This Year 11 boy will be me in a few years

Today was an off-timetable day at my school, which meant that I had to sit through the exact same guest lecture given to four different Year 11/Sophomore groups. Which meant that, as I was sitting in front of the class within view of all the children, I had to have a look on my face that suggested that this was the most fascinating lecture ever to have been given in the history of lectures. My goodness, children, this is such a groundbreaking lecture that as soon as this class is over I shall rush off to alert the presses. Nay, I must alert God Himself. In the meantime I shall grip the arms of my chair for support as I struggle to contain my growing excitement over the course of 70 minutes each time the lecturer uses words like "functionalist" and "essentialist." For the fourth time that day.

At some point during this 70-minute lecture, perhaps about 45 minutes in, one of the boys burst out laughing. It was the sort of joyous laugh where he knew damn well he was going to be in big trouble, but so great was the comedy that stifling this laugh would be hazardous to his health. So let 'er rip. After a few seconds he managed to repress the rebellion, but he couldn't quite manage to stop the shaking, the silent, mirthful tears that steadily streamed out of his eyes, and the occasional snorts and squawks that accompany any laughter made to be silent for a long period of time.

The lecturer ignored this boy, who was essentially having a seizure in the corner, and continued on with his lecture, either with the courage of the Titanic band or with the helpless stupidity of a Mariokart player who has just driven off Rainbow Road. I'm not entirely sure to be honest. I quietly suggested to the senior teacher that we invite this boy to step outside to compose himself and then come back in.

Instead of taking advice from someone who knows a thing or two about uncontrollable giggling, the senior teacher stomped over to the giggling boy and started bawling him out. As soon as she started doing this I had to stifle a sympathy giggle, because anyone prone to fits of uncontrollable giggles can tell you that the only thing funnier than something funny is something funny in an inappropriate situation. And so the boy started almost hiccuping laughter, alternating between silent giggles and very loud guffaws that would burst out every now and then. I actually felt terrible for him because he looked desperate to stop giggling so that he wouldn't get in trouble, but each time the teacher yelled at him to stop being silly whatever he originally found funny increased exponentially in hilarity.

Eventually the teacher realized that she was only making the situation worse. Unfortunately, she still didn't quite get it. She stopped yelling at him, but replaced the yelling with the stink eye.

And so the lecturer droned on with his horrifically boring lecture as the teacher angrily glared at a child whose laughter was actually starting to propel him out of his seat. And instead of relieving this poor soul of his misery by sending him out into the hall, the teacher continued to maintain intense eye contact, as though her looking angry enough had the power to make something stop being funny.

Eventually (after grumpily staring at this child for about five minutes with hilarious results) she took my advice and kicked the kid out of the class, leaving him to cross the room to the door as he wiped joyful tears from his eyes and noisily walked into chairs and walls because of his laughter-induced blindness.
And the lecturer just kept plodding on.

The Bungalow.

So there’s this one classroom that I teach in that’s a bit like a mobile home. Every time I walk into it I always half expect to find some obese Mississippian named Sharla who is missing several teeth, and so it’s always a shock to instead find 25-or so English 12 year olds.

What I mean by “like a mobile home” is that it feels as though it’s one tornado, or heck, it’s even one half-hearted gust of wind away from completely collapsing and killing us all in a news story that the Daily Mail will somehow find a way to blame on both immigrants and ‘elf ‘n safety.

How do I know that this bungalow is unsafe? Because it quakes like…like….shit. Every simile I’ve tried to come up with is offensive, so I’m just going to skip the similes. But I feel as though with every step I take another window pane wobbles and screams for mercy before exploding, while meanwhile the bookshelves wearily concede defeat and willingly implode into themselves as they give their children one last, sad, knowing glance. “This fate awaits you, too, my child,” the bookshelves say as they collapse into restful oblivion.

