I Kind of Hated My Job

My unexplained absence for the past few months has been due to a lack of computer. When I left my previous job, I had to hand in my laptop. (See below.) This is not to say that I have not made some priceless observations. Au contraire. I’ve got them stored right up here. (You can’t see me, but I’m tapping my forehead with my index finger. Not a hammer.)

I’m now writing to you from my new, indeed my very first brand new to me, computer. That I bought it and the office software package all by myself and primarily in Turkish, is a point of pride.

While I take time to organize my thoughts on a recent trip to the States, the end of my first year teaching in a private school, and the 25th high school reunion which I did not attend, I leave you with the following. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t post it earlier.

I Kind of Hated My Job
Due to lack of teaching space in the school, I used to teach on the ground floor of a converted villa. It was alternately used as a ballet room for the little kids, a storage space, the chess activity room, an office for teachers and administrators who wanted to hide for a few hours, and an English classroom. Since the beginning of the year, I fought with the powers that be to respect the space as a classroom. Every week it was something new: cleaners and maintenance people doing little repairs or moving furniture in the middle of class, the chess teacher rearranging everything and trying to muscle his way into the space... My younger students had the attention spans of one tsetse fly between them and didn’t really need such distractions.

The school also had, and as far as I know still has, a cat. He was a dirty -should- be -white -but - sidewalk –colored, and was "adopted" by the school when he was a kitten. The director is so full of himself that he baptized the cat with a feminine version of his own name. Unlike the director, the cat dropped a pair of testicles, but retained his given feminine name. The housekeeping staff left food for him during the week. A constant presence in the school, he habitually slept directly in the middle of the floor in front of the first floor staircase, ignoring children and teachers who would carefully walk around him. For a few weeks, he took it upon himself to spray the desks in the English department offices, rendering it impossible to work in them. We were going to take up a collection to get him snipped, but he must have gotten wind of it because he subsequently chose to mark the 6th grade room instead.

One Monday morning, I went to the villa early to set up a projector to watch Bowling for Columbine, and to chase out the two women who usually worked in there until after I brought my students to it and reminded them that I had a class. (They were always shocked that I was going to use the room for teaching purposes. Clearly, a teacher leading 8 students carrying notebooks wasn’t much of a clue.) Much to my surprise there was one desk in the room. Hmmm. How to hold class with one desk and no tables? I found the principal, in whom I had little confidence, who feigned surprise at the lack of proper classroom furniture. Indeed she was the one who instructed the staff to move them in the first place. She decided to look for a different classroom for me, as if one would magically appear in a broom closet. I told her I didn't need desks immediately as we were watching a film, but when and if she did find some, to replace them during recess so as not to interrupt my lessons.

The kids were happy to relax, and asked permission to use the large pillows stored on the side of the room opposite the classroom area. (The room was quite large as it was the bottom floor of a converted house.) Two minutes later, the girls had installed themselves in the place farthest from the projector to concentrate intently on something. Ah, it was the cat. As if it was a rare treat to caress a filthy creature that they saw roughly 20 times a day. I noticed that there were food and water dishes and a litter box in the corner. Hmmm. It did not bode well.

I gave the group my usual, "look at this face and tell me how happy it isn't about wasting time therefore don't aggravate me anymore" speech. Because I can be quite threatening, they complied and soon we were watching the film projected against the whiteboard. Not 3 minutes later, the cat started to traverse the floor with one leg twisted underneath and behind him. Michael Moore became priority number two. Slowly, the cat dragged himself to the litter box where he proceeded to make a deposit of the same number. Of course, all eyes were on him, including mine. My classroom had become a large kitty box. Since the smell of cat deposit makes me want to lose all 3 of my morning cups of coffee, I opened windows as the cat continued his ass-scraping, post litter box journey across the floor. Perhaps prompted by my angry reaction, one student asked the rhetorical question "And this is supposed to be a classroom?" Because the students were concerned about the cat, I'm not so cold-hearted that I didn't notice something was wrong, and because I wasn't going to get anything done otherwise, I told one of the girls to pick the cat up gently, set him on a pillow and pay attention to the movie.

During break I shot an e-mail to the principal to tell her that the lack of desks was disrespectful to me and my students, and that while I have sympathy for injured animals (we later learned that he had been hit by a car over the weekend and was put in the room by the security guards,) my classroom was no place for a cat to relieve himself.

Sometime during recess, a few desks were replaced in the room and I could proceed with my young tsetses as usual. I had warned them that the cat would be in the room, that he was injured, and that they were in no way shape or form to bother him. 10 minutes before class ended, the friendly maintenance man entered the room with a cardboard box, put the cat in it and took him outside. The litter box full of presents was, of course, left in the corner. It took me a few minutes to redirect the attention of the boys, my flightiest of tsetse flies, and a long moment to calm my anger.

When I left, the cat was sitting in the box near the exterior door of the villa.

When I returned to the classroom two days later, the litter box and deposits remained. I resisted the temptation to tip its contents on the principal’s desk.

Post Script
1. I want to emphasize that not all aspects of my job were intolerable. The majority of my colleagues were (and probably still are) remarkable people.
2. Despite the fact that some of my students had the attention span of a tsetse fly, I do love them and will miss them.
3. The cat was subsequently taken to the vet hospital where his broken hip was repaired. For about a month, he kept a low profile but recovered nicely. He was not, however, fixed.