The Wonders of being a Teacher

Sometimes, like most jobs, being a teacher is great.  We get to interact with a lot of enthusiastic children and help them develop into young adults.  We work with a (mostly) dedicated professional team, who are always willing to go the extra mile to help both the kids and our colleagues.  The nice long holidays are a major attraction, even if the pay isn't fantastic.



It has its downside.  Sometimes some of the kids can be difficult, bloody-minded and in a very few cases, dangerously evil.  Some of the parents and caregivers demand that we teach their kids how to behave in a civilized society, as they can't.  They've given up trying to raise wee f**king Johnny or Hoani or Maree-Elize, because they really have no idea how to do it. 

Evil is out there

When I trained as a teacher after getting a BSc in Microbiology and an MSc in Computing, I had no idea that it was such a complex job, with so many facets, and we were not trained for any of the pastoral side of our duties.  We try our best, and some of the kids succeed despite their home environment

But sometimes they repay us a thousand fold.

We had a relieving teacher (Mr. TH) here on Friday.  He's originally from the UK, and has taught successfully in city centre schools in Bristol and London.  He came to me yesterday in a mild panic.  He'd locked himself out of his car, and when our caretaker had managed to open his car for him (Good skills Wayne.  Where exactly did you learn to open a car door in less than 10 seconds?) he couldn't find the keys.  He was trying to arrange for a locksmith to come and get a set of keys, but he had to go and each his assigned class, as did I.

I was 10 minutes into my lesson on Relational Database Navigation Forms when a student arrived.  He asked (very politely) if I knew where Mr. TH was as he had a message for him. I told him and sent him on his way, wondering what the message was.

TH told me at the end of the school day.  The student had been walking past TH's car, and had noticed a set of keys sticking in the passenger side door.  He used them to lock the car and went to the school office, who, knowing that TH had misplaced his keys directed the student to TH via me.

TH said that in all the schools he had worked in, it was only Nuova Lazio that he had encountered such a degree of public mindedness and pure civility amongst the students. Sure, they can present as a bunch of real idiots, and have huge fights over the stupidest things, but they are basically good people.

I'm nice, but just don't f*ck with me

BTW Sorry about the delay in posts, but blogger wouldn't let me in for 24 hours.