Pending further notice.

It's just one of those times when life seems unduly cruel and harsh. The pieces of bad news just don't seem to be running out. People suddenly missing in action with horrifying diagnoses. Then today I found out that one of my favourite students, well, one of the first hour anyway, a bright kid with a ton of sad stories on his shoulder, hasn't been ill these last ten days after all, but is in fact skiving off school and refusing to leave the house ever since he had been sent into a children's home before the Easter holidays. All news to me. I mean, I had known and guessed some of the crap that has been going on in his life (father absent, mother psychiatric in-patient...). But he had always been an excellent student with a lot going for him, well, comparatively speaking. And now he just seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Yeah, I know, there are people in charge, and I'm sure they're looking out for him.
At least I sincerely pray so.
And here I was thinking I was lonely and entitled to be just a tad dissatisfied with my lot...

A bunch of fireworks.

I'm painfully aware that amidst all the chaos and cajoling, the skirmishes, the reprimanding and the infinite shushing that is in a school day, I hardly ever get round to telling the kids, each kid, what they most need to hear:



"Do you know that there's still a chance for you
'cause there's a spark in you.
You just gotta ignite the light
and let it shine..."

I wish I could make them believe that with the power and confidence of that girl singing the solo! And I wish the world around them would not teach them otherwise...

Being there.

While the world as we knew it seems to be spectacularly going down outside, I, in the meantime, must admit have had one of the best weeks ever, and certainly the best of my teaching career.
After weeks and weeks of preparations that tipped our day-to-day routines into full-blown chaos, on Monday morning Gen Rosso finally came to our school with their huge musical project "Streetlight". And right from the start, effortlessly it seemed, they turned the chaos into an atmosphere buzzing with anticipation and creativity.
For three days our students danced and sweated, acted and sang, built and painted, rehearsed and trained, drummed and played, battled against their short attention spans, mood swings and lack of self-confidence and overcame their shyness and sore muscles.


Yesterday then was the big day of the big night of the big show. It's hard to describe the atmosphere that had the transformed gym humming with excitement all day during the final rehearsals.


I won't pretend that it wasn't also a fair bit exhausting to help coordinate everything and to try and settle down and answer the billions of questions of 400 bubbly, hyper pupils.


Then again, whenever I found a quiet moment I just found myself watching the kids and thinking what a huge, huge pity it is that the school system forces us into such rigid corsets that we hardly ever get a chance to see our pupils behave like this. To see them discover new talents and blossom under the appreciative looks of newly-found role models and friends, to watch them straighten up and broaden their shoulders with a new confidence and happiness they didn't know they possessed.


So, millions and millions of heartfelt thanks to everyone from Gen Rosso for sharing with us your boundless energy, your talent, your kindness, your optimism, your patience, for giving our pupils' faces a glow like this...


...and smiles like these...


...and for giving us teachers the opportunity to see "our" kids...


...in a new light!

Ich hab ein zärtliches Gefühl...

Nach dem Adventskaffee letzten Sonntag stand tags darauf noch ein Teller mit Plätzchen im Lehrerzimmer, die eine Kollegin und ich so lecker fanden, dass sie recherchiert hat, welches Kind sie mitgebracht hatte.
Ihre Sherlock-Holmes-Künste waren auch von Erfolg gekrönt. So berichtete sie mir, dass es ein Junge aus meiner Sechser-Englischklasse sei und sie ihm aufgetragen habe, doch mal bei der Mutter nach dem Rezept zu fragen. Er ist ein kleiner, dünner, extrem quirliger (ADHS lässt grüßen), zappeliger, wilder, liebenswerter Junge mit schwarzen Haaren und dunklen Augen, der aus dem Irak stammt und da wohl in früher Kindheit so einiges durchgemacht hat (Die Klassenlehrerin erwähnte mal nebenbei etwas von einer Autobombe, die direkt neben ihm... Frag nicht.).
Jedenfalls brachte er mir heute ganz stolz folgenden Zettel mit, den er sich von Mama wohl hatte diktieren lassen:



Irgendwas zwischen Lachtränen und Rührung hat mir die Schrift fast vor den Augen verschwimmen lassen. Ich hab die Plätzchen vorhin gleich versucht nachzubacken. Aber gegen die Backkünste seiner Mama komme ich natürlich nicht an...

