"Ding, dong... etc"

Today we’re “signing off” the students portfolios from the first four week block. They ought actually to be doing a City and Guilds exam at the end of the next block, so the mind is concentrated somewhat. It will be a “challenge” to get them though the exam, but the attempt will be really interesting. At last I’m beginning to feel that what I’ve been learning with my MA, - what I learned in my last FE job, and over the last ten years of teaching, too – is beginning to pay off. It’s possible to look objectively at a group of learners, at the examination they are to do, and to try to stitch those two abstractions together.

What I think I’m saying is that there’s an externally verified goal we’re working to. Success or failure in that is almost as vital to me as it is to them. I cannot say, for example, “Well, Farouk is lazy, that’s why he failed”, because Farouk’s laziness is a matter for me as his teacher.

We are beginning to breathe easier. I hadn’t realised how bullied we felt until this morning. LM confessed as much, a bit shamefacedly, without any prompting from me. I’ve spent more time talking today about work to T3 than in the last two weeks or so put together. There’s a feeling that the war is over, and we can get back to work.

I asked LM whether she jumped or was pushed. She jumped, and wrote a long letter of resignation castigating him. He’s a fairly well centred bloke, but it’s clear he’s a bit upset about the whole affair. She was the sort to get under your skin. I lost some sleep last night, which wasn’t due solely to the strange, strong winds which came and went mysteriously in the small hours, rattling my bedroom door so that I had to wedge it shut with some folded paper.

It’ll be a relief to know that TOHH is actually out of the country. I’m drafting this between lessons at work, with no internet connexion, to post when I get home. It’s absurd, but one feels that the birds will sing more sweetly if she’s not there when we get back.

In the course of a discussion about what-went-wrong, LM said that he felt that the application procedure was wrong. I had to do a task – prepare a lesson plan for a given teaching point for a fictional class. TOHH didn’t do that – management had objected that it was putting too many candidates off, whereas LM thought that that was the point: to weed out the idle and incompetent. I think he was probably right and that’s one of the lessons I’ve learned from the TOHH debacle.

The Fruitcake's Finished

Noted down whilst off line, earlier today:

2:51 PM: Breaking news: TOHH has indeed resigned. Thank God. The atmosphere in the minibus this morning was ghastly, with KST on her way to her 1^st day in a new job, and TOHH and PTI swapping ironies about Johnny-Go-Between’s wee talk yesterday. I’ve spoken briefly to LM, who is hoping she will leave ASAP. He will take her classes. It’ll be brilliant to have a constructive staff meeting on Wednesday morning, and to actually not be nervous about approaching someone to exchange views on students and classes. Actually, as I type this, I’m more or less skulking in my classroom, the lesson having finished at 2.30, but the minibus not leaving for The Bungalows until 3pm.

You meet these mad people in the world of TEFL, and you feel that they’ll never be at peace, that they’ve chosen this profession because they can roam the world almost at will, knowing that if they fuck-up, the next job is only an air-fare away. Her last job was in China, and only lasted for five months. And that was for a UK University. Peachy jobs comparatively, that one and this one. She must be plausible at interview. Somehow. But that won’t last. References are sometimes honest, and bad stuff catches with people eventually. She’ll end up in the sort of small private language schools that’ll take anyone, where the DoS is a drunk, and the owner is a crook.

4:00 PM: I always got the impression that these people, The Company, wouldn’t mess around when push came to shove, and so it appears. She’s finished work today, won’t be in tomorrow, and they’re trying to get her on the first available flight to God-knows-where – probably also tomorrow.

Perspective and Pep Talks

It's been a remarkable day.

To everyone's surprise, the "temporary" classrooms were in good enough order to permit three class to take progress tests in the morning and a class in the afternoon. It all went very well. The Addams Family, (I feel a bit of a heel calling them that now, I'm becoming quite fond of them), did reasonably well in their progress test - I'll write more about that later when I've looked at the test data more closely. And in the afternoon I took Brokeback Mountain for "study skills", which will actually focus on writing and nut-and-bolts like spelling. It all went so well I did actually wonder if I was dreaming.

