Deadlines

I've missed several in the last week.

First, my Form 2 reports. Due Wednesday, 12:30pm. I was only a few hours late in the beginning but then thought I could do it at home with the school's new, fancy web-based report system... but no. And then the internet was down the next day at school (which was handy because it meant that the rest of the deadlines following my missed one could not be kept, so I had a bit of undeserved extra time).

On Friday my Form 3 reports were due, 12:30pm. By that stage I was exhausted from marking, overwhelmed at the thought of keeping my deadlines, and mad at the authorities for scheduling a Literature essay-based exam on the last day of exams and expecting all 100+ scripts to be marked in 48 hours and reports based on those marks in the next morning. So that fact is, I could probably have stayed late into Friday afternoon and finished and only been a few hours late... but I didn't. I went home. (And got them in first thing Monday before anyone was the wiser).

Okay, so its not a good habit to miss deadlines, I realise that, and in the past I've always been an almost ridiculous stickler for the rules, but the fact that I was so relaxed about missing these school ones (the first was sort of not my fault, or at least less my fault than the second which was totally a choice and my fault) shows something quite cool. I'm comfortable at W. I feel confident in my position here, so much that I realise that first, missing deadlines occasionally is probably not the end of the world and second, if there are near world-ending ramifications such as being shouted or frowned in next week's staff meeting... I probably will survive.

So missing deadlines at school, not a good thing, but being comfortable and confident in a place, definitely a good thing.

And a worrying thought that I'm not going to deal much on: this blog post is two days late and I feel more guiltly about that than missing my report deadlines.

PAIN: Invigilation

Along with exams comes invigilation. Last year, I started teaching right before Cambridge exams began in November. I listened as teachers bemoaned the duty of invigilating these exams with, I thought, over-exaggerated consternation and drama. Honestly, all you’re doing is supervising a bunch of girls while they write an exam. How terrible could that be? Well, having been inducted into my first round of public exam invigilating and well into my second, let me tell, it can be pretty darn terrible.

Cambridge is, as I imagine many other examining boards are, very strict on how invigilation must be done. An invigilator may not do anything else other than invigilate. This consists of walking (you are not really meant to stop moving) around the room watching attentively for cheating students (and supplying extra paper, tissue paper, string to tie papers together, picking up dropped writing utensils). Not difficult. No. But do you know how unbelievably boring walking around watching people write, racing other teachers to get to the raised hand, with nothing to do, for anywhere from 40 to 120 minutes, is? Well, let me enlighten you: it is awfully painful. You scoff? Believe it. I never knew doing nothing could be so painful (I knew there was a reason I avoided all those "Silent Retreats" at Calvin!).

So, in an effort to survive the eternity of walking in a daze around the room (who expects us to see cheaters after an exhausting hour of nothingness?) like zombies, you come up with some interesting ideas.

String braiding with the little pieces of string for tying papers together
Origami stars – made with thin strips of smuggled in paper
Statistics – work out what percentage of Maths candidates have two or more calculators
Races – first invigilator to find a certain number or word
Bets – with fellow zombie guess which month has more candidates born in it, count them up (based on students’ statement of entries on their desks) and see who wins
String hide and seek (our latest favourite) – spend the time hiding little bits of string (very surreptitiously) around the room, next invigilator has to find them

Jess, a friend and fellow zombie-walker, created a Facebook support group called “People Against Invigilation: PAIN”.

Ideas of ways to fill spaces of nothingness welcome.

Six-word memoirs

Someone once challenged Hemmingway to write a short story in six words. So he did:
“For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”

In 2006 Smith magazine challenged their readers to write their own six-word memoirs.

In October I challenged my L6s (17 year olds) to write their own six-word memoirs along with the back story. The back stories stayed private, I was the only one to read them, but the six words were all put into a powerpoint for our final lesson. The memoirs they wrote ranged from funny to thoughtful to heart-breaking. It is amazing how much you can put into six words and I feel privileged that they shared these stories with me – some deeply personal. Some of the things that they bring with them and have to go home to, that they hide behind hard work and good-natured smiles, that they have to cope with and still be expected to hand in homework and study for exams, are unbelievable.

Here are some:

“Experiences,” names given to our mistakes. --Jo
Newspaper Classifieds – Urgently needed: Braille Instructor --Ru
Can’t love what you didn’t have… --Sa
Love is patient. Love is kind. --De
Pink cozzies don’t make it better. --Se
High School Musical is a movie. --Ki
Blow out your candle – never mind… --Ch
Natural Selection: Survival of the fittest. --Pr
A little firefly glowing in darkness. --Ru
I swim because I want to. --Ni
Muffins, Best Friend and Worst Enemy. --Sh
Laugh out loud, let it rip. --Ta
Life. What it has to offer. --Ku
Friends all made it, I didn’t. --Ru
Best Friends Forever. Forever… CUT SHORT! --Me
My teacher made me do this. --Ch
Dearest God: Bring Daddy Back… Please! --Li
Darkness isn’t what I’m afraid of. --Ca
Wanted: That elusive place called home. --Miss Bell

Being a Lady

It is not ladylike to walk and eat or drink at the same time. You learn something new every day. W* is all about molding young ladies of excellence. Or something like that. It’s all a bit vague. But becoming a lady is definitely part of the goal. Last week they were lectured about acting like ladies (my Form 2s – 14 year olds – responded by greeting me for our after lunch lesson as “Lady Bell”, I think they missed the point). In our staff meeting we were reminded to make sure girls do not walk and eat at the same time because “ladies do not do that.” Ladies walk demurely, in silence, from lesson to lesson, not eating.