About that flamethrower you asked Santa for...

...And then there was that little First Year boy with the big, brown eyes, who yesterday during break took a deodorant and a lighter and, just like that, set fire to two Third Year girls' hair.

They were extremely lucky - their faces weren't burned, and miraculously none of their completely synthetic clothes caught fire. "Only" their hair was thoroughly singed and one girl's eyelashes a little bit, too.

Why did he do that, you ask?
What do you mean?
I'm sure Calvin would understand.

Kinder, stellt die Stiefel raus...

"Wenn es raschelt im Haus heute Nacht,
still und heimlich, dass niemand erwacht,
sind es ganz bestimmt keine Mäuse,
sondern viele, liebe, kleine Nikoläuse..."


Der 2. Advent ist nun nicht gaaanz so friedlich und entspannt wie der 1., aber nun, was will man machen? Ich hab's ja immer gesagt: Augen auf bei der Berufswahl!
Heute ist der alljährliche Rabbatz und Budenzauber aka Adventskaffee bei uns in der Schule und damit herrscht seit Wochen Ausnahmezustand. Die komplette letzte Woche war die Turnhalle gesperrt, zu Dekorations- und Aufbauzwecken und nicht zuletzt für die 5-10 Gesamtdurchläufe und "Generalproben", die es offenbar braucht, um 100 Fünft- und Sechstklässler und ca. 50 Chorsänger auf Linie zu bringen. Was an besonderem Reiz dadurch gewinnt, dass je drei aus fünf Lehrern sowas von ganz offensichtlich absolut keinen Bock auf diese Veranstaltung haben und mit Arbeitsscheu und Gemaule für so richtig konstruktive und besinnliche Stimmung sorgen.

Sicher, mir fällt auch was Entspannteres ein, als am 2. Advent aufgedrehte Kinder im Schach zu halten, um dann anschließend mit zwei Kolleginnen und 6 Schülerinnen das Geschirr von 300 Kaffeegedecken per Hand zu spülen... Ich könnte zum Beispiel den Kuchen, den ich grad gebacken und gleich abzuliefern habe, mit ausgewählten Leuten selbst essen.
Andererseits weiß ich aber auch, dass diese Chaosaktion für unsere Kleenen da heute das Highlight des Jahres ist. Dass sie mir die nächsten Tage mit strahlenden Augen, gestärktem Selbstvertrauen und (gefühlt) fünf Zentimeter größer entgegenkommen werden, weil sie gemeinsam etwas geschafft haben und dafür Lob und Applaus bekommen haben.

Da wäge nun jeder selbst ab, ob es die Sache wert ist...

Worüber man nicht sprechen kann...

...darüber soll man schweigen. Nur soviel: An einer katholischen Schule kann man durchaus auch "a god friend" haben.


Ich hab's ja immer gesagt: Die Medien sind an allem schuld.

Morgen ist Elternsprechtag. Himmel, schick Schokolade! (Und 'nen guten Dolmetscher.)

Food for thought.