Okay, obviously nothing’s collapsed or shattered yet. Though I am convinced that my shaking our classroom trailer by my ENORMOUS T-REX FOOTSTEPS will eventually bounce some of the smaller children out of their chairs just like in a moonbounce. And, yes, I get it. I’m fat. But there is still no excuse for how much the bungalow shakes when I walk around. Or indeed when anyone walks around. One of the smaller girls who has the same mass/density/whatever the relevant science word is, as a three month old baby manages almost as well as I do to get the trailer to rattle around like a washing machine making its break for freedom. It’s the sort of eerie, inexplicable thing that the Doctor needs to sort out for us.

I gotta admit, it’s distracting. Though not, admittedly, as distracting as the constant smell of fart. I told someone earlier today that young teenagers always smell of fart, BO, anxiety, and (in the case of girls) way too much perfume. And that’s not strictly true. Much like the city of Chicago, middle school/KS3 classrooms have Fart Pockets. And I’ve said on this blog many times that I think farts are hilarious, but that’s also not strictly true—the truth is that I think OWNED farts, farts whose credit is proudly claimed, are funny. So in the case of the silent fart pockets that lurk in my classroom and haunt my teaching experience, I’m not a happy camper. Basically my teaching experience can be summed up with this: I wander around the classroom and from time to time think to myself, “Oh goddamn it, not again.”

I also want to take this opportunity to express my fear at the thought that the more I teach the more the farts of children take over my life.

Jackie: Year 8 Champion Farter, Girls Division

Today a girl farted in my lesson and laughed so hard that she fell out of her chair.

And, dear reader, I must be honest. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a clearer sense of vocation than I did right there. I am 100% meant to be working with children.

It was during an ICT lesson, so it wasn’t the sort of thing done to interrupt a lesson. All the kids were getting on with their work. I saw this girl was giggling a bit, and her friend called me over. Without any kind of warning to brace myself, I entered into a new level of stench just as the friend announced, “Miss, Jackie farted!” At which point Jackie turned bright red and completely lost her shit (not literally, thank God!), and before I knew it she was convulsing with laughter on the floor. This angelic, well-behaved and intelligent young woman was reduced to a hilarious mess on the floor by a single fart.

“Yes, child,” I wanted to say to her. “Just yes. Clearly you understand what is truly amusing in this world. I have nothing left to teach you. Your education is complete. Go forth and be awesome.”

These kids are just so amazing. This champion farter is just the tip of the iceberg of awesomeness. Sometimes they horrify me, but mostly they just say the most delightfully bizarre shit. And I mean “shit” in the wonderful sense.

One girl decided that the British Empire was not the result of a desire for power or money, but rather a desire to acquire a bunch of lands with strange names like Swaziland. Another girl wrote a letter to her husband fighting in the trenches of World War I and confessed her affair with the milkman. Another kid created a new religious TV character who was a vampire and a Christian, someone who begged his victims for forgiveness right before draining them of all their blood. Another boy argued that Christians should be in favor of cloning because then we could resurrect Jesus, clone him, and then “we could all have our own personal Jesus.” And then there’s the Year 8 child who doesn’t say awesome things but just looks like Edward Scissorhands, minus the scissorhands.

Man, I’m going to miss these kids when I leave this school at the end of next week. I am genuinely worried that the kids at my next school won’t be as strange and wonderful as the ones I adore at this school.

Oh God. I just got all soppy and sentimental over a fart.

My cover letter

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am pleased to apply for the post of Teacher of RE at your school, as advertised on the TES website.

At this point you are probably wondering what that blinding light is. You know, that mesmerizing but slightly painful light that seems to be suddenly shining in your life out of nowhere, just as soon as you opened this letter? Well, to answer your question, that light is the sun shining out of my ass.

Now now, stick with me here. You are dealing with the biggest BAMF this side of the River Avon. I don’t even know which side of the Avon we’re on at this point, since I haven’t the slightest clue where the fuck the River Avon is, but regardless of the Avon’s geographical location I can pretty much guarantee that I am the greatest teacher you will ever see.