As we waited for the minibus to fill up, LM gave me, T3 and TOHH new job descriptions. Well, they were new only in as much as our job titles have been changed from "Project Lead Tutor" to "English Teacher", the rest is the same. The good bit came when TOHH initially refused to take hers from LM because "I'm leaving". I've not got the gen on this yet, but apparently - I gather from a couple of truncated conversations with LM - she's (at least) threatened to resign. T4 is on her way from Turkey (she has been in the recruitment pipeline since August, apparently - put the Company together with Turkish and HUDC bureaucracy and see what happens...) So, if TOHH does indeed go the distance, her classes will be covered and I for one will have a song in my heart.

We got back to The Bungalows to get an induction talk from Johnny, the Company's "go between" as HD described him, but he corrected that to say he was the local manager. Whatever. He was very nervous, and gave information about what not to wear, the local archaelogical society... It was all balls, really. PTI, however was incredibly rude to him, cross examining him in effect and demanding to know why we hadn't been given this information at the start, and why The Company was building a local admin office next door to the bungalows... DoS was there, too, and looked nervous - I was sitting next to him and his hands were shaking when he was talking about the piss poor internet connexion here.

There's been a change of regime in the management of the workmen at the site, with the slightly unhinged pain-in-the-arse "Ahmed" sacked.

If PTI was behaving badly to the point of weirdness, it all got stranger thereafter. LM told me that HD had had a word with him about my demeanour - apparently it's not deferential enough to HD. Ha ha. It'll stay that way, too. What can he do? My actual work is way beyond reproach. We're subject to UK labour law and it would take some doing to base a verbal warning on person's manner when addressing management.

Poor KST has had bad personal news: his wife's from China and is living there at the moment. She's been taken ill and is in hospital, and his Chinese isn't up to getting information about what is actually wrong with her. So he's flying to China as soon as he can sort out a visa. I'll miss him, he's a nice bloke, whose only fault was to form an alliance with TOHH - he's such a nice bloke he would hardly notice she had a few tiles off.

KST2 arrived from the airport in the middle of the meeting, God bless her: what she made of that I can't think.

And what she made of the cherry on the weirdness cake is even less fathomable. I'd gone into the city centre to attend church and run a few unimportant errands, and got a 'phone call from LM, who'd had a phone call from HD, who'd had a phone call from Johnny-Go-Between to say that there was trouble brewing in a flare up of the Danish cartoons continuing sore-point, and we were to stay indoors and not leave The Bungalows. I should therefore return immediately. The city centre was its usual chaotic, happy, carefree self, so I said that I wouldn't - and actually ended up staying longer than intended. There was no trouble. On the way home with our usual taxi driver, who is both devout and has an ear to the ground, I asked him if there was any trouble in town, and he was completely flummoxed by the idea.

So, either Johnny-Go-Between got the wrong end of the stick, or he was sincerely passing on duff information, or there actually was an anti-Danish protest which passed me and the taxi driver by... OR, (and this is the bookies' favourite), it was a load of old toot passed on for unknowable but probably Machiavellian reasons.

When I got back I had a chat over a pipe with LM and KST. LM told me that he questioned the gravity of the situation with HD, who'd said that he had to take his word because "I've been in trouble spots, under fire!" He was an NCO in the RAF - I suspect any fire he took came from his own side, given his breath-taking sense of self importance and utter lack of leadership ability.

Perhaps the writing's on the wall for him. I understand that recruitment makes a significant hole in The Company's budget, and if he loses KST and TOHH in the same week it won't look too good - these blokes get high salaries but they get the drop with ruthlessness if they aren't paying their way.

Weird. I wonder if any wheels are coming off? It's fun to sit back and watch it.

Or maybe the whole day really has been a dream?

Another Friday and A Happier Perspective

Friday, and a well deserved day off from the other staff.

Friday’s are a good day for catching up on blogging, cooking a good meal, avoiding everyone, and generally soothing one’s emotional and professional wounds from the week gone by.

I’m going to have to rename “Paul” PTI, for Physical Training Instructor because I’ve learned that’s what he was. He’s also a bloody idiot, though thankfully so far out there as to be comical. Last night I was on an expedition into the City centre with LM, when we bumped into PTI and Shelley.

