Hell, I’m not used to this. Fucking knackered, I am. Most of this year I’ve been a gentleman of leisure, rising when I pleased, going to bed when I pleased, going into work on the odd day, afternoon or evening and just about surviving financially. Then suddenly we received the news that twice the expected number of students had enrolled for the first course of the Summer, and since the 13th inst., nobody at the Little CHEF (Centre for Hammering English into Foreigners) has had time to take so much as a leisurely shit. Every four years we subject ourselves to voluntary inspection by the British Council, and the inspectors left on Thursday last after probing into every facet of the Little CHEF’s being, like a drug squad searching for cocaine.
Like everyone else, I had prepared fifteen hours’ worth of detailed Lesson plans, as every teacher is observed during an inspection. ‘Are you scared?’ one of the students asked me when I told them an inspector would drop in at some point in the week. I snorted unattractively. I’ve observed literally hundreds of lessons myself and had dozens of people observe me for one reason or another, so I’d be interested to meet the inspector who could scare me. That said, I was glad nobody was observing me between two and three on Wednesday afternoon, when I trotted out some materials I made for the same period last year but had forgotten that it was for a class with a much higher level of English. My group of 18 Chinese twinks didn’t understand a bloody word and I had a lot of thinking on my feet to do to rescue the situation. One colleague told me he felt his observed lesson had been somewhat less successful than one could wish: ‘I might as well have dropped me kex* and shat on the fuckin’ desk.’ He had apparently omitted to make a photocopy of his lesson plan for his own reference and thus been fain to ask the observer to hand back his. This is rather as if an actor playing Macbeth spotted an audience member following the performance with a copy of the Penguin edition of the play and felt it necessary to cadge it off him.
As no Briddish Kyncellor came to my classes on Tuesday or Wednesday, I knew I could expect one on Thursday. He sodded off after ten minutes. This was either because i) he knew a consummate professional when he saw one, or ii) he was pig sick of observing bloody lessons. It really does pall.
In summer, I always hope for groups of graduate students but this year I have two groups of Chinese undergrads. They are lovely kids, (well, early twenties) friendly and willing and funny, but Jesus, I’ll swear their concentration spans get… hang about, I need a refill… shorter every year. I’ve moaned beforeabout their obsession with their smartphones. On Friday, I made everyone switch off their phones and surrender them to my safe keeping. Twenty of the damn things lay dead in a row on my desk, and I knew a brief moment of triumph. But it was brief. My lovely Greek colleague Sophia informed me today that there is such a thing as FOBO, Fear Of Being Offline. In my students the symptoms appear to be a complete mental shut down, an inability to be: they just bloody sit there. Well, they are going to have to get used to unsmartphoned moments and learn to bloody concentrate. I’m not indulging FOBO (FFS) all bloody summer.
Ree-speck to our academic co-ordinator (if such be his title) for his unfailing patience, empathy, courtesy and good humour, at least in public: he might have a collection of cloth dolls at home that he stabs with pins. In his place I’d probably have punched somebody by now. ;-) You know who you are.
*****
*Kex = Lancashire for trousers.
