The reluctant students

I barely ever hold my classes uninterrupted for a week - there are so many assemblies, presentations, bank holidays, special events, elections for class representatives, consultations with the higher up members staff... the list goes on.  Every now and then would still be a bit surprising, but understandable.  The fact is that it’s just all the time that a class is cancelled or rescheduled.

The other day my timetable was changed at the last minute, which made a big clash, and so that meant I missed three hours of lessons.  I was stressed and apologised adequately, and everyone was just like ‘look, this is what it’s like over here, it’s not your fault, you need to get used to the mentality we have here’.  The teacher I was chatting to today, who is the colleague I should have been with on Tuesday, explained that the class I was most looking forward to seeing, the 5B, was almost completely absent.  I was understandably confused.  She explained.  In Italian schools, as I knew, they do continuous assessment throughout the year.  At the end of the year, they average out the marks and they only advance to the next year if they average at least 6 out of 10.  There is no public moderation though, there are no external examiners, it’s just the teacher.  So it turns out that the 5B had a test that day.  A common way to cope with the sudden stress of an exam you haven’t studied for is to get the whole class on board and not turn up.  The 4A, another of my classes, also did the same that day: out of a class of 28, only 2 were there.

There is no contingency plan for a class who is absent on a test day.  For as long as the test is on the cards, the students aren’t gonna come, the teacher can’t fail them all because they’d have a year group with no students in (or maybe just two, those two that turned up), so they’re at a stalemate.  The teacher gives out low marks, the kids come to class again.  It’s absurd.

It’s important not to generalise too much.  I have had so many experiences in these schools that I’ve found interesting and noteworthy, but the above only happens in one of my two schools, and they definitely do do their tests some of the time.  However, just the fact that a whole class can just not come is difficult to get your head round.

Life eh?

I love Miranda Hart, fully and entirely, I feel that her and Bridget Jones together give me instruction, direction and reassurance in a life that, at times, feels so totally bizarre that I just wonder how on earth this is all happening to me.  I know that I am experiencing the very same word as everyone else, I am under no illusion of being special in my bizarre experiences of the world, but Miranda Hart’s audiobook (finished this afternoon, highly recommended), provided me with the wonderful above phrase, 'life eh?' to express the sentiment succinctly.  When you look around you and have an almost out of body WHAT IS GOING ON moment.  It's a fun, almost unnerving thing, that you can allow to just rock your mind for a moment before you need to get on with it.

Strange things that have happened to me since I’ve been back in Sicily since Christmas:

1. I have taken an increasing amount of lessons entirely on my own.  Now, in Italian schools, the bidello (caretaker guy, called Roberto), often breezes in with some kind of notice or announcement that the teacher needs to read to the class.  In this particular class, I was on my own, so instead of giving the notice to the teacher, he gave it to me.  In the spirit of teaching my classes entirely in English, I have not corrected the students’ assumption that I do not speak or understand Italian, but I do chat to Roberto between lessons so he did not see the issue in coming in and talking to me.  To the students, it was absurd that he should ask me to read out a notice in Italian, and they all shouted at him that I didn’t understand.  Roberto enjoyed the attention, so smiled and joked back a little bit, which amused the students greatly.  Within about 60 seconds it had descended into absolute hysteria, Roberto was playing to the audience, saying ‘I’m Sicilian!  I’m from Ispica!  You can’t expect me to speak English!’.  The students were literally weeping with laughter from the hilarity of it all, still trying to shout to Roberto between gasps that he really wasn’t going to manage to communicate with me.  I sat on the desk and had a drink of water, and let them all calm down.  One of my most wonderful and responsible students took control of the situation, took the notice from Roberto and did the necessary short administration task.  Roberto left, and I asked my students to calm down and carry on with the activity.  They obeyed, which gave me a great rush of gratitude and affection for my lovely students, and felt secretly pretty amused by the whole thing.

2. Last weekend I spent a wonderful weekend in Palermo with the other language assistants who have been placed in Sicily.  I can't emphasise how great it is to chill for a few days with people who are having the same experience as me.  Amongst other activities, we discussed our mutual puzzlement of bdays, so in order to clear up the confusion, Rebecca read us the Wikihow of ‘How to use a bday’ out loud in the cafe.  I felt very happy to have found people with whom such activities are acceptable.

3. On Monday, I arrived at school impressively early.  I was feeling refreshed from an amazing few days, but also tired from a late night journey back, so I felt a little on the back foot.  Lessons start at 08.10am, and at 08.05am there was a phone call.  Turns out my colleague Sabrina wouldn’t be in school this week.  The teachers in the staff room set about sorting who could cover which lessons, but the first thing they said was ‘well, today is okay because there’s Laura’.  I do always plan and deliver my own lessons, but Sabrina is there with me in class to give me back up if I need it, and I’ve not done an entire school day on my own before.  I got a bit nervous, but went up to class, explained to them that it was just me so please could they be nice, and they were.  I did a lesson on William and Kate (a request from one of the students - ‘Miss, as Laura’s English, can she talk to us about William and Kate?’), and then two lessons on body parts.  In the first lesson, one of my students added a penis to his labelled diagram of the body, and in the second lesson I treated the class to a rendition, or actually two renditions, of ‘heads shoulders knees and toes'

Me: If I teach you a song, will you sing it?