This was in an upmarket area, and PTI told us that he’d just bought a suit, though the jacket was 56 (what kind of size is that?) and he indicated with his hands at shoulder height like the man telling everyone about the enormous fish he’d caught; and the trousers are 40, and he brought his hands in dramatically to waist height close together like a tart telling her friends about the same man’s little dick.

It was good to get out. LM’s become a friend now, which means I get more gen for this blog, that I learn a bit about middle management in case I ever want or need to do it, and also that we both have someone with an IQ in treble figures to confide in or let off steam with.

He told me that the gun turret of TOHH has turned from him on to me. I didn’t say anything, but think that this is a poor metaphor because it makes him, and then in turn me, look like victims who must cower in bunkers. Fuck that.

One starts out in these situation wanting to be a nice guy and willing to be pals with everyone. But five weeks have gone by now, and it’s clear that TOHH is a thoroughly nasty piece of destructive work, who will never respond to good manners or intelligent discussion. Yesterday, for example, after I’d snarled at her she was nice as ninepence, approaching me to arrange mutual use of the text books.

And so I’ve worked out a new survival technique. Far from seeing TOHH, PTI and the inhabitants of Fraggle Rock as sharks to be dreaded and avoided, see them as characters with immense dramatic and comic potential. Sit back and watch the show. Even better, give them an occassional prod – this is real life and it’s interactive, after all.

Reaching a Nadir on "The Bend"

I don’t know how much more of TOHH I can take. Now we have to co-operate because the Temporary Classrooms are ready, which means afternoon classes can start, which means we’ll be shuffling the classes around to give them different teachers. I don’t know how she managed to make a row of this. She’s one of those people who could start a fight in an empty house.

She asked if I had written work, from the class, (she’ll be dealing with their writing, mostly), and I said yes, but I hadn’t marked it yet, so she didn’t want it. Then she left the room and I later found out that she’d complained to LM. On her return she said something sarcastic, which made me lose my temper, I regret to say.

She’s a get-under-your-skin kind of horror. LM’s giving things another month, and then seeing how things stand. He commented this morning that there are no boxes you can tick which say “looney”. But she is. A constant forcefield of negativity which pushes others into shouting or resignation. But it’s as hard to describe as the smell of shit. There are indeed no boxes to tick. I can only say that I am extremely uncomfortable around her. If she wasn’t here, this situation would actually be quite pleasant. As it is, it’s almost unbearable. I’ve already got a flight booked on 1^st May, so I could give a month’s notice next week some time. That would mean the horror of signing the dole in Jarrow. Or, as LM suggested, wait for her to fuck up. I suspect that she’s one cunning nutcase, though.

HD came into the staffroom and announced that we were to get and extra day’s holiday on our flight days back to England. I was extremely grumpy with him, and wonder why we are getting this unasked-for extra. He told us that we shouldn’t tell anyone about it, this only applied to our department.

Today is five weeks plus one day into the first spell out here and away from, home, with five less one day to go. So I’m “round the bend”. And at an all time low, it feels like.

Good Friday...

...though you wouldn’t notice.

Paul knocked on my door and said he was seeking volunteers to clean up the communal area. Everyone but TOHH turned-to and helped clean the floors and generally make it presentable. A pool table had arrived but was still in its box. When we started to get to grips with unpacking and assembling it, IT Bloke freaked and said he was going, in case we got into trouble.

The rest of us then had a lot of fun with this novel experience – it took six of us only half an hour or so. One reason for getting it done was anxiety not to see it ruined: Ahmed had already told KST, with his characteristic confidence that the baize covered slate bed of the table, packed separately from the base, was in fact nothing to do with the pool table, it was the counter from a bar to be fitted. Fuckwit.

Pool table built, we had a couple of games, and then mopped the floor. There were plans to get out a projector, speakers and laptop later that night and improvise a cinema. I don’t know if this plan went ahead.

Hell is Other People

A topsy turvey kind of a day. No teaching. We got to the college to find that TOHH, who, charged with keeping the staff room, had mislaid it. It was an hour before college workmen were able to break in to the place.

Then we had a faculty meeting, addressed initially by DoS, who gave us some of the Big Picture – the best detail was that Big Cheese had presented a portfolio about what was what at the college, and that this had been okayed by the Minister. He’d said something along the way about resources, and at the end asked if there were any questions. TOHH asked if we could have a scanner in the staffroom.

