Week 2
Social Highlights:
The Stand - sick of teachers and teaching I broke free and visited a comedy club alone. I felt like a bit of a weirdo for a while but then ran into a guy I'd met two years ago at a Cambridge comedy night, had a chat and ended up eating Pringles and dips with the stars of the Edinburgh comedy circuit in the tastefully leopard print green room of The Stand.
Albarrio - After the kid's 'P' disco (in which the only thing vaguely 'P' related they achieved was puke) I was finally warming to teachers and went out with my colleagues to Albarrio which is a Latino night club in what is known as the 'pubic triangle'; an area of Edinburgh dominated by strip clubs. We spent the whole night fending off invading men who tried to pick the women off like lions picking off wildebeests straying from the herd. A good exercise in teamwork.
An extract from the teaching week:
Background Info
Class of 16 kids, average age of 14, sent to UK by mummy and daddy to learn English. Exceedingly apathetic. Key Phrase - "Can I to toilet please" - meaning can I leave the room and speak to Camilla from class 3 for the next fifteen minutes. On discovering this toilet visits were banned in my class.
Story
Ana begins to cry and runs to the door. I ask her where she's going.
"Can I to toilet please?" She says between sobs. I take her out of the class and ask her what's wrong.
"My ankle" she replies
"What happened to your ankle?"
"He die las week" I try not to laugh, her poor dead ankle... She continues, "I think about and I sad... Can I to toilet please?"
"No," I say cruelly as I look at her rubbing her dry eyes and sobbing. Back in the class I realise there's only fifteen minutes left of the lesson and ignore Ana's crocodile tears as I try to sort out the bedlam that has ensued. Martina sits with Ana 'comforting her' eventually I go over and remind Ana that when we cry there are tears and tell Martina to go and get on with her work. I rush through the activity, and look at my watch, there's still half an hour left till the end of the class and Guilio has the look of someone trying to suppress a grin as I tell him to correctly set the time on the clock for me. Repeat ad infinitum.
The Stand - sick of teachers and teaching I broke free and visited a comedy club alone. I felt like a bit of a weirdo for a while but then ran into a guy I'd met two years ago at a Cambridge comedy night, had a chat and ended up eating Pringles and dips with the stars of the Edinburgh comedy circuit in the tastefully leopard print green room of The Stand.
Albarrio - After the kid's 'P' disco (in which the only thing vaguely 'P' related they achieved was puke) I was finally warming to teachers and went out with my colleagues to Albarrio which is a Latino night club in what is known as the 'pubic triangle'; an area of Edinburgh dominated by strip clubs. We spent the whole night fending off invading men who tried to pick the women off like lions picking off wildebeests straying from the herd. A good exercise in teamwork.
An extract from the teaching week:
Background Info
Class of 16 kids, average age of 14, sent to UK by mummy and daddy to learn English. Exceedingly apathetic. Key Phrase - "Can I to toilet please" - meaning can I leave the room and speak to Camilla from class 3 for the next fifteen minutes. On discovering this toilet visits were banned in my class.
Story
Ana begins to cry and runs to the door. I ask her where she's going.
"Can I to toilet please?" She says between sobs. I take her out of the class and ask her what's wrong.
"My ankle" she replies
"What happened to your ankle?"
"He die las week" I try not to laugh, her poor dead ankle... She continues, "I think about and I sad... Can I to toilet please?"
"No," I say cruelly as I look at her rubbing her dry eyes and sobbing. Back in the class I realise there's only fifteen minutes left of the lesson and ignore Ana's crocodile tears as I try to sort out the bedlam that has ensued. Martina sits with Ana 'comforting her' eventually I go over and remind Ana that when we cry there are tears and tell Martina to go and get on with her work. I rush through the activity, and look at my watch, there's still half an hour left till the end of the class and Guilio has the look of someone trying to suppress a grin as I tell him to correctly set the time on the clock for me. Repeat ad infinitum.
posted by RTP at 6:30 AM
1 Comments:
Just found your blog via facebook, will bookmark it and suchlike. I'm torn between feeling sorry for/dangerously impressed with you dealing with such chaos and hoping there's more of it for me to laugh at!
Keep well & hopefully see you at some point xx
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