Sometimes teaching just takes

It has not been a good week overall.

1. I had to tell two different upper level classes how disappointed I was in them with them not handing in work. Last week I sat down with one -- a group of Lower Sixes who have just chosen English Literature as one of their three A-Level subjects, emphasis on the chosen and had all failed the test because of simply not reading, who last week did not hand in their homework-- and at the beginning of the lesson in disappointment, asked, "Why are you here?" and then told them how they were destroying my love of teaching... well, not in so many words, but pretty close.

2. My matron (who lives in the hostel and looks after the girls as a "mother" figure and is old enough to be my grandmother) was not here on time on Monday when girls were being dropped off from the long weekend and the head of Boarding found out and told me I have to "speak strongly" to her about it... still haven't done that.

3. I feel even busier this term than last year and seem (somehow!) to have less time to plan creative lessons or to create new lessons and creating is one of my favourite parts of teaching and if I can't do it occasionally, I just don't feel fulfilled.

4. I had to be stern to a little Form One sent by the matron who had dropped the iron and broken it as she looked so sad and I just wanted to give her a hug and tell her it was okay--I've dropped many a thing in my day--but I can't because I'm supposed to be in charge and holding them all accountable and sometimes my job is to just look stern.

5. I missed a class. Yes, I just didn't go. It is a class that has been added to my teaching schedule and so I looked at an old timetable but still. And they had a party.

6. I spend most of my free time marking books, or thinking about marking books, or feeling guilty for not marking books.

7. I counselled two different girls with two different problems and I can't solve either of them.

8. To add insult to injury, I've ended up with 3 Lower Six classes (I asked for extra because I loved them so much last year) and they all seem to be a particularly uninspired lot who don't do their homework or think or care much about anything.

On the other hand, the last couple days have had some bright moments:

1. Toby--the resident campus dog--went crazy in one of my lessons, running around and barking at all the girls (usually he is very well-behaved and sleeps under someone's chair) and I thought, yet again, "This would never happen in the States."

2. One of my Form 3s complimented my colour combination of skirt and top (it's amazing what a compliment from a teenager can do to your self esteem!).

3. I had a lively, engaging discussion with my Upper Sixes about Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins and marveled how one year group can be so different from the next. These are my L6s from last year, my favourite class then, the level I am despairing over right now. My U6s last year where my most dreaded, painful class and having any kind of discussion with them longer than two minutes was major work.

4. We sent off Amnesty International letters today to the North Korean UN Representative about closing Yodok Prison Camp and I think I may have made them think about the important uses of English outside of English class (shocking revelation, let me tell you).

5. I walked past one of my classes as they were having a Maths lesson and when they saw me (their teacher busy shutting the windows) they all waved excitedly--probably because I was a welcome distraction from vectors but, at this point, I'll take what I can get.

So I guess while I love this job and I know this is absolutely where I want and am meant to be right now, I'm realising just how much it takes from you and how little it leaves at times.

Roses

It’s the day after Valentines and I’m thinking of roses.

On Saturday I stopped by Strathhaven shopping centre to get some veggies for the week (one green pepper, some beans, a Chinese cabbage and 2 carrots – it’s odd shopping for one person). I was slowly putting my things back in the car because I was kind of hoping Mum’s Mango Man (yes, she has a Mango Man) would descend upon me at that moment when you are stuck outside your car, caught in between getting in and driving away very fast and putting away your groceries – a moment I try very hard usually to avoid and one Zimbabwean fruit sellers are highly skilled at capitalising on. Today though, I wanted mangoes.

The Mango Man was refilling his bags on the other side of the parking lot and I was trying to decide if I would completely rewrite shopping parking lot rules and conventions and drive over to him, when the Rose Man found me. I know this Rose Man. He and I go way back. He knows I’m a sucker and will probably buy some discounted roses from him (business is always bad, he’s always desperate, I’m always a sucker and the roses actually are pretty cheap). We have a nice acquaintance – this time he didn’t even bother asking if I wanted roses. We talked for a couple minutes about business (bad) and how much money people had (none). I tried to be positive and point out that Tuesday was Valentine’s and that was sure to be good for his line of business. He wasn’t convinced. It’s hard to hope once you’re out of the habit. I asked how much his roses were and bought a yellow bunch. 20 for $2. A bargain.