He buggered off and then HD gave us the Medium Picture. This took several hours and I can’t remember very much about it now. There was nothing new, mostly speculation about when we’ll get out of the temporary-temporary classrooms and into the temporary ones – at least a couple of weeks. During a coffee break, KST teacher informed all present of the joke I’d made this morning about my home-made wine turning to vinegar. I wish he’d kept his mouth shut. This led to HD telling a story about some oil worker who’d gone on holiday and his cleaning lady had been alarmed by the sound of his fermenting alcohol (eh? Yes, I know), she’d called the police who’d broken down the door and subsequently arrested yer man and left him for two days in a hole in the ground. I said in light of his anecdote and the impossibility of making wine with all these vinegar flies around, I wouldn’t be bothering in the future.

KST had complained earlier this morning about coming home to find bulbs changed in his bungalow, and we agreed that it wasn’t a good thing to have workmen coming in whilst we weren’t there. Anyway, after the meeting I saw R., the Mr Fix It, and mentioned this to him on KST’s behalf (he wasn’t there at the time), and wished I hadn’t bothered because I got a long bad-tempered diatribe about how he and he alone had changed the lightbulbs and blah di fucking blah.

LM asked me to lead a meeting about the placement test, which needs to be refined, and suggested the three teachers take one or two bits of it each to work on. I told him that TOHH was unlikely to be co-operative. He said he wasn’t setting anyone up, but... He had to go to a meeting and could I deal with it? And so I suggested we work on the placement test, and TOHH of course refused point blank claiming to be “snowed under”. I felt very unhappy and uncomfortable with the whole situation. Trying to do anything with TOHH’s co-operation is just downright impossible.

She wasn’t done yet, announcing as the working day drew to a close that she hadn’t any money, and when would HD be here with our local currency advances. The arrangement is, we put in expenses claims at the end of the week and get the cash at the start of the next week. And we put in requests for advances at the start of the week, and get them at the end, on the Thursday. I asked her if she’d put in a request and she admitted that she hadn’t. So I don’t know how she expected to get money now. LM appeared and she asked for an advance. DoS wasn’t around, the safe was locked. LM did a fair bit of running around and eventually got cash from HD’s own pocket for her, which was accepted without a thank you and with very bad grace.

The tonight I was having a non-alcoholic beer and kebab with LM and he dropped the bombshell that TOHH has alleged that he’s been bullying her. He had a shouting match with HD about this today. Something about an investigation. He’s so pissed off, he’s thinking of resigning.

Now this is all like some bizarre game of chess. It’s extremely difficult, if not impossible, for me to work with TOHH. She must be impossible to manage. I feel that we’re in a situation here which cannot continue. TOHH has certainly turned against LM big time, and is prepared to lie to get him into trouble; I can’t accept allegations of bullying, which he says stem from his telling her that her teamwork was unsatisfactory, which led to her walking out - turning-on-her-heel indeed, - from her five-week staff appraisal with LM. I can say that TOHH gives me the heeby geebies.

So during the last twenty four hours I’ve had to face the likelihood that I won’t be here much longer, especially if LM goes. I got caught in the crossfire today with the placement test – he cannot work with TOHH and tried to get me to fill in for him over that. If I’ve got any criticism of LM, it’s for putting me in that difficult situation, one I’m not being paid for – though I understand the circumstances that led to the situation. The atmosphere is poisoned. It’s not a pleasant workplace, on top of the isolation and separation from family.

And it’s that which is making it unbearable. My wife emails me and tells me how unhappy she is, missing me as she does, and worn out having to cope with a two year old on her own, and the two year old is herself missing me too. Of course, I’m pining for the pair of them.

I could cope with the family separation anxiety, and I could cope with the poison antics of TOHH. Coping with both is rather too much at the moment. But I’ll hang on – things have gone from cheerful to dark in a night and a day, and can swing around again. A coping strategy I’m working on with my class is to imagine it’s all a PC strategy game: Can I get them to Expert level? And with the LM v TOHH debacle, I’ll try to keep out of it as much as possible, and pretend I’m watching a soap opera unfold. Or something.