Them: no

Me: but it’s a really good song, come on, you’ll like it

Them: we don’t want to sing

Me: I’ll sing it the first time, and then the second time you can sing it with me.  Stand up and copy my actions

They stand up.  They’re my youngest class, so I always refer to them as ‘my little ones’ (not to their face).  Turns out that they’re actually much bigger than I thought.  Well, they are 14/15 years old.  I realise I’m about to perform ‘heads shoulders knees and toes’ to a group of year 9s and I really can’t back out of it

Me: ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and toes....’

They laugh a lot.  They don’t join in with the second rendition, so it is just me singing it twice.

4. I had a group skype session with my wonderful university friends.  I don’t have internet in my house, so I need to skype from the cafe.  This was a golden opportunity for them, who waved at everyone else in the bar, put a bra up for show on the screen and had a lovely dance along session.  As if I wasn’t conspicuous enough for speaking a foreign language to my laptop in public, I had a screenful of fun for anyone who happened to be looking around the cafe.

In my life I often think of the freeze frame moment about five minutes into Bridget Jones, when she walks past Mark Darcy at the turkey curry buffet with her dignity in tatters, and it is at precisely that point in her life that she realises how much of a state everything is.  I’ve actually had a really great few days, but I also think just how did anyone think of putting me all the way abroad, and not only that, but in charge of large groups of teenagers and expecting me to educate them?!  I think it’s because I slotted in so easily when I was back in England for the holidays that I’ve felt a bit disorientated back here.  There was a bit of the negative January blues stuff, but recently there’s been a lot more of the positive but surreal ‘how is this happening to me’ stuff.

I’m pretty precisely half way through my job now, and I wonder if it will stop being strange that I walk into this Italian state school and they seem to think ‘oh yeah, this seems like a reasonable person to put at the front of the class’.  

Back to it

It was a bit over a year ago that I was discussing with my university friends whether to apply for this assistantship or not.  My worries were that I would arrive in a dead-end town in the middle of nowhere and be very bored and lonely.  I remember the conversation, my wonderful flatmates told me that it wouldn’t be the easiest experience I could choose, but it would be what I made of it and I could learn a lot from it.  I thought about it for a bit, and then chose to apply.

It has been in that vain that I’ve been carrying out this year.  My job has been above anything else a wonderful highlight of the year so far, but it’s also been more challenging than I was expecting, having been given a comparable amount of responsibility as an average teacher, albeit untrained and only a 21-year-old student.  The town is beautiful, and I feel privileged to be in such a pretty, safe and welcoming place, though I can’t deny that I wish the social side was more substantial.

I am mindful of all of this in the last few days coming back after the Christmas holidays.  It is reassuring that everyone I know seems to regard the first day back with an impending sense of doom and struggle with the readjustment at first.  It felt funny that I was coming back here after the nourishing comfort and familiarity of being with my family and friends over Christmas, and it took a little bit of self-coaching to get back to the positive mindset that I’ve held onto so far.  It seemed strange that the time in my own country was actually a holiday, and for the moment my life is out here.  

Yesterday I had a good day at work.  I had all of my favourite classes and they were happy to see me, and I them, and they were for the most part happy and receptive to follow the lesson, and we had a laugh too.  Basically it was my job on a good day, which was what I needed.  I think that the end of the visit in your own country is bound to be a low point of living abroad, but it’s okay really.  Remembering why I’m here and the lovely positive aspects of my life here, along with how that fits in with my expectations before getting here, makes a huge difference.  

Caos, confusione, bordello, casino

The above words all refer to a very Italian range of situations.  The rough translation is chaos, but that doesn't quite capture it.  It is not a very complex linguistic theory that a language has words that correspond to aspects of its culture, so in this case Italian has at least four words to refer to something that English can't properly capture.  The words can refer to general disorganisation of a person or group, or to a big traffic jam, or to an argument, or other things.  Well, literally 'bordello' and 'casino' actually mean 'brothel', so literally speaking they're going round saying 'what brothel!'.  Looking at the colloquial use, though, there seems to be a kind of essence in all of these situations that is so quintessentially Italian, at least to my foreign and stereotypical eyes.

People seem to take some pleasure in it, and I must admit that I'm thinking and writing about it with some fondness: much as I don't particularly think it's the way to live your life it is kind of endearing when it's a feature of your host culture.  A good example was when I was in the car in Catania.  My friend was driving, and despite moaning about 'what bordello, what confusione', he sounded his horn at every, and i mean every opportunity.  When I asked why, he said 'because we're in Catania'.  He explained that in theory you're not meant to sound your horn in the centre, but in practice people often actually break their horns from overuse.