And then it was Valentine’s Day. Zimbabwean private schools have a tradition of sending roses amongst each other. A group at the school, usually fundraising for charity, takes orders from its students to send roses to each other and to many schools in the city. So you pay a dollar and send your girlfriend who goes to another school a couple roses, her name is called out in assembly or lunch and everyone sees what a lucky, loved person she is. It’s horrible. I remember high school. By the middle of high school, my friends and I were sending each other roses but before then, those of us who were roseless each Valentine’s felt unlucky and unloved, all day as we watched the lucky and loved walk around glowing holding their wilting flowers. What I would have given for a wilting flower.

Anyway, I decided to send my boarding girls roses (because it actually doesn’t matter who they’re from because no one knows when your name is called out and they might be from, say, a boy, instead of Miss Bell and only you and Miss Bell have to know if you want, it’s mostly about the illusion). I decided to buy my own roses (cheaper and I had missed the pre-ordered ones) so I headed out Monday afternoon after lessons to a group of rose-sellers down the road – not my Rose Man, who was a bit further away. Anyway, this rose man wanted to sell me a bunch for $10! Five times the price of what I had paid on Saturday. Well, I like a challenge. I had facts and knowledge of rose prices on my side; he had the roses and knowledge of my desperation on his. Eventually I got him down to $4 a bunch. Fair, I think, for Valentine’s Eve. So I found a prefect, and got my roses slipped in amongst the official ones.

Yesterday, my girls were happy (I saved a few of them from the “zero-club”), and I have the left-overs in a glass on my bookshelf. They are slowly opening and smell gorgeous. I’m happy, too. But even now, even though I am content with who I am and where I am in my life, and even though I like to challenge accepted perceptions about love and gender and relationships (usually not on Valentine’s day because people aren’t usually in the mood to be challenged about love or gender or relationships then), and even though I have mostly moved on from high school and know that roses on Valentine’s do not make me lucky or loved, I kind of – secretly! – wish someone had sent me roses.

Disappointing poetry

Last week my Form 4s and I tried to figure out the poem "Full Moon and Little Frieda" by Ted Hughes together. It's a beautiful poem that captures the innocence of a child and a moment in time when she interacts with the universe and the universe interacts with and responds to her. It is a tricky poem though: the images are confusing and the sentence structure is not clear. You have to work hard to get to the beauty of the poem. And last week I made them work. I never just give out the meaning of a poem (I don't presume to know many meanings of poems anyway). I make my students annotate and think and write and then we discuss all the way through, often line-by-sometimes-excruciating-line. It is sometimes painful but I want them to learn to analyse poetry for themselves and to think through a difficult poem. It is rewarding to have come to conclusions yourself. You get so much more out of something if you work hard and see the light in the end. And once they see that you're not going to do it for them and that you trust them and their ideas they really get into it, if they have to figure out what the poem means themselves (sometimes they get into it a little too much and come up with some wacky ideas and then you have to gently prod them back onto the straight and narrow).

So, we spent a tiring but thoroughly enjoyable 40 minutes working through "Full Moon and Little Frieda". And they were wonderful. With a few questions and guidance they made some really astute comments about the poem and "figured it out": who the he was, who the you was, the perspective of the author, some ideas what the blood river was (one I had never thought of!), the trembling star and unspilled milk... They started off completely lost and with looks on their faces that said "why would you do this to us on a Wednesday afternoon, Miss Bell?" and by the end I was thrilled with how involved they had been and the ideas they had come up with. I was so proud and got to the end of the 40 minute lesson feeling invigorated and just tingling - you know that feeling, at the end of a really good lesson? Where everything has just fallen into place so perfectly and you couldn't have planned or executed it better? Rare, but oh so good.

After my final "Okay, any last thoughts or comments about this poem?" I put down my poem and said with passion, "Wasn't that a great poem?"

...

And my balloon of love and happiness popped as I was met with groans and sighs, "No... not the best.... the other one was better... ugh." What?!

Oh poetry. Oh students. Will you never cease to play havoc with my heart?