More Fun with Turns-on-Her-Heels

I've made no secret of the fact that, once I get my MA, I expect to be doing a job not unlike LM's. I've told him this and that I'm watching how he handles things with professional detachment. What I haven't told him is, I think he's doing an impossible job. We walked down to the local shops together last night - it's a pleasant walk if you go the right way, along a tree lined and very quiet lane, bordered by some very wild looking cattle pasture on one side.

He said he was asking me as a friend, Did I think his management was ok, and he was asking this because he could not deal with TOHH, and it was being suggested to him by his line manager, HD, that perhaps his "management style" was to blame. He also told me that she'd knocked on his door on Friday (day off for everyone), saying that she couldn't stand this anymore, something had to be done NOW, and then when he tried to reply she, well, turned on her heels.

I was quite relieved to be able to let off steam about her myself. She's taken this job without thinking. This is not an easy situation for someone whose only interest in life appears to be shopping. So, OK, she made a mistake, but then she could give notice - EFL teachers can walk into any city in the non-English speaking world and find a job within hours, if not minutes. There's no excuse whatsoever to feel chained down.

But she seems to rather whine, complain and unsettle the troops. She seems to have fixed on LM as the cause of her woes, claiming to have been lied to at her interview. This is all a bit much, LM is a genuinely decent bloke who's rather good at his job. And I doubt he fibbed at the interview - why would he? I think she probably heard "swimming pool" and didn't hear an future markers. (As if a daily swim will keep her inner misery at bay...)

Things have apparently come into sharper relief for LM and TOHH because of her five-week review where he had to record her attitude as "unsatisfactory". (The Company's form only gave a choice between that and "satisfactory", ffs: what else could he do?)

This afternoon I was sitting in my window with my shisha pipe and The Sopranos on the laptop, and TOHH went by and asked me if I had an Internet connexion. I said that I did, but that it was very slow. She said, "I haven't had a connexion all morning." And then she stood there and just looked at me as if waiting for a reply, for what seemed like a very long time. She didn't look right. She really shouldn't be here.

On the other hand, LM told me, the feedback he gets from her students is very satisfactory. I'm not too suprised by that. She is one of those EFL teachers who almost worship their learners, advocating for them almost as a parent would. I've met quite a lot of teachers like that, mostly middle aged childless women, like TOHH. On the surface, it's an attitude which passes for devotion to the job. Actually, I consider it to be unprofessional: one needs to be good natured and courteous, but you're not going to take them out for a burger and a milkshake at the end of the class.

During our walk, LM speculated on "If", (not "When") this contract's teddy bear event will come. This thought cheered me up no end: the scenario of angry crowds outside the college, and HD escorting TOHH to the airport, fielding phone calls from The Sun and The Daily Mail as he did so... Incidentally, reading between the lines, the teddy-bear teacher looks like a classic student worshipper. And look what happened to her.

Liberation at the Post Office

Yesterday, I arranged for a taxi to pick me up when we finished work at three, and take me to the post office, to get a PO Box and connect myself with the outside world. It was great to be away from the lower middle class banter in the minibus one endures each working morning and afternoon. And getting the PO box was a big step - I was going to ask for the Company to organise it, but instead decided to give it a go myself. It took two visits, and the box is too small to receive anything but letters and small packages (that is, not books - a great pity).

The Addams Family are presenting a splendid personal, professional and academic challenge. Otherwise, I think they'd reduce me to tears.

HD came into the staffroom today and told us we're to get a few hundred pounds towards furnishings. And he hinted that moves were afoot to get a much better package. We shall see. It'll be nice to have a telly. The main thing though is to get the second bedroom furnished for my daughter to come out in due course.

The Only Significant Problem continues to be T2. Ceaseless complaints. LM confided in me tonight about his near despair. She banged on his door last Friday, with a litany of complaints and demands, saying that she couldn't stand it any more, and then characteristically turning on her heel when he began to reply. (Whenever you ask her a question, like, "Did you turn the projector off?" She'll say "What?" and turn and walk away. She's a fucking nut-job, no question. In fact, I'm hereon going to name her TOHH, turns-on-her-heel. )