What do I mean? I mean my kids know the Bible so well that they can fart the 10 Commandments in morse code in their sleep. My kids understand the concept of the Trinity so well that they literally made their Math teacher’s head explode. My kids understand arguments for the existence of God so well that Richard Dawkins actually weeps with fear and dives into the nearest trashcan like something out of Scooby Doo when he bumps into my kids on the streets of Oxford.

Bitches worried about how I deal with SEN kids? I am such a goddamn champ that I actually cured my students of their SEN issues. None of this standing around trying to make provisions for these kids like a little bitch would. I cured blindness, much like Jesus. Except I did one better than JC and cured dyslexia as well.

Safeguarding? You’re worried that I’m not gonna keep your kids safe? I will personally bite the head off of any bastard who tries to lay so much as a perverted GLANCE at my kids. And then I will use his head in some kind of a fucked up voodoo ritual—that’s how seriously I take safeguarding. One time a kid had some weird bruises on his arms so I used my laser vision to incinerate his parents into an irrelevant pile of dust that blew away in a slight breeze--at Parents Evening. And then I had one of them free biscuits and ate it like it ain’t no thang.

Bitch please, you think I can’t differentiate for pupils of differing ability levels? Bitch, it be like 27 different goddamn lessons when I teach.

In conclusion, if you don’t employ a fucking BALLER like me, I will have you sectioned. And no, I don’t mean taken in for mental health observations. I mean literally chopped up into sections.

Sincerely,
Sam

Tell us more about the lineage

Friday morning I spent about an hour and 45 minutes staring at some dude's hairline. And when I say some dude I actually mean a Buddhist monk. And when I say Buddhist monk, I mean some guy who dressed in red robes and worked at a Buddhist center. To be honest I have no idea what he introduced himself as because, as I shall explain, I did not understand a single word that came out of this man's mouth.

There were definitely a solid few minutes where I was shaking with suppressed laughter when, sitting Indian style with my ass propped on a meditation cushion, I realized that I was stuck in a never-ending lecture with a man who was less intelligible than my newborn niece. I wasn't laughing at him, mind you--no way, having been the unintelligible foreigner in Israel, I'd never laugh at someone else's accent. Rather, I was laughing at myself, because at the time I thought I was the only person who didn't understand this man.

I looked around me as this lovely gentleman spoke to us, and all I saw were all of my classmates nodding attentively, as though this man had just provided some life-changing insight into the nature of the world. An insight which was completely lost on me. Needless to say, I began to zone out and wonder about things. For as much as I tried to understand this man he seemed to get even harder to understand. And after witnessing our tutor continually ask questions about lineage and history that invited hour-long responses, not a second of which I could understand, I began to wonder if I had had a stroke.

At one point the monk may have asked me a question. Yes, me personally. Actually though I'm not entirely sure it was a question, and I'm not entirely sure it was addressed to me. It was sort of the aural equivalent of someone with a lazy eye addressing you. There was definitely a moment where I considered pointing at myself and mouthing the words, "Sorry, me?" and quickly glancing behind me and slightly to the left.

All I know though is that I'm grateful we didn't do any silent meditation. When I saw the hippie white guy lead us into this room with mats and cushions I got a little afraid. I'm not afraid of finding Enlightenment, but I am afraid of the weird noises my stomach makes. Public silent meditation and I don't get along because my stomach is a bit of a diva. Well, he's not really a diva--maybe he's just one of those people that is afraid of awkward silences. "HEY GUYS!" my stomach likes to scream in silent moments. And even though most of these dear classmates have seen me fall over furniture, molest trees, fall in front of an ambulance, and eat disgusting amounts of kebab, I don't want them to misunderstand my stomach noises and think I'm the sort of person who goes to other people's shrines just to fart in them.

This did, however, lead to a private silent mediation during the monk's lecture. I began to ponder meaningful questions about the relationship between farts and Buddhism. Namely, "If you're about to reach Enlightenment in a shrine and somebody farts, do you get sent back a bit?" And "If you intentionally fart in a shrine to distract someone from reaching Enlightenment, will you get reborn as something really nasty?"

