Strange New Places

Yesterday morning's session was one of the strangest I've ever taught. We just got on with it, but it was like I wasn't there. We worked through the materials I'd provided, but without genuine interaction. Often, the class would talk amongst themselves in Arabic.

I can only assume that solidarity is being demonstrated with Old Gomez, whose authority I have been seen to ignore. This is a first, I've never had a class behave this way before. It's actually really interesting.

On the one hand, subjectively, I can't wait to see the back of these bastards. LM, who has already had a year of them, and takes them now for academic skills in the afternoons, understands completely, and has agreed to move the poisoned chalice elsewhere once we've gotten past this exam in a few weeks.

On the other hand: there is a big issue about these learners being colleagues, potential fellow teachers at the college. Which is fine, but this lot under the generalship of Old Gomez have set up an anti-authoritarian structure in the classroom as effective as anything you'd get from intelligent and rebellious teenagers in a brutal classroom regime. And they've done it answer to Old Gomez' ego, not to any oppression.

When they move on from English to studying Leadership and Management, under the wing of a sensitive chap like PTI. Oh, lordy lord. LM and I have wondered how PTI will cope, given the touchiness of all of these students on virtually everything, and given the extraordinary inflammatory dynamics of the Addams Family. And so, I comfort myself in the cool atmosphere of my classroom with the thought that I might be watching the early development of a Sudanese-teddy incident.

Bold Talk and Teddy Bears.

There was some rather bold talk at the interview about flying out in mid-November. Recently, somebody predicted 28^th December. The best bet now is mid-January. We shall see.

It’s worth blogging. I’ve got a two year contract to teach English in an English Language Further Education College in a country recently shedding its pariah status.

I got the job no doubt because I already have 15 months experience in that country. Nobody else employed so far has got this experience, and sometimes I feel like the old timer in a Western, spitting his tobacco juice and saying “that’s all fine and dandy, but try doin’ it in injun country!”

I’ve been here a month now, and got my first payslip today. Well, I suppose that’s when you realise you’ve got a new job, when you’re getting told about slightly healthier lucre in a payslip that looks slightly different.

I say “been here”, but the nearest to “here” is the laptop they gave me on my first day. It’s a portable office with music. I spend a couple of days a fortnight at my company’s offices in the east midlands. The rest of the time I’m working from home.

The last month, I’ve been designing and all-singing-and-dancing placement test. That’s about done now, and next it’s curriculum design. Both are fiddly, intricate jobs, absorbing enough to keep you focussed whilst working mostly from home.

The Sudanese tefl teddy bear business seems to be sharpening minds wonderfully.