left feeling much more intolerant of bad behaviour and much less inclined to smile at students than I had done before. In other words, I began to blend in much better with the other teachers.
The next couple of days passed in much the same way, with occasional flickers of interest from the front of the class but with teachers mostly wrestling to keep everyone sitting and quiet. I was soon enrolled as assistant class disciplinarian, being asked either to "show so-and-so out of the room" or "take his water bottle/pen/book from him". I learnt that "I haven't got it Miss!" translates as "I haven't done it" or "I've lost it", a ruse that most teenagers carry around with them from the age of 13 but something that I was never really aware of. The students seemed to feel that all attempts to keep them quiet were infringements of their human rights, with one even declaring: "It's like the army here." Hmm, not quite. I prepared a lesson on North African women and the veil (something kind of linked to my Masters project) and it didn't happen because there were no students to teach. One lesson which was being taken by a supply teacher came to a complete standstill about fifteen minutes in when a couple of mating pigeons moved the activity from the desks to the window. However, I was introduced to one wonderful service provided by the school and, I believe, others in the country - the 'On Call' team. This is a crack team of disciplinarians who are called upon to deal with students out of the teacher's control. The first time I witnessed their arrival was in the middle of a particularly dire lesson in which it took forty minutes to get the class to just sit down. They arrived and silence ensued. The effect was hypnotic. They were brilliant. I think they should wear leather jackets and turn up on motorbikes. That would be very cool. Despite the reluctance of some students to get involved, there were others who, whether it be to their playground detriment, seemed more enthusiastic. And some of the teachers were absolutely brilliant. Inspiring, in fact. I learnt that calm always wins over crazed and that showing a small amount of interest in the particulars of someone's weekend really does help you when you come around to teaching French numbers up to a hundred.
As teachers became aware that I wanted to get more involved and that I found sitting down for an hour watching other people do and learn a bit boring, they started volunteering me to speak at the students in either French or Spanish in an attempt to incite some interest in them. "You're young. It's good for them to see a young person speaking languages." "Now, Miss is a journalist," was the preferred introduction. Although factually incorrect, it became an excellent way of getting 30 kids to shut up. "How much do you earn?" was the first question fired in my direction. I decided to side-step the disappointing answer to this question by picking them up on the tense of their question: "Oh, I WAS a journalist - not any more." "Oh." And they didn't ask anything more. Interest lost, a few students began playing with their keys, crunching their water bottles in their hands and getting to work fashioning something a bit like origami out of their worksheet. They set to work filling in a worksheet. I patrolled the classroom in an attempt to look useful and to do my best NOT to look like a work experience girl. If they picked up on that, any thread of respect they had gained for me or my former profession would fray spectacularly. And I couldn't afford that so early in the week. I was just about feeling powerful enough to think that the rest of the week may not be so bad after all when the obvious but disappointing happened: "Miss, what's the point of learning Spanish if everyone speaks English?" She rounded off her question as an arrogant celebrity would write the final sweeping letter of their name in an autograph book; with a sickening certitude as to her own superiority. I thought about staring her out but she stood her ground well. She even leant back in her chair to get a fuller view of my circus clown act of a response. I dug around for something brilliant. "If you say that then what you're saying is that the last few years of my life have been a waste of time." Not the objective, successful response I had been searching for. And it wasn't what she had been expecting either. It shut her up for a second but I think that was just the confusion. These kids had been to Spain - one had even been to Cuba - and yet learning Spanish still seemed utterly ridiculous to many of them. Nearly defeated, I took up my position at the front of the class to begin my Spanish monologue. Spanish origami worksheets being turned over in their hands, the class chattered disinterestedly through this lesson transition. So I decided to start anyway. I began talking about my family. I rambled on for as long as it took to get the room quiet. Then I went on for a couple more sentences. And I stopped. "Oh my god, you sound like the woman on the tape!" The woman on the tape? Ahhh, I know, the woman on the educational listening tape. Wow. I felt a bit better. I replied, not without a little bit of smugness and milking their sudden interest: "I AM the woman on the tape.." They looked bemused so I decided bad jokes were not the order of the day and carried on. I carried on speaking, and then began posing questions myself. Five minutes later some of the kids were dislocating their shoulders in an attempt for me to notice their raised hand and give them "a go" at speaking. They told me about their families, themselves, their friends. All in Spanish. Only pausing in moments of social awareness to check that no-one was laughing at them. When they realised that they really weren't, they continued. Forty minutes later we stopped our Spanish conversation class and it was time for worksheets again. But not before one rather confident young lady spoke out: "You're really good you. Are you gonna come back and teach 'ere? I reckon you should. I've leeernt loads just now doin' that. That was dead good." I didn't know what to say. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel just a bit proud. But it was great. I'm not saying it made everything else easy, but it helped me through the rest of the week.
I arrived at Friday feeling surprisingly more comfortable in my new surroundings than I had done at the beginning of the week. A couple of the students called a "Hi Miss." as I walked into school and, whereas at the beginning of the week this would have scared the shit out of me, by the end I saw that it was a very good thing. The week was hard and there were times when I wondered what the hell I was doing. Sitting there with my notepad and pen, I had moments of nostalgia and was desperate to recount my experiences as opposed to, well, experience them. It's weird how journalism seems to train you to hang on the periphery. And, if I'm honest, it's where I feel most comfortable. But then, getting involved was pretty good too and, as long as I can vomit it all out through this blog then I'll feel OK. Teaching is...hard. Getting thirty kids to sit still, shut up and listen, and then actually absorb, is like trying to squeeze a story out of a non-story or an original comment out of a press officer. But once you do, it's fairly satisfying. Lunch-times will be different too. Rather than endless chocolate and coffee, I fear I am going to be surrounded by many many more salads-in-boxes. I have never seen so many women eating cottage cheese and Ryvita as I have in the last two weeks. God help the woman who turns up with a pie from the canteen. There was one such maverick last week and she just about got through the critical references to her lunch choice. She was skinny as well, so that didn't help her case. "Ohh, that looks naughty!" declared one woman, as she crunched her way through a cottage-cheese smothered cracker. The jealousy cut the air in two. It wasn't pretty. But, I feel pretty strongly about the 'speaking languages' bit and have met some brilliantly cynical teachers which makes the cracker-crunching for half an hour a day bearable. I have to say that it does surprise me that the TDA have launched a fairly huge campaign to recruit more teachers as if the money and the security would be enough to get you through. I don't think they are. The "when in doubt, teach" philosophy just doesn't work. There is no way you can get through five days a week doing that and remain distant from the school, kids and your subject, spurred on only by the promise of a pay scale. It makes me wonder what's going to happen to the swathes of businessmen who have plumped for a job as a maths teacher, or the other City slickers who have decided to put their Geography degree to better use. I don't even know what's going to happen to me. I may decide it's not for me. In the end. That would be hard after all this but it's still a possibility. Maybe the notepad and pen will indeed win over the blackboard and chalk. But if pretending to be 'the woman on the tape' can get a few kids to order their ice-creams in Spanish on the Costa Blanca this summer, then my contribution has not been wasted.
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