I can't believe they let me teach RE...

Double double toil and please just let me die now...

Oh man, I've been bitten by the theater bug. I offered to help with props/building/whatever with the local Passion Play, and a shortage of willing players has meant that I've since been upgraded to the status of actor, with an actual honest-to-goodness line. I flatter myself by thinking that the person who allowed me to take on this role thinks I can draw upon inner acting strength I didn't know I had to add meat to this one line, when in reality (as learned from this past Sunday's rehearsal) when I act--on a good day--I just sound like a quietly constipated version of my normal, dull self.

To be fair, I am enjoying myself and I'm happy to be part of it. But honestly it also brings back horrific memories of my time as a theater major at college. All I wanted to do was play with lights and use the occasional power tool, but my college thought that in order to be a good lighting designer I needed to know how to act.

All I remember about that class is that every day was humiliating agony. I still cringe at the thought of having to perform that witches thing from the beginning of Macbeth in front of everybody. I remember during rehearsals for it my partners would nag me to put more effort into it. Get into character, they'd tell me. Double double toil and trouble... And I'd just silently pray that either I or everyone else or both would die before the performance date, because the thought of enthusiastically crouching around an imaginary cauldron and speaking in verse seemed somehow even worse than simply shitting my pants both visibly and audibly while onstage.

It got to the point where 18 year old me considered drastic solutions. Whenever I had to perform in front of my class I would fantasize that while I was reciting my poem/monologue/whatever I was wearing an enormous inflatable penis costume. "Surely that'd embarrass you even more, Sam," you're probably saying. But the fact is that imagining I was wearing an enormous inflatable penis costume made the rest of the class seem ridiculous. Here I am, wearing an invisible inflatable penis costume in front of the entire class--and these dumbasses don't even realize it! I'm giving a serious monologue in my dull voice of indigestion and I'm NOT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGING THE FACT THAT I'M DRESSED AS A HUGE INFLATABLE PENIS! And you're taking me seriously! Who's the idiot now, guys? Oh, that's right, YOU!

Well, a girl can dream...

I eventually gave up on the whole theater major thing. It wasn't just the horrific acting classes, but also the crap jobs I had to do backstage. My personal favorite was "Lint Mistress," where my job was literally picking lint off the leading man.

As part of the costume crew I had to follow around the costume designer, a grad student who had such a strong Great Lakes accent that I thought her jaw was going to pop off at any minute from the vowel strain. On one memorable occasion I was called in to help her with the leading man's pants (TROUSERS!), so I followed her into a small dressing room where the three of us could be alone together. She decided that the leading man's pants needed to be expanded, so without any kind of warning she just tore this guy's pants open. So the guy was just standing there with a huge, gaping hole in the region of Ass, looking completely appalled. The costume designer had to hurry out of the room to get more pins, leaving me alone with this guy I don't know but who I regularly pick lint off of, now with him in underpants and pathetic tatters that were once pants. I remember trying to turn around to preserve some semblance of this guy's modesty, only to find that a mirror was behind me. So instead I just sort of stared off to the side while the leading man and I both grew increasingly red in the face as we both tried to pretend like he was not wearing shredded pants right now. He was a senior and I was a freshman, so he tried to break up the awkwardness of the situation by asking me how I was settling in. "Not very well at the moment," I wanted to tell him.

After about five eternities the costume designer finally returned to fix the pants, but by that point I was pretty convinced that theater was no longer for me. I needed order in this chaotic world. I needed to know that pants would not suddenly be ripped apart at any given moment without any kind of a warning.

The whole realization that theater was not the major for me made me think of Roland the Farter, or more importantly Le Petomane.

Le Petomane was a guy who farted professionally in the Victorian era, a guy who is sometimes referred to as a "fartiste." Apparently he used to do farting impressions of the San Francisco Earthquake, and he'd do animal sounds. This flatulist retired during World War I because he thought the world was too inhumane. Just as I only wanted to play with lights, he just wanted to fart. That's all he wanted.