Monday morning.
A colleague just sat down next to me, wide-eyed: "D'you know one of my Third Years? (We'll call her) Jenny? Well, she was sitting in my class this morning as usual and at one point said she wasn't feeling too well. I told her to have a drink of water and wait and see (the way you do) and went on with my biology class. Some minutes later one of the girl's friends asked me 'Is it normal to feel queasy after an abortion?' Because, you see, it turns out Jenny had been having an abortion on Friday, that's why she wasn't feeling too great."
Jenny's fourteen.
Another colleague came up and said "Did you know (again, let's call him) Tom's grandma died? You know, he had been living with her since he was small because his parents rejected him. Now we don't know what's to become of him. I don't think he's fully realized what's happened yet."
Well, you can say that again. That 13-year-old boy had been sitting in my class that morning as always, had smiled at me in his special, awkward way and complained about having English in order to get some kind of reaction, some attention, like every morning.
I tried to recall my own behaviour and just prayed that I hadn't made any stupid, thoughtless remarks towards him. Which is silly, because something is always going on in these kids' lives, so you can't really spend your time tip-toeing around them. But still, when you're reminded of their fragility like that, you wish like mad you weren't among those who made things worse for them.
There are more "incidents" like these of course. One of "my" pupils has been admitted to the psychiatric hospital on account of countless intestinal obstructions without apparent physical causes - and now, after 8 months of finding nothing the experts finally hit upon the words "abuse" and "rape". She won't be coming back to our school whenever all this is over. If it's ever over.
I don't know.
It's just that things like these are difficult to stomach with a recently upset stomach and without fair warning and a good night's sleep.

Der lange Arm des Gestzes.

Die Klassenlehrerin der 7. Klasse, die ich in Englisch habe, ist seit den Osterferien in Mutterschutz. Wie zu erwarten war, drehen etliche Schüler der Klasse nun extrem auf, testen, wie weit sie gehen können, was passiert, wenn das Alphatier nicht mehr da ist, ob es Konsequenzen gibt bei Regelverstößen. Das übliche.
Eine Regel, die die Kollegin für ihre Klasse aufgestellt hat, lautet, dass niemand in Trainingshosen zur Schule erscheinen darf. Das mag zunächst seltsam anmuten, hat aber durchaus seinen tieferen Sinn. Doch das können die Schüler besser selbst erklären. Letzte Woche liefen nämlich an einem Tag gleich fünf der Jungs in Jogginghosen auf. Leider hatten sie nicht eingeplant, dass die Klassenlehrerin durchaus noch häufiger in der Schule vorbeikommt... Da war dann Schluss mit lustig. Erstaunlich, wie das mit der Prägung funktioniert (Pawlow und - wie hieß noch der Typ mit dem Gänseküken? Ah, Lorenz - wären begeistert). Als die Jungen ihre Lehrerin über den Hof kommen sahen, ist ihnen regelrecht die Kinnlade heruntergeklappt. Zwei von ihnen waren den Tränen nahe.
Wie dem auch sei, kleine Sünden ahndet eine Klassenlehrerin sofort, so dass ich euch die Hintergründe und Details in schriftlicher Form präsentieren kann. Ich hoffe man kann alles lesen, wenn man zur Vergrößerung auf die Fotos klickt.

Wie lernen: Jogginghosen haben kein Style.

So, hier wird's schon komplexer. Kleiner Verständnistipp: Es gibt tatsächlich gar nicht mal so wenige Schüler, die in den Klamotten zur Schule kommen, in denen sie auch geschlafen haben. Woher die Lehrer das wissen? Oh, da entwickelt man so'n Gespür...

Die Kurzfassung hat natürlich auch ihren Reiz. Vor allem für den, der den Aufsatz schreiben sollte...

Ich weiß, ein Schmankerl für Graphologen. Falls ihr aufgebt, hier die Schlüsselformulierungen: "das kommt assi rüber" und "weil ja nicht jeder wissen soll, dass wir Hauptschüler sind". Was für eine ernüchternde, wenn auch treffende Selbsteinschätzung.

Tja...

Welcam tu mei worlt.

I thought you might be dying to know what fun it is to mark 80 English tests in three days. You see, the tricky part is to keep the balance between the boring-but-quick-to-mark multiple choice questions and fill-in-the-gaps-texts and the hilarious-but-tedious-to-correct free-writing exercises... Rule of thumb: Never (!) more than one free-writing exercise per test. You'll laugh heartily and then fall into a stupor, unable to decide where to put the red pen first...

So here goes:

What can I say? I love how he addressed his grandma by her full name, but then signs "in love"...hmmm. What's behind that, I wonder? And the sliiightly challenging "You are sad?" (Huh, are you? Are you???) - masterpiece of rhetoric.

Then there's the indecisive one. But once he got the hang of it, the answers just seemed to pour out of him: No, but yeah, but no, but yeah...

