It has been an interesting week so far. I have a cold, and I have probably gotten due in part to some of the stresses associated with the, uh, surrealness of it all. Another thing is that my roommate was talking on the phone late at night, and waking me up in the process. Thankfully that was sorted (he will now talk on the livingroom sofa, which is behind another door).
At the end of week 1, which I thought had gone rather well, half the class complained about the pace of the learning. I used my 3.5 hours of teaching (8AM to 1140AM) to get though the materials, and the students said that it was too much too fast, with not enough listening and speaking. That was the curriculum, I said, but I was willing to listen to proposals. What we ended up agreeing to was this:
8-9 Reading textbook
9-940 Documentary
10-11 Writing
11-1140 Speaking: Discussion groups
One student has a list of 700+ documentaries on memory sticks, and we can pick and choose from there. In exchange, the students agreed to always bring their books and homework and participate in class from beginning to end. It has mixed results so far: students have indeed brought their books - when they have shown up. I get lots of promises (I will never be late again, blah blah), and excuses (I had to pick up my diabetic parents at the airport who just arrived from Bahrain), end result: not living up to their committments. Patience, grasshopper, patience.
As well, I had recieved a complaint from another teacher, over what I feel to be a trivial matter. Without getting into details, that complaint wasted the time and efforts of about 6 people before it was thankfully quashed. We had recieved a presentation the day before of the official complaint process, which curiously did not include info about teacher vs teacher procedures.
On a serious and concerning note, though, was a complaint procedure which had gone awry. At the meeting, we were told that teachers would be informed about complaints prior to observations, and process of information and detail sharing would proceed. Later that afternoon, I met with one teacher, who was suddenly confronted two days prior in class by 3 HR staff, who told him on the spot to leave the class. The teacher was shocked, but asked if he could have the request made in writing (to prevent the scenario where he could be accused of leaving his class and relinquishing his duties on his own accord, thus justifying a firing). This was refused, and he was told in front of his students to leave or security and/or police would be called. He subsequently left the class, but was not given any explanation of why this even took place. I hope to recieve some closure over the next few days, and perhaps to hear more details if this scenario is even accurate. This is concerning, however, because it leaves me to wonder on the possible arbitrary nature of HR departmental power: could I be subject to this one day as well?
Finally, another two teachers had a strange encounter with two students while in the bathroom. The teachers had gone into the bathroom stalls, to relieve themselves. Upon exiting the stalls, two students stormed up to them, waggling fingers inches from their nose, telling them they would be reported to the manager and fired. Mystified, but also becoming angry at this insolent treatment, teacher A went to get assistance from a line manager, the other teacher B to stay with the agitated students. The manager came, but by then the students had allegedly pushed teacher B, who was angry and who then said loudly to the approaching manager that these students should be written up etc etc. Unfortunately, the tension escalated into a misunderstanding between teacher B and the manager, without anything being done about the offending students. While this misunderstanding eventually resolved itself, later on as I was with tecaher A, the two students in the original altercation were walking up the stairs. we both asked the students to accompany us to see the manager. The students said very casually they were tired and were going home, and then continued to saunter off, completely ignoring our requests to accompany them to the office. We looked at each other, as we clearly saw our own impotence in the light of this blatant disrespect. But what could we do? There is no leverage, most if not all the managers were already off-campus by then, we did not know their names, and frankly, we felt that little if anything positive would result from this anyway.
That night I went to sleep with a slight headache, and woke up next morning with a sore throat and runny nose.
No comments:
Post a Comment