And that, my friends, is beautiful.


(Speaking of theater, if you'd like to read a short scene about St Thomas a Becket that I wrote when I was 16, please click here)

Back in college

Back during my quick stint as a film major at college I had a really good looking professor. Staring at this man during class made all those hours of pretentious films that we had to watch allllll worth it. But as hot as he was, and as much as I dubbed Fridays "Hot Prof Day" because I had his class and another looker's class, this guy was a shit teacher.

Okay, maybe that's a bit unfair. Having gained a bit of teaching experience myself now, I have a lot more sympathy for him than I did back when I was 19. I realize now that sometimes students will make contributions in class for which all the best pedagogical theorists agree the only appropriate response is "What the fuck are you talking about?" And I also realize that sometimes kids will ask questions that I have to wonder what language they're speaking in. And frequently when you ask kids for an answer to a question they'll come up with some answer so horribly WRONG that only Satan himself could have planted it in the child's head.

So anyway, this professor would have us screen our short films in front of the class. My one and only film made as a film major was about a Jew getting so pissed off about Campus Crusade for Christ that he ends up leading an exodus to Skokie, IL. But you didn't really need to know that.

Anyway, after each film was screened the professor would flip on just one of the lights. There he'd stand, only half of him lit by a small pool of weak, orange light in an otherwise dark room, and he'd spout off awkward comments. Trying to express an interest in our beginners' work but clearly not sure how, he'd say things like, "Wow. So what was up with [*insert the worst part of a student's project*]?" He didn't say much, usually just one line, but the one line was without fail unintentionally awful. The sort of thing that would make you want to step outside, go up to the water outside, and slowly immerse yourself in Lake Michigan and never come up for air. Then, silently gloating over someone else's failure while also realizing that we were next, the audience of film students would sit in awkward stillness, someone would cough uncomfortably, another person would give a good ol' SNUUUUURF to remedy their runny nose caused by the Midwestern winter, and then the professor would ask us to put on the next film.

Repeat for each film.

Besides Professor HotStuff and his awkward comments though, there were a lot of other things to look forward to when it came to film class. And when I say a lot of other things I really just mean Penny*. Or maybe it was Penni. Or Peny? I don't know. Penny seems too normal for this girl, one of my dear film classmates. I remain fully convinced that she was a very nice person, but my God was she delightfully bizarre. Years from now when I'm old and gray and about to die alone in my house with my 500 cats (all of whom I will detest), I think her coats are what I will remember about this period of my life.

What I remember is that she would wear enormous fur coats. Like, MASSIVE fur coats. They were usually cut short, almost a bit like crop top fur coat. She had several different fur coats, but the one thing they all had in common was that they all made her look like a yeti. I always used to anticipate her arrival to class because she was one of those people who is physically incapable of arriving on time to anything, so every Friday she would waltz in about 20 minutes late like it ain't no thang, and she would disrobe. And off would come an absolutely ENORMOUS and unspeakably furry coat. And then it would take her another five minutes for the coat to be lovingly tucked into a vacant seat like it was not just an enormous collection of dead, fluffy animal skins but instead a pile of fluffy and inanimate puppies. I mean, I was a theatre/film major--I loved a good production, and this definitely counted.

I'm also convinced that she had some sort of a religious obligation to have at least 10 animals on her at any given moment, much like a Sikh's Five Ks. On one memorable occasion I watched her take off a gigantic light brown fur coat only to find that she was wearing a suede hippie-indian vest. With colorful embroidery. And which was lined with even more yeti fur.

I also liked the pillbox hats that she would wear. They were exactly like what Jackie Kennedy used to wear, except that Penny's had the same texture as latex. And they were metallic and neon. They looked a bit like what I would imagine we think hookers would have worn in the 1960s (regardless of how they may have actually dressed.


Anyway, that was my undergraduate experience. Just thought you should know.

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