A Day in December

Two months already, since I started here. My hands are cracked and I've got chalk under my nails. My bag is bulging with worksheets, activity ideas, flashcards and Christmas carols. I have an obsession with stationery and I hoard old manuals. Occasionally (but not now) I have head lice, the children pass them around. My locker contains a bottle of water, a box of pencils, and half the school's lost and found section, including skipping ropes, hats, gloves (not in pairs), a brown cap.

Yesterday I was summoned to a meeting of the English Department in town. One other teacher of 'extra-curricular' English turned up. The head of department, a lovely woman, and the two of us made ourselves cozy in the busy staff room of the secondary school.

The annual plans were discussed for about twenty seconds. 'Anything else you might want to mention?' - well I reckon our coordinator has by now removed this innocent phrase from her meeting-musts. What followed was a blizzard of information from the two of us . Fifty minutes into it, when I stopped to draw breath, she had a polite rictus on her face and was nodding manically.

Not that it was boring. It might have been a bit like describing another planet in a different language, but boring it was not. We – many of us with no previous experience or, like me, total foreigners – are sent into classrooms of kids going crazy at the end of their long days of enschoolment. Our classes are not compulsory, but everyone attends, because what parent can possibly leave work before half past five to go spend some time with their kid?

So, by the time we say hello to them on any given day, these kids – aged 5 to 10 years old - have already spent seven hours at school. We must look them in the eye and regurgitate the processed, prepackaged vocabulary of a foreign language, just to keep them quiet for another two hours until their parents finish their jobs.

This scheme – I find out today – was cooked up by a former Minister of Education only four years ago, and might disappear as early as next year, nudged out by austerity measures. It was a bit like putting a few new chicks in the coop . They never get enough food, the other hens peck them mercilessly, there's no space to spread their wings (which are clipped from the start anyway) and when their time comes, everyone's surprised to find there's no meat on the bones.

So we cluck about it for a while and then go back to school. Who cares, I think as I walk to the gate. We just do what we do. I get mobbed as soon as I get in. 'Teacher', they shout, 'teacher, teacher, teacher'! 'Hello' I say, 'hello, hello, hello'. They don't want to say anything specific, just be noticed. Sometimes they ask me to tie up their shoelaces, and hold my umbrella while I do. Someone gives me a drawing. It's Santa Claus, wearing red pijamas and riding a black cat in the sky. He appears to have jettisoned a present and a girl (the author of the drawing?) is there to catch it. The present is large and square and tied with a ribbon that says Hello Kitty. I take the drawing and glue it into my book.

Then the first class of the day files in and I set up the stereo, rearrange a poster, pick up the chalk.