Here's the poem for your enjoyment (don't tell me if you don't):

Full Moon and Little Frieda

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm
wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.

Ted Hughes

Wrinkles

Okay, so I’m not an ironer. When I lived alone and did my own laundry in the past, I always make sure that when I dry or hang things out to dry, they hang so that they are basically unwrinkled. I did iron occasionally, but you’d be amazed what wonders a hanger and a steamy bathroom can do. I can feel my mother cringing as I write this. Sorry, Mum.

Well, I’m learning my lesson now. Almost every morning for the last three weeks I stand in front of my cupboard looking, often desperately, at the trousers and skirts and tops hanging in my cupboard for a combination that first, works aesthetically, and more importantly these days, is perfectly straight with not a single wrinkle anywhere. Because after that, I walk out my door onto the covered corridor after the second bell rings and stand next to the head of house as she calls role, facing 27 silent Form Ones and after role call she asks them to look at the skirt of the person next to them. At this point, for the first week, she strongly berated them for their appallingly wrinkled skirts. The second week she occasionally (at my suggestion) recognized one nicely ironed skirt… just before she rebuked the rest for their wrinkled ones. You should know, these skirts looked perfectly ironed. And it’s not just because I’m not an ironer, I can tell ironed skirts and these looked fine, a few wrinkles here and there, yes, but mostly impressive, especially this was the first time many of these little Form Ones had ironed their own clothes. Today, after three weeks, they looked immaculate and she told them so.

There is no way I can walk out in anything that is not absolutely wrinkle-free.

Two nights ago, my head of house asked for permission to have a “bed drill”. What’s a bed drill you ask? I did too. Basically, you (if you a Form One) make your bed again, and again, and again, and sometimes again, until it is perfect, because, as we learned in a house meeting last week, the state of your room shows who you are. Oh dear. She can never come in my room. And I straighten like crazy when she comes for a meeting in my lounge.

I’m becoming an ironer.

A whirlwind of new things

I'm going to add "arriving back in the country, moving in to a new flat and beginning a new position and starting to teach new classes within one week" to my list of excuses for the lack of a weekly blog post. Things have been busy, my apologies.

I have moved on campus and am the new Housemistress for Angwa house, the boarding house for Form Ones (Grade 8s). Fortunately, I have the most amazing mother who cleaned and packed and made sure my flat was ready for me to move in with the least amount of stress possible - including coping with a red polish disaster on the floors - and I am now in, living amongst a few boxes, but in.

It has been a week of new things: a new flat, a new position, new students, new classes, new ideas, new stresses, new worries, new hopes. I haven't had a lot of time to think through it all. I'm learning each day new things my job as housemistress involves (a bit more complicated than just enforcing bed times and mopping up homesick tears), trying to tweak old syllabi and get to know new students (both those living with me and those in my classes), figuring out what extra (extra?!) activities I can commit to, and madly trying to prepare new texts before the L6s arrive back at school next week. And, right, I occasionally teach in the spaces between.

So far, though, new is good. I'm excited for this new year of new people and new jobs. I hope I will have time to sit and think and write about some of them as they become comfortingly old and familiar.

Tradition

This Christmas has been a different one. Actually all my Christmases over the last few years have been different. Many have been very good and memorable, but they have not been the traditional ones of my childhood. This may come as a surprise to some of you, indeed it was a surprise to myself - I who strive to be open-minded and to accept new ideas and ways of thinking - but I think I like traditions. Yes, I know, it comes as a shock.

We were staying this year with an Indian family who we became good friends with when they were living in Zimbabwe and who are living at the moment in Dublin. They have moved around a lot and subsequently do not have a lot of Christmas traditions of their own because many years are in new places, with new people, so their Christmases are always different and often take on flavours of the places they are in - this year we had brussel sprouts along with Indian delicacies and drank mulled wine with brownies (okay, so the brownies are not particularly Irish, they just happen to be going through a brownie phase. We didn't complain.).

