School Under Siege

Last week I didn't write any posts. I was busy watching scruffy workmen taking over the school, armed with electrical drills and long black wires.

At the beginning of term we were told they were just finishing the work they'd started during the winter holidays. They would return in the summer holidays.

Last week, all of a sudden, a roof was stripped of tiles and new tiles were laid, all in the sunny calm between two showers.

By Wednesday, there were workers doing noisy stuff outside (pressure washing the walls of my classroom) and inside (drilling next door).

By the second break on Friday, I had been given my orders to move to another classroom. Twenty minutes later, my classroom was stripped of chairs, tables, all materials and the shelves where they'd been sitting.

My new classroom is small, has an impressive echo and a toxic new false ceiling. The thing - white, pristine, recently installed - sends out waves of chemical poison. Kill-by-headache.

Yesterday the drilling was so loud and so close that no one word could be heard, despite the impressive echo and regardless of the language. Besides, we had a worker perched on scaffolding, painting the windows outside the classroom. Without the incessant drilling, he could have learned 'Head, shoulders, knees and toes'.

Why? Why now? Why?

And, by the end of the day, I had my answer. The contract has gone to a family member of someone influential. The family member is a little strapped for cash therefore the work must happen NOW. Dash the hundred and eleven children trying to learn something in a bright and quiet place. Dash their stressed and migrained teachers. Take over their classrooms and choke their corridors with black wires and sacks of cement.

What we need is a bomb shelter and a DVD player. Alternatively, a glorious spring with sunny days and flowers and new grass. They can be our classrooms.