Neverending fun!

Any non-teachers out there, never again dare to imply that teachers got it easy. I invite you to visualize the effort it takes not to scream out loud/bang your head against the wall/keel over unconscious during endless staff meetings with agendas that bring tears to your eyes:

Today's for example included:

• the building of lanterns for the St. Martin procession (That's still on Nov. 11, right? Or did they change that?)
• the organisation of the school Christmas (!) party (Outside it was 30°, for Santa's sake! Why, are the gingerbread and stollen in the stores already?)
• the election of staff representatives for some conference or other
• some other election I couldn't bring myself to follow
• oh, the swine flu, of course (Aren't you as pleased as I am that no, the cleaning crew are not asked/obliged to disinfect door handles at the end of the school day - evidentially the no.1 place of infection? But don't you worry, the city council has provided - I'd write new, but for the most part there weren't any in the first place - soap dispensers for all classrooms! WTF...)
• the discussion about whether or not it is ethical/practical to put students on breaktime toilet duty with or without a reward system (Ooh, that'll keep for another day's post, you so don't want to have missed that!)
• the motion brought forward to replace the normal handles on all classroom doors by door knobs that only open from the inside on account of higher security in case of someone running amok (Yeah, that'll really scare them off, if they have to knock politely and wait for the student nearest to the door to open up for them before they start shooting...)
• the reconstruction measures that are imposed on us to meet some obscure new fire safety requirements. Now, apparently what they're doing is knock through all the walls joining two classrooms and insert fire doors with glass panes. No, I don't know why either. I mean, apart from making any teaching next to impossible with students sticking their greasy noses against the windows and making faces at the nextdoor class, as well as providing even more background noise than there already is - my, those lucky ones with their emergency door towards the music room... - I guess they had in mind just that: additional emergency exits in case one staircase is already blocked. Now, I think you're with me that emergency doors should remain unlocked at all times? Yeah? And can you picture my students not messing about with such a door non-stop? No? Well, me neither. But hark! There's more. Today we learned that those new fire doors actually are not going to be fire-proof after all. Instead they're going to be sound-proof. (Hear, hear! So, you're going to be able to see the fire catch on to your room, but at least won't hear the nextdoor people's screaming. Neat. Much less disruptive.) Also, they are going to be locked. The emergency doors - locked. But just when you thought that, as utterly futile as all these undertakings might appear, at least there's still a slim chance of some teaching/learning taking place at some point in the future, here's the catch: The door handles are going to be equipped with a sensor alarm, which means that as soon as someone tries to push them down, a beeping noise will be set off both in the classroom and the caretaker's office which won't stop until the caretaker has come to the classroom and deactivated it. Oh, the fun will just never stop! I swear I am not kidding you...