The cold, hard reality is that despite what seems like a constant tendency towards cynicism on my part, I'm actually far less of a misanthrope than my writing suggests. In real life, I try not to find fault with every significant detail and my blog postings, for those of you who can't pick up on the tongue-in-cheek nature (I'm looking in your direction, Ross), are mainly intended to be a wry mix of observations for comedic purposes.
Unfortunately, my series of "Reasons for Leaving Moscow" must, after a few jokey asides, include a rather serious posting. As if it weren't enough that the organisation I worked for had seen fit to bugger me over for a variety of things (lack of furniture, being placed in close proximity of the irreplaceable Asshat, being thrown out into the no-man's-land of Moscow despite having been told to the contrary), the school management, ineffective sodomites that they were, allowed the school children to run the school.
Perhaps you've been educated in the UK system and are aware that children these days "know their rights" and are not afraid to inform teachers of this on occasion. This isn't quite the same as children figuratively running a school.
Let me explain. I was implicated in a rather ugly rumour by a shite-stain of a boy and the management did absolutely nothing to rectify this. The boy in question, a Turkish runt-bastard of around 15 years old, treated the mainly female staff with a disdain that I haven't seen in the most sexist of British men.
Cultural sensitivity be damned: I was working in an international school that was attempting to promote equality and when he saw fit to inappropriately touch another member of staff in my presence, I made sure that he didn't get away without feeling my wrath.
Oh, how naive we can be in our experiences of the world.
Cunt-bags proceeded to spread a malicious rumour about yours truly, which resulted in my being approached by management. As ugly a situation as it was, I understand that things like this will always occur in school settings; it is how the school manages these incidents that truly matter. I, of course, was innocent and the school was willing to take that at face value, though I was still required to teach the cretinous, smirking little shit for the remainder of the year. The fact that he was related somehow to the director of the school had no bearings on the outcome, of course.
And lest I forget, he was priming a young girl (10) from the primary school by sending her various lewd text messages. And he would also repeatedly hack other students' Facebook accounts and hold them to ransom.
Still, time heals all wounds and I was fortunate, in some ways, as I walked away from this situation with my employment still in tact. The same could not be said of a female member of staff who was targeted by a couple of the older teenage girls after being disciplined by the teacher in question. The girls took it upon themselves to start a hateful campaign towards the teacher, which was resultant in her being an emotional wreck for almost three weeks. When she finally broke down in front of the two offenders, they had to ask her why she was crying; remember, these are two girls who had set about her like a pack of dogs, turning pupils against the poor teacher, and they didn't understand the upset they had caused. Eventually, they retracted their statements after the teacher explained how she felt about the situation. This, however, had very little effect in the long run, as the teacher was informed at the end of the semester that she could no longer work for the school. While a glut of reference letters from various members of management and other staff was forthcoming, a clear explanation why her contract was being terminated was not.
Being somewhat responsible and level headed when the situation occurred to me, I argued vehemently that the school needed to have some policy, some form of recourse that would deter pupils from engaging in the sort of behaviour that allowed them to wantonly accuse teachers of whatever they liked because simply they disliked being disciplined. From day one, I had argued that a clear and consistent discipline policy needed to be drawn up and put into practice. Neither of these were taken seriously. A lot of head nodding, humming and agreeing went on, but when it came to the clincher, the point where action was actually needed? Nothing.
And this, my friends, is why the international teaching sector is such a minefield. I know that similar things can happen to upstanding teachers in the UK, but, at the very least there are unions and (usually) the management to help support staff in these stressful times. If the school is in any way well run, they will have a discipline system in place that would stop much of this activity from taking place. What has to be kept in mind, in my situation, that this was a secondary school of little more than sixty pupils.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Within the space of six months, two teachers were made targets by the pupils of a school of sixty pupils. Not 1200. Not 600. Not even 300. Sixty. The odds of such a thing taking place twice within a five month period with such a small student-body, must be about the same odds as Elvis playing T-in-the-Park with Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur-it's impossible. What's saddest of all in this is that they effectively won: one teacher had her contract terminated early and the other handed his notice in before his contracted ended; the good students will have their learning disrupted yet again, just because some pupils don't want to abide by the rules that are put in place for a reason.