Ohh, drama! The imaginary new classmate Elizabeth is of the evil kind! I hate her already.

no i'm did'n either


And finally, a special treat before sending y'all off to bed: A colleague (P.E. teacher) was fuming over this "extra assignment" he gave to one of our all-time-favourite students after he'd been disruptive during P.E. class (the student, not the teacher. Although, come to think of it...). Ah, I just realized, it's in German, so why do I even bother explaining? Anyway, the colleague thought it was impertinent. Which it is, without a doubt, but hilarious too. Well played!

Is there a danger bonus for teachers?

Two colleagues of mine were on early playground duty on Friday morning - you know, the duty I'm on two days a week, shouting at the kids to please not get themselves run over when not crossing at the traffic lights? That's the one.

Well, the two women were standing at the school gate as usual, talking, one facing the playground, one facing the street/bus stop, when out of the blue two Fourth Year boys (the big baby, I-refuse-to-use-what-little-brain-I-might-have type) came charging towards them, in the middle of one of their non-stop scuffle-tussles. They either didn't see the two teachers or were unable to stop, either way, they banged with full force into the first teacher who in turn bumped her head so hard against the other one that the second woman was knocked to the ground.

She broke her left wrist which resulted in a complicated operation featuring nails and steel plates. She also broke a lumbar vertebra (Lendenwirbel - that's what the dictionary tells me it is). Now, apparently there are two ways of breaking a vertebra: the fracture pointing towards the outside, or towards the inside.

The inside being where the spinal marrow is.

The spinal marrow being quite useful when it comes to walking and moving in general.

The second kind of fracture being not good at all.

Of course it's the second kind of fracture she got.

So now she's strapped to a hospital bed in a special corset for at least eight weeks and not allowed to move an inch, because any wrong movement might (and very probably would) lead to paralysis/paraplegia (Querschnittslähmung - God, I'm learning so many freaky new words today). They decided against an operation for the time being.

A colleague was on the phone to her yesterday and quoted her saying "Oh, what a nuisance. Here I am lying around, good for nothing, when there's so much to do! Some of my kids' work placement is still not sorted!"

Well, you got to worry about something, I guess.

In the schoolyard.

The other day I passed that boy with the brain tumor in the schoolyard. Well, I walk past him and 450 other kids every day, but that one day he noticed me and made eye contact. "Hey, Ms B., how you doin'?" he called out to me. - "Alright. You?" - "Want a piece of chewin' gum?" And he held a packet out to me. I took one, managed a "Why, thank you!" and he was gone.

It was so totally unexpected. I know it's silly to read too much into such a short episode, but it felt like a peace-offering. Needless to say, the next day he was back to "normal", ignoring me. I would have been surprised by anything else. Street cred at stake and all...

Thanks for the gum, mate!

* * *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFwDEqLQ0bA

Average day?

What I learned at school today:

• that one of my pupils was rushed into Emergency last night with we-don't-know-what. She was the one I sent home last Thursday because her symptoms were slightly (swine-)flu-ish and I didn't want to be the idiot responsible for an outbreak of that at our school. However, instead of seeing her doctor that day she went to the outdoor swimming pool. The next day she had an ear infection. She told me all this herself yesterday, at school, in her bubbly, loud, excited usual way. She seemed totally fine. I just can't figure out what happened between then and last night.
• that another girl from that class was taken home by her mother because she had cut herself all across her left arm, over and over. Again, this is a friendly, polite girl. Quiet. Well, alright, point taken.
• that a third pupil from the same class hadn't come home last night and that his parents and child psychologist were trying to track him down, so far without success.

...And those were the ones that didn't even show up!

I sometimes have to do a quick reality check whether it's a school or a (raaather special) hospital I work in... On a much happier note, I also learned something else. I happened to meet our caretaker in the office this morning and enquired after his son (one of my new pupils in Third Year) whom I had first-aided the day before. The boy was lying on the ground after breaktime, bent double and crying because he had been stung by a wasp earlier and someone had kicked him hard right where the sting was. He couldn't get up or walk properly so we picked him up and helped him inside where he got a thermal pack and a few soothing words from me (the all-purpose-medication for anything that doesn't bleed too much) before I rushed off to round up my class who meanwhile had happily run wild.