As we were talking around the table about Christmas memories that we each had, we realized how many traditions we as a family have. Mum's German heritage comes out most strongly at Christmas time and for me, Christmas tastes like stollen and lebkuken and prunes with diamond donuts (yes, I imagine they do have a real name; no, I don't remember it). There's our Christmas Eve supper of cheese and crackers, chips and dip and salami and chutney (a feast in the days growing up when cheese and chips were luxury food items that we didn't get during the year) when we read the Christmas story; stockings (literally Mum's old pantyhose cut in two) that appeared on the bottom of our beds in the middle of the night filled with more treats of sweets, small gifts, chips and complete with an orange in the bottom and a balloon in the top. I remember the feeling of that stocking on the bottom of the bed, the thrill of brushing your toe against it, half asleep in the early hours of the morning and hearing the crinkle of the wrapping of something that just must be good, and dragging it out to the lounge to be opened all together. We always opened gifts early Christmas morning as we ate sticky cinnamon rolls warmed in the microwave before heading to the Christmas Day service. Christmas lunch was always a hodge podge of people who didn't have anywhere to go and who managed to be such an odd and different combination that it always seemed to be the perfect group. Boxing Day was always extended-family day with everyone's leftovers combined to form another spectacular feast, more gifts and often a competitive Chinese auction (white elephant game) where the spirit of giving and love and family loyalty was set aside for an hour or two as we all battled to end up with the nicest junk.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that these traditions are so important to me, because I suppose it is what comes with these traditions that makes them so important. There is a deep security and contentment in the constancy of traditions and I think that this is tied to the memories that are embedded into those traditions: being flooded with moments and feelings attached to a cinnamon roll or a crinkling stocking or the smell of cloves and pineapple glaze on the Christmas ham. That is a powerful thing. I do like traditions. And I think there is plenty of room for adding new ones to the old. Hmm, twelve months to get Mum used to the idea of mulled wine...

London Glimpses

I have been here almost two weeks and although I feel that might make me even less of an expret than someone who has never been here, but I thought I'd share a few things I've seen, glimpsed, in the last 10 days anyway.

1. Although in this city you can find people dressed in absolutely anything and ranging from designer clothes to very worn, second hand ones, I always feel underdressed and like I really should wear more makeup than I ordinarily would just to feel okay. Its a daily mind battle to convince myself not to give in to the social pressure to throw on every vaguely fashionable piece of clothing or accessorie I own to try to measure up.

2. Londoners are remarkably friendly and helpful. The few interactions I have had with strangers - socially and as a customer - have been very pleasant; not at all the brusque, stiff upper lip treatment that is stereotypically expected of the British.

3. Saw 2 little boys, about six, happily pulling the middle finger at the car behind their bus. Their huge, innocent grins suggested that they merely knew that they would achieve some sort of strong reaction and I'd like to think they did not know what they were doing but even if so, how sad that they already know this sign and its implications.

4. We watched a fascinating scene between two drivers. A very fancy white car crossed on-coming traffic in order to enter a side road. Although I don't think it was dangerous, the on-coming driver of a delivery truck had to slow down somewhat and leant on his horn (do I say horn or hooter or beeper as a Zimbabwean? my lexicon is confused!) as he approached the fancy car. Well. Fancy-driver stopped his car in the middle of the road, got out and shouted abuse at the "arrogant ***", saying he could "SIT THERE ALL NIGHT". I was waiting for the delivery driver to get out and for a full blown, perhaps physical, fight to begin. And yet delivery driver just sat in his car while fancy-driver rained anger on him. After a moment, fancy-driver got back in his car and delivery-driver skirted around him on the pavement. It was fascinating. I am confused about the delivery-drivers lack of reaction, especially given his hooting in the first place. Power issues at play? Class even? Very interesting.

5. Christmas is different here. As in the States, consumerism still rules and there is lots of pressure and chance to spendspendspend! But the endless Christmas jingles that plague you ceaselessly are not here. Christmas music, yes, but much less Santa Claus, reindeer and elves. Its nice.

6. There are whole vegetarian rows in the supermarkets here! So wonderful. And although the restaurant menus I have looked at still only have a couple vegetarian options, they are marked with a V, so we're on the radar here. In Zimbabwe you might get a salad or a cheese sandwich. If you're lucky. Also, there are 7 recycling categories... what a place! I would move here except it rains in winter and I can't imagine living some where it rains in winter!