Secret diary of an expat teacher – Week 7

Predictably, the students didn’t return as eager to learn, and it was another frustrating day of endless repetition of instructions and detention threats.

By the end of that first day I was eager to get out of school.

So, I ran to catch the bus and a class set of essays spectacularly flew out of my laptop bag.

It was like a scene out of a film; it seemed to happen in slow motion.

Before I knew it, unstapled poetry papers had made their way into the path of oncoming school traffic and across to the other side of the road.

It seemed an all-too clichéd way to end another ordinary day at the office.

However, I was pleasantly surprised that students, fellow commuters and even an old man who happened to be walking by chipped in to help me recover the stray papers.

The driver even waited for this pantomime to finish so I could catch the bus that I had been sprinting towards in the first place.

Just like Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire, I was thankful for the kindness of strangers.

But, I was positively overjoyed at the attitude of the helpful students.

These same students might be tools when you’re attempting to teach them, but, underneath it all, they are usually decent kids.
They just have other things on their mind – like their love life – that are infinitely more important to them than sitting quietly in an English classroom.

I need to keep reminding myself of this, so I don’t end up in the loony bin like Blanche at the end of the term! 

Miss Cazbar – not her real name – is an Australian teacher who has come to work in a London school. Follow their secret diary, chronicling the experience; exclusively for Australian Times each week.

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Secret diary of an expat teacher – Week 6

Secret diary of an expat teacher – Week 5

Secret diary of an expat teacher – Week 4

Secret diary of an expat teacher – Week 3

Secret diary of an expat teacher – Week 2

Secret diary of an expat teacher – Week 1