Anyway, I asked his dad how the boy was doing and the answer was "Well, not too great. But you know what, he really enjoys his English classes now. He used to hate the subject, but now he's really pleased to have you as a teacher." Of course, I had to play it down immediately and replied something stupid like "Well, I guess he's quite comfortable with having a teacher who is even more chaotic than himself..." - But, well, you know, it did feel really good to hear something like that.

Ah, to be young and in love!

Amongst all that contract-kerfuffle (love that word!) I forgot to mention there also was a letter the other day from the police asking for a written witness account of a school-related incidence that happened a while back...

* * *

A colleague and I had been on early playground duty before the start of lessons (which basically entails standing at the school gate and stopping the little darlings from being run over by a bus by shouting at them to use the bloody traffic lights) when some 5th Years came running towards us asking for help. "He's hitting her! He won't let her go!" ...Ehm, sure, right. No prob. (completely out of my depth here) So we ran across the street (well, no, not at the traffic lights) and found a strange 18-year-old giving one of our students, his girlfriend, a hard time. Her arms were blotchy and red - from what we later found out to be the marks of a leaden emergency hammer he had stolen in a bus - and he simply wouldn't let go of her, squeezing her wrists hard, pushing her into the hedge...you get the picture. Since we couldn't persuade him to stop harassing her, we borrowed one of the kids's mobile and called the police. (Note to self: Always carry your mobile with you. Always.)

Of course some happy ten minutes passed before a patrol car showed up, by which time we had slowly and very carefully managed to calm the boy and girl down by ourselves, by gently guarding her (all the while not getting so involved he might feel threatened) while trying to talk sense to him, asking for his version of the story, distracting him with questions about his job plans etc. Don't ask me how, but somehow we coaxed him to let go of her. The police car that came was, by the way, not the one we had called for but just happened to be in the area by accident. (How very reassuring!) The officers took our particulars, the girl pressed charges, then I accompanied her to her classroom. The boy I think was sent on his way to his vocational school.

On the way to her classroom the girl filled me in on the background story. Apparently her boyfriend had gone ballistic because she had tried to break up with him because he had forbidden her to go on that school trip to Munich. ... I mean, what the f***?! She told me other things too, about how they'd gone out for over a year, but that after the first few happy months he had begun to control her every step and become increasingly violent when she tried to break out of that "cage". She, in turn, had already once used a knife against him in one of their fights - I had noticed the scar on his hand.

Long story short, there she went back into her classroom. A week later her mother showed up, worried and helpless, asking us for advice, telling us how she couldn't get rid of him, how forbidding her daughter to see him would make things even worse etc. The class teacher and I sat and listened and did the only thing we knew to do, which was give her a bunch of helpline and social service numbers to call.

The girl didn't manage to break up with her boyfriend after all. He was back at the bus stop after just a few days, chatting to her and her friends, holding her hand. When I took her aside one day in my class and carefully asked her what the story was now, she was evasive. I still see them every morning. All seems quiet. So what's with that queasy feeling in my stomach?

* * *

Anyhow, that other day my colleague called me straight away. He seemed quite agitated: "Did you also get a letter from the police asking you to give written evidence?" "Huh, don't know, haven't checked yet. Why?" "Well, 'cause we need to get our stories straight!" ...Is it just me finding that hilarious?!

Count to ten.