The same day, in the car on the way home, Angela told me how two girls at her co-ed school down the road almost got into a physical fight—“so unladylike!” she exclaimed with wrinkled nose.
“Why is it unladylike? Why can’t girls fight but boys can?”
I’d like to report that she realised the incongruence of this social more, and we had a mind shaping conversation… but we didn’t.

But really, this lady business distresses me a bit. What is the point? Who decides on what is ladylike and what is not? And why is being ladylike so inconvenient to the lady? And the big one: why can men eat and walk at the same time but women – sorry, ladies – can’t? Delicate constitutions, no doubt. Goodness, it feels like the 1870s sometimes (not that I have a firm grasp of what that decade was like). This lady image is an appealing one to push young girls towards, but what really are we pushing them into? And, why?

Well, fortunately, it’s too late for me to be molded a lady. So I walk down the corridor, and I grab the tea biscuit on my way out of school at 3pm and munch on it as I walk to the car. And I whistle; because I love to whistle. And that's definitely not ladylike.

*I have decided not to refer to my school by name anymore. So from now on it will be referred to as “W” – a random letter that has no connection at all.

Heat

It is hot. Clothes sticking to your sticky, sweaty skin hot.

Today we had a high of 36C - the highest since 1962, so the rumour is. Everyone is talking about it.

I love it. Four awful Michigan winters eventually replaced with the unbelievable feeling of spring slowly coming back to life have given me new, awakened senses, much more in tune with the air around me than I ever was before. I love how alive my skin feels in this heat.

But some things are that much more difficult in the heat. Sleeping, for one. Lying, limbs spread out on your sheets, windows and curtains flung wide. Hopeless. Also, teaching. "Miss Bell, don't you feel like you're melting?! I think I'm melting!", better than the glassy-eyed glaze that over takes most. At least melting they're still responsive.

Some days I remember it's good to be alive.

Glimpses: the cost of an accent

I’m not exactly sure why I’m at W given what it is and who I am but it is teaching me much about the world and my stereotypes of it. Things are not as simple as I like to think they are.

The other day in my AS Language class (17 year old Lower Sixes) we were talking about one of my favourite topics: language and power, and specifically, how language is power. And it is not only the words you speak that give or deny you power, it is also the way you speak those words.

In Zimbabwe, as in most places in the world, there are various English accents created by various factors ranging from native language to education to ethnicity to social class. As we seem to do so naturally, it is easy to lock people into rigid groups based purely on the sounds of the words that come out of their mouths.

W is a fairly elite, private girls school (yes, it’s true, I am teaching at an elite, private girls school). The majority of our girls come from middle to upper class families, many of them with connections to various significant, influential people in the country involved in important business, politics, and NGOs. Most are Shona speakers, with the “correct” kind of accent. The accent that marks them as educated. We’ve had discussions before about how accents shape perception and very quickly determine who is acceptable and who is not. They tell stories about the good-looking guy who is suddenly not quite so good-looking after he first opens his mouth. By the time they have left, even if they did not start out with it, our girls have the right kind of accent: one that will give them acceptance and privilege.

And yet, it is not as simple as the well-spoken, privileged versus the poor, unprivileged. I’m discovering very few things are simple at all. This accent of privilege comes at a cost. In the same way that the good-looking guy who does not speak correctly is marked and boxed, these girls are marked and boxed. They have lost the fluidity of their native language and feel out of place and uncomfortable when trying to speak it to relatives. Their visits to rural family are often difficult and it is obvious they cannot fit in the same way their cousins can. They are judged by their junior school friends who do not attend such an accent-defining high school and who ask them who they think they are. Their accent opens many doors, but it also limits where they can fit and who they can be in ways that are surprising and, I think, ultimately, painful.

Language is power. Accents give power.

But power comes at a cost.

No, it is not simple. I’m getting glimpses of why I’m here.

The other side of the pool

Tonight was our interhouse swimming gala at school. When I was in high school the interhouse swimming gala was one of the worst days of my year. Every year. I approached these days with knots in my stomach. There were never enough actual swimmers to compete in every race for the house and my best friend and I spent our time sitting way in the back trying to blend into the bench. We never quite learned how to do this. Even if our names weren’t on the list the day before you could be certain that someone would be absent or conveniently forget their costume or suddenly develop some strange, deadly disease that was passed through water, and we would be called on by some nasty, clip-board-bearing prefect to fill in. Of course, we were too much of a pair of goody-two-shoes (or just simply too terrified to dream of breaking any rules) to have forgotten our own costumes and no one would tell us where to pick up those deadly diseases the night before. So we swam, every year. Sarah was better than I was. Sometimes she came third or fourth! I came sixth or seventh depending on whether there were six or seven swimmers. Humiliating. If I we had a perseverance cup, I would have got it. But no, there wasn’t even a perseverance cup to hope for in the end. Just humiliation. Year after year. And, to top it off, our school was co-ed. Swimming galas are already a bad idea but having them at a co-ed school is just cruel and unusual punishment. Just at that time when you are self-conscious about absolutely everything about yourself they make you get in a costume and try to swim in front of boys and all the other girls who are way prettier and way more popular that you. And everyone, every single person—parent, student, teacher—at Les Brown pool is watching you. Contrary to what you would assume, they do not watch the person coming first, or second, or third, they don’t even watch their daughter or their sister or their girlfriend. No, , no, they watch you. Like hawks watching a poor, little, defenseless baby rabbit. You can tell galas were traumatic moments in my life.

But now – oh the happiness – I am a teacher. Ha! Now I sit on the other side of the pool. I give out the little disk with the number 3 on it. I get wet only when a dive fails to be executed quite right. I drink tea and chat to colleagues about which swimmers are their favourite students. I clap for the girl who wins the perseverance cup. Next year I’m going to get the number 6 disk. Those are my people.

Oh, it is good to be here, on the other side.