Another example was my students talking excitedly about a school trip, again to Catania, that we went on this Tuesday.  They were trying to say that they're going to go and 'make confusione… Laura how do we say that in English?'.  They meant they were going to hang out and mess about and be silly… maybe I'm not that articulate, or maybe I'm right that it's difficult to quite capture.  They were right though - we went to the theatre, and I've never known such a participative audience.  It was only 'Waiting for Godot', hardly a lively and participative play, but they were shouting out and clapping along absolutely whenever they could.

For a Brit, every sense of these words is counter-intuitive, but although I do on occasion want them to shush (in lessons would be nice), it is quite fun.

The Sweetest Students

I shouldn’t have favourite classes, but there are definitely ones that I look forward to.  5A on a Tuesday morning is very firmly in that category, they are a bright, conscientious and enthusiastic class who I love teaching.  Today I was around 3 minutes late to their lesson because I’d been disorganised photocopying worksheets, and the other teacher had gone ahead of me to the classroom.  In her presence and my absence the students had got antsy, and when I came in they actually cheered a bit, and laughed and smiled.  It was one of the nicest welcomes into a room I’ve had in my life.

I have a bit of a sniffly cold at the moment and my voice was cracking a little through the lesson and I was feeling a bit grotty and sorry for myself, so I asked them to not make me raise my voice, and they were absolutely wonderful to me.  I just stood at the front and looked at them when I wanted them to stop their activity, and they shushed each other and listened to me.

Though this is a particularly extreme example, I realise more than ever that I am incredibly lucky to have polite and kind students.  It’s a two-way process of course, and they would have none of this respect for me if I didn’t think they were fairly wonderful in return, but I came out of that lesson feeling like I’ve been landed, through no merit of my own, into the best school ever.

Normality

It’s amazing how quickly things become routine.  I’ve been here nearly 7 weeks now, but this is only the fourth week at school, and it all feels so much like normal life.  I know most of my classes now, though some of them I haven’t taught that much yet.  I teach in two schools.  In the Liceo Classico I teach every class but one, so when I walk around the small school everybody knows me.  The Liceo Artistico is quite a lot bigger and I teach only 5 classes.  I say ‘only’ with reluctance because it brings my running total up 14, so that’s about 350 students.  That means that most people aged 14-18 around Modica town centre recognise me, but remembering all of them is absolutely impossible.  

So it’s normal life.  That means the honeymoon period is over, the kids are pretty used to me now and generally aren’t totally astounded to see me, which to be honest is a massive relief.  Though standing at the front and running the lesson doesn’t faze me, I was keen for the incessant centre-of-attention/fascination phase to pass as quickly as possible.

Normal life also means I can generally get by in Modica.  I’m moderately used to adapting to new cities, and for me success is 

1. being able to go to the supermarket and to your workplace/studyplace effortlessly (e.g. not to get lost every day, difficult when you’re me), 
2. having a minimum of two favourite cafes where the staff recognise you
3. encountering a fairly low frequency of problems you don’t know how to solve

I’m not completely lost here, I know my way round and it’s very much the place where I live now, not just a place where I’ve landed or am just passing through.

Normal life unfortunately means the odd bad morning.  Nothing that won’t be mostly better by the evening and totally forgotten by the next day, but something like a bad lesson with unparticipative teenagers who can’t understand English, rainy weather and running out of cooking gas, all on inadequate sleep.  Just ordinary everyday things.  If you’re in a really nice town doing a really nice job in a country you’re completely in love with, most days are good days, but the point is that this isn’t a holiday; it’s actually my actual life at the moment.

Anyway, as it happens, my landlord has just this second come to check the cooking gas and headed out to get a new ‘bombola’ - what’s that called?  A big metal can/bottle/thing of gas.  And tomorrow I have just one lesson, and it’s one of my really good classes, and it’s not till midday, so it looks like I’ll have a nice lie-in and tomorrow will be a good day.

Ps. I’m not writing this blog for praise, but thank you so very much for the kind complements you people have given me, each one has made my day.

The day off

It’s my long-awaited day off.  As I only have 12 hours a week contact time, I really should get at least one, probably two days off, but organising my timetable is an uphill struggle so what with one thing and another I didn’t have one last week.  Italians don’t even have a proper weekend - they make up for every day being a half day (8am-1.30pm) by having school and work on a Saturday.

I’ve been so looking forward to this.  I went to a bar and drank wine with Laura last night, slept till midday, and had a granita with cream and a croissant with cream for a late breakfast in the bar where I am now - effectively two desserts for breakfast, but it's okay because I'm on holiday in Sicily.  I work really hard at my job, but the amazing thing is that when I get some time off it’s like a real holiday.  Yes, the sun is shining too.  Wonderous.