Not much happened yesterday. There was a seminar in the afternoon for the foreign teachers that I could actually attend and understand the language spoken. It's also much easier to understand a foreign language if you are actually using it in conversation rather than listen to some one drone on in lecture... I should try to remember that. I am definitely guilty of droning on and on myself.
Anyway, it was basically a 2.5 hour bitchfest about everything we felt was wrong with the school, how it was managed, how classes were taught, how students disciplined or precisely lack of discipline due to ineffective punishments and/or incentives to succeed, and other such nonsense. Hopefully something positive will result from it. I tried, actually we all tried to explain that a big part was the culture itself was working against the goals and mandate the administration wanted and demanded. In addition, there was also a lack of incentive or reward from administration giving the teachers an additional workload and making illogical demands to complete said workload. One of the main things the other teachers, who understood Thai and therefore had been listening to 2 days of this new propaganda from the administration, was complaining about is in the 5 hours of the day we are not teaching, we use it to mark papers and prepare lesson plans, as well as mentoring students throughout the day. However, all lesson plans, exams and paperwork basically, and there is a lot, has to be done at home on our own time. We are not allowed to do it during school hours when we are actually working. That's the only time I do it. I never work on school paperwork except at school, or if I have a deadline. Since it was during the 2 day Thai seminar, I know nothing about it. And one bothered to translate it for me. That's my story, I'm sticking with it
Apparently there is also a mythical students guidebook that has the responsibilities of the student and punishments for failure to comply. However, none of the teachers have ever seen it. It is only distributed to students. The teachers and, most importantly, the parents have ever read it. And of course, it's only in Thai. It has been suggested that it be translated into English & Chinese, and given to both teachers and parents so everybody fucking knows what happens if the students don't do their homework and fail as a result. Stop blaming the teachers for your kid's failure and start disciplining your own god-dawned spawn of Satan. It's not my responsibility to make sure your precious snowflake does their homework. It's the parents and the students and they are always so surprised to learn that their kids fail because they never do their homework and therefore never learn their lessons because they definitely aren't paying attention to it in class.
After that I went home and slept for 3 or 4 hours and went to meet my friend for a late night dinner. Some movies and a bet to see if she can get up at 8 am. $100 if she can get up and stay up at 8 am. Each hour she sleeps in, she looses 1/3 of the money. I'll probably be up at 7. I sabotaged her alarm so it's not going to wake her. She probably sleep until noon and I'll save myself $100. If she does manage to get up early, my whole day will finally not go to waste watching her sleep waiting for her to wake up so we can go outside and actually do something other than eat, drink and... well, you can fill in the blanks. I'll keep it PC13 for now. Point is, it's my weekend, I want to go out and do shit, not sit around all day watching some chick sleep. And then she has to go to work, so I have to amuse myself for several hours anyway. It's a good way to feel alone with actually being alone. It sucks and is pointless, so it better change soon, or I'm moving on. I don't really have time for it.
She eventually woke up at 9 and went to the salon to beautify herself while I did laundry. So, I owe her $50 which she will probably spend on me anyway (after she pays for the beauty treatments which cost nothing in Bangkok).
No comments:
Post a Comment