This morning I felt like I was a good teacher. (The fact that I care to even mention that might give you an inkling how very seldom I actually feel that way.) I undertook an experiment and I still can’t quite believe it worked. Most of my colleagues would probably think me crazy but here goes:
I watched a film with my Third Years. So what you say? It was a film in English, a film set in Belfast (so all you got to hear were Northern Irish accents), a film that didn’t have German subtitles, only English ones. Now let this sink in. Most of my pupils have very low reading skills, an attention span shorter than the average music clip, and don’t even get me started on their English…

But I very much wanted them to see this movie. There had been a unit in their student books about Ireland, but I felt they hadn’t really made a connection, that those pretty travel brochure pictures had passed them by without leaving much of an impression. And since Northern Ireland was completely ignored in their book, I thought well, if you want something done…
Alright, I admit I think the mention of bombings and shootings during the Troubles grabbed their attention but nonetheless. They watched the film, or rather the first half of it (by the way, a thing called “The Mighty Celt” with Robert Carlisle and Gillian Anderson) in silence and concentration and were totally okay with the fact that they didn’t get half of the dialogues’ content. Nothing short of a miracle. Sure, we had discussed before how you can try to understand situations just by watching people’s faces and gestures and by listening to their tone of voice. And sure, I gave them little bits of information along the way or stopped the film for a minute to explain something important to the plot. But still, there had been a good chance straight from the beginning that half of them wouldn’t be able to “allow” those gaps and to settle into the film at all but would very subtly inform me of their discontent.
So this story hasn’t got much of a punch line. I’m just so proud of my Third Years (and a tiny little bit - or rather a wee bit - of myself) and wanted to high-five someone all day. Nine days out of ten they drive me round the bend, but somehow tenth days like today…well!

Not fair.

One of my pupils was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

And I'm riddled with guilt because I've never been nice to him. Well, one of the voices in my head says: How could you have been? Because, let's be honest, he's one of those students that try to make it particularly hard to love them. When I first started out as a teacher (without a clue or proper preparation for what I might find), he made me dread the English classes he was in. He was continually disruptive, loud, throwing things, shouting abuse at other pupils, impossible to talk with - or, as we say: advice-resistant.

He wasn't alone in that. They had a nice little gang going in that class who, quite simply, turned every lesson into a lesson for me in how not to react ever again, how not to lose control, how to establish silence, let alone a productive atmosphere. Most days I failed spectacularly. Anyhow, he was always in the middle of all disruptions, so we spent most of our time me breathing down his neck, giving out to him for doing this and not doing that and him testing me to see how far he could go before I'd explode again. As I said, early days, and I'd like to think I've got something more of a grip on things by now. Most days.

Then there's the other voice in my head. The one that says, early days or not, you should have known better. You should have paid better attention. You should have realized he couldn't help it. [Aside: Because none of them can. They're children, at the mercy of adults' whims or goodwill, thrown into a world that, for many of them, holds in store unemployment, poverty, domestic violence, estranged parents, lack of integration, lack of social stability...the list goes on and on. It's your job to give them structure. Something to rely on. And maybe teach them a thing or two along the way.] And you should have known. You should have guessed. More than that, you knew for a fact that something was wrong with him. He's been seeing social workers, doctors and psychologists for as long as you've known him. And they ran tests and yet more tests and came up with therapy and a lack of iron.

That was two years ago. I had lost sight of him since because I no longer teach that class (and, here's more guilt: am glad of it). Then yesterday I picked up his name in the staff room and asked his class teacher what was going on. So he told me. Things had gotten gradually worse over the last years. The boy's mood swings had become so extreme that he'd "explode" completely in class and then in turn be so exhausted he skived off early every day, went home and fell asleep for up to 6 hours straight. But since his GP seemed quite happy with his "lack of iron" diagnosis, nothing happened for ages. Up until last week. I don't know how the mother convinced the doctors and insisted on a CT scan. I only know that they got the results two days after the boy and his class came back from their class trip to the sea. And his teacher told me how the boy hadn't been sure whether he should go on the trip in the first place (what with all the anxiety and the state he was in), but that when the results were in he told his teacher "I'm glad I went and had this week of fun!"

He's a skinny, blond boy of just 15 and I feel I never did him justice. My heart goes out to him, standing chatting to his mates in the school yard, scrawnier than ever, eager to fit in. But I mustn't let it show. I mustn't be nicer to him than before because he doesn't want anyone to know. He never had much of a chance in the first place. And now maybe he has none at all.