Teaching and Terrorists

Well, it’s the second post and the feedback hasn’t been glowing.

Panda didn’t have much to say other than make the astonishing observation that my blog could be called “Just in limbo”.

In all my life no-one has put that sentence together. Suffice to say my wife was very impressed. Panda, very sharp girl. By the way did I mention she attacked a Chinese tourist, took his arm right off. Terrible.

Linc thought I had been taken over by some sort of alien life form. He actually asked me that. He suggested that I write in English. I spouted all this crap justifying the disaster by claiming that my first blog was a critique of the two extremes of blogging. Which it was, but you know I had to explain that so.... yeah, it failed.

Sigh.

So… Part Two.

I work with teenagers, I am a teacher. I won’t tell you what I teach, we can work up to that later, although I can tell you that I’m not a manual arts teacher – so I don’t make bombs.

There are moments that, well, leave you gob-smacked. Not because of how jaw droppingly naïve the individual is, but how much physical danger they put themselves in. Mainly from me.

I’m not really a person to upset.

I’m not a fan of smiling sweetly at a cheap shot made by a kid; placing my finger on my chin with arms folded in thoughtful repose and pointing out the error of their ways.

No.

I want a big messy pile of blood, gore and carbon left where I’ve struck.

I don’t believe in yelling though.

Yelling at a student leaves you with no place to go. You impress no one. You’ve got to leave them with the distinct impression that something terrifying lurks beneath your restraint. Something that requires a parole officer to check up on you each night at 6pm. Yelling just makes you look like an imbecile – all that teeth and spit, and then you loose the faculty for lucid speech so your witty retort comes out so far short of what you wanted.

For example, here’s a transcript of typical midmorning English classroom incident:

Teacher: I’VE ASKED YOU REPEATEDLY TO GET YOUR WORK OUT AND STOP TALKING!

Jinny: (gums slapping with the chewing of gum) I wasn’t talking.

Teacher: RIGHT! I’VE TOLD YOU!

Jinny: (gum makes strange little popping noises) But I wasn’t talking, that was Sharron!

With eyes blazing you turn on Sharron. Sharron is colouring-in her pencil case and could care a tiny bit less than zero that you exist. She casually turns to talk to her friend you’ve been remonstrating with and begins to continue her point about Barrie or Bescuit or whatever his damn new age sensitive mispelt name is when you actually interrupt her. Needless to say she exhibits her annoyance with the roll of her heavily made up eyes.

You can’t remember what happened next. Except you play it back in your head and you seem to have come across like a children’s television co-host with your arms outstretched pretending to be a bear. And yelling. Lots of yelling. And there’s makeup and blood all over your hands.

We put more and more restrictions and demands on teachers and then wonder why the only people teaching are those who are out of their mind, trapped or just can’t find other work – the shortage of teachers makes schools even more desperate and prepared to employ people who don’t brush their hair in the morning.

Having said that there are good days. Don’t let me put you off teaching. Just go in with your eyes wide open and the safety off your Glock.