_________________________________________________________________
"Haven't you learned anything from that guy that gives those sermons in church? Captain What's-his-name."
-D.
Unfortunately, my series of "Reasons for Leaving Moscow" must, after a few jokey asides, include a rather serious posting. As if it weren't enough that the organisation I worked for had seen fit to bugger me over for a variety of things (lack of furniture, being placed in close proximity of the irreplaceable Asshat, being thrown out into the no-man's-land of Moscow despite having been told to the contrary), the school management, ineffective sodomites that they were, allowed the school children to run the school.
Perhaps you've been educated in the UK system and are aware that children these days "know their rights" and are not afraid to inform teachers of this on occasion. This isn't quite the same as children figuratively running a school.
Let me explain. I was implicated in a rather ugly rumour by a shite-stain of a boy and the management did absolutely nothing to rectify this. The boy in question, a Turkish runt-bastard of around 15 years old, treated the mainly female staff with a disdain that I haven't seen in the most sexist of British men.
Cultural sensitivity be damned: I was working in an international school that was attempting to promote equality and when he saw fit to inappropriately touch another member of staff in my presence, I made sure that he didn't get away without feeling my wrath.
Oh, how naive we can be in our experiences of the world.
Cunt-bags proceeded to spread a malicious rumour about yours truly, which resulted in my being approached by management. As ugly a situation as it was, I understand that things like this will always occur in school settings; it is how the school manages these incidents that truly matter. I, of course, was innocent and the school was willing to take that at face value, though I was still required to teach the cretinous, smirking little shit for the remainder of the year. The fact that he was related somehow to the director of the school had no bearings on the outcome, of course.
And lest I forget, he was priming a young girl (10) from the primary school by sending her various lewd text messages. And he would also repeatedly hack other students' Facebook accounts and hold them to ransom.
Still, time heals all wounds and I was fortunate, in some ways, as I walked away from this situation with my employment still in tact. The same could not be said of a female member of staff who was targeted by a couple of the older teenage girls after being disciplined by the teacher in question. The girls took it upon themselves to start a hateful campaign towards the teacher, which was resultant in her being an emotional wreck for almost three weeks. When she finally broke down in front of the two offenders, they had to ask her why she was crying; remember, these are two girls who had set about her like a pack of dogs, turning pupils against the poor teacher, and they didn't understand the upset they had caused. Eventually, they retracted their statements after the teacher explained how she felt about the situation. This, however, had very little effect in the long run, as the teacher was informed at the end of the semester that she could no longer work for the school. While a glut of reference letters from various members of management and other staff was forthcoming, a clear explanation why her contract was being terminated was not.
Being somewhat responsible and level headed when the situation occurred to me, I argued vehemently that the school needed to have some policy, some form of recourse that would deter pupils from engaging in the sort of behaviour that allowed them to wantonly accuse teachers of whatever they liked because simply they disliked being disciplined. From day one, I had argued that a clear and consistent discipline policy needed to be drawn up and put into practice. Neither of these were taken seriously. A lot of head nodding, humming and agreeing went on, but when it came to the clincher, the point where action was actually needed? Nothing.
And this, my friends, is why the international teaching sector is such a minefield. I know that similar things can happen to upstanding teachers in the UK, but, at the very least there are unions and (usually) the management to help support staff in these stressful times. If the school is in any way well run, they will have a discipline system in place that would stop much of this activity from taking place. What has to be kept in mind, in my situation, that this was a secondary school of little more than sixty pupils.
Yes, you read that correctly.
Within the space of six months, two teachers were made targets by the pupils of a school of sixty pupils. Not 1200. Not 600. Not even 300. Sixty. The odds of such a thing taking place twice within a five month period with such a small student-body, must be about the same odds as Elvis playing T-in-the-Park with Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur-it's impossible. What's saddest of all in this is that they effectively won: one teacher had her contract terminated early and the other handed his notice in before his contracted ended; the good students will have their learning disrupted yet again, just because some pupils don't want to abide by the rules that are put in place for a reason.
_________________________________________________________________
"Haven't you learned anything from that guy that gives those sermons in church? Captain What's-his-name."
-D.
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