Today I said “see you later” to groups of students I probably won’t actually see again or won’t see for a couple years except in the hallways at the school where I work. None of us were actually moved. Pretty soon I’ll remember names but won’t be able to match them to faces.

The end of the term brings a certain good-riddance feeling to even good classes. We’ve spent the better part of the year facing each other and it’s time to be done.

Complicating things is the problem that even though we are finishing some classes we are only partially done. We turned in JHS 3 marks (9th grade) today and high school marks are due Wednesday. After that we have another week of marking to do before we finish with the JHS first and second year students.

In my case, my worst classes are all either first or second year meaning I still have to deal with bad students. The dread of dealing with them one more time (and, knowing my luck, next year as well) has me more glum than I should be at the end of the year. This is especially true as there’s only a few weeks between “see-you-later” and “later”.

This week all the classes I taught were review classes. One student refused to review my class. Others understood a pun that almost got them bonus points.

Depending on the class, I’ll let the students study any subject for the last 20 or 25 minutes of the lesson. I usually give them material to work on for the first part of the class and in case they neglected to bring anything else to study.

One student, though, refused to even take out a pencil when he had the material for my class. He kept complaining that he wanted free study and I kept saying no. I also postponed the free study time for an extra five minutes.

Eventually I let the students study whatever they wanted an the the student who didn’t study started to study.

In my worst class, when it was free study time, four students just stood in the center of the room chatting and playing air sports. When I asked them what they were studying they said “Social studies”.

I said “I see. So you’re talking and being social.” They seemed to get that and then sat down and didn’t do any work.

Because they at least seemed to get the joke I almost gave them bonus points. Except that they didn’t actually do anything so I couldn’t.

Two studied. A few pretended to study. The rest weren’t even aware they were supposed to be doing something. I didn’t care either way.

This is a strange week and it makes it hard for me to care very much.

A few classes still have class. A few classes have been moved and have class at a different time. A few others are not having class at all. At the same time I’m marking final exams but the constant on-again/off-again nature of the week, and the small number of exams currently in hand, makes it easy to put off dealing with them.

At the same time, if I have one or two classes in a day, I don’t really care what happens as long as blood or protruding bones aren’t involved. (i.e. As long as I don’t end up having to do any paperwork and/or interviews). If the students don’t want to study for their final exams, it’s not actually my problem. In fact, anything that increases the chances of them passing in a blank exam is good as that makes my job easier.

Eventually, I’ll be passing back completed exams on the same day I’m collecting exams for the classes I’m still teaching. At least then I’ll have large blocks of time available and will be able to get into a marking rhythm.

I still wont’ care, but at least I’ll get through things faster.

A short interlude from the Olympics has been necessitated by the necessities related to an actual job.

This is the time of year at the school where I work when we all go slightly mad.

Classes for different grades end at different times and we find ourselves finishing exams for one grade whilst we have several days left to teach in other grades.

By next week we’ll be marking exams at the same time we’re planning and teaching other classes. During that time we may have one class on Wednesday afternoon and one class Thursday morning.

This seems awesome, but it requires we keep careful track of time and days lest we miss one of those classes. (Note: this happens more than it should.)

Eventually we’ll be passing back exams the same day we are getting others.

At some point we’ll stop caring, but today is not that day. Close. But not yet.

The new guy was warned but thought he could handle it. When he came back he appeared to have been handled.

For at least this week, maybe more, we are a colleague down at the school where I work. Because of this we’ve had various substitute teachers rolling in and out of the office. The first was assigned, for his first class, one of the worst classes in junior high school first year. He came back looking worse for the wear but went away with some energy so the day wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Today there was a bit of confusion as many people rushed in to assist the newest substitute and give him different visions of what he should do. The results were a bit backward from what was expected by the lesson plan that no one seemed to notice. It’s not a fatal problem, but it does complicate speeches and the final exam.

For my part, I’ve been staying out of the mess. My voice would only succeed in complicating things further. I’ll help out with writing exams if necessary but the day to day stuff I leave to people who are much more competent than I am.

Things should start to settle down tomorrow when the first sub comes back. At least, that’s the hope.

Forgive me if I’m shouting but for three hours today I felt as if I were in a crappy night club that confused noise for music.

This means, of course, that I taught first year junior high school students after a long break and right before another one.

Of my three JHS 1 classes the usual proportion of noise to silence is one quiet, one noisy, one LOUD. Today all three were loud.

This is because they’ve just finished an entrance exam break and have another long break coming up this weekend. Long breaks cause them to forget English, class rules, and the vindictiveness of their teacher.

However, because I also benefit from entrance exams, I was in a more laid back mood. They did all their work, they just did it at the level of a jet engine blasting at full force right before it explodes.

Luckily, the classes didn’t get quieter as the day went on. If they had I’d have started fearing I’d gone deaf.