team leader

This is the new sound, just like the old sound. Just like the noose wound, over the new ground.


I thought about beginning this post with, "This is the new job, just like the old job." But then it occurred to me that not everyone who reads this might recognize a 14 year old Rage Against the Machine deep cut. So, I though it best to type out the actual lyric, then tell you about how I'd thought of beginning this post.

If you were hip to that lyric, you would've undoubtedly picked up on how I was referencing the fact that I recently started a new job, and that it is quite similar to all the other jobs I've had here in the past. Man, I am so close to deleting all this.

There are some things that differentiate this job from prior ones. For one thing, I'm in the heart of the city. Every other academy I've taught at has been in the boondocks, so to speak; kinda on the edge of town. There are some benefits to being downtown.

For one, it's a much larger school, and thus more stable and unlikely to go out of business. There are actually about 15 foreign teachers, whereas my last school had just me and one other.

Second, the kids are generally better, both in terms of English ability and behavior. Today before one of my classes, a fellow teacher warned me about a particular student, saying she was a bit of a handful. When I actually got to class, I saw that she just talked a lot, and loud, but in English generally. I wanted to tell my coworkers that if that's bad, they don't know how good they have it. Hell, I'm used to lunatics and arsonists. There was also the kid who threw a pair of scissors out a 4th floor window which hit a lady. I don't know that I ever wrote about that one.

Third, I have a mere 15 teaching hours a week. That's about half of what I've had at other jobs. I still have to be at the school for about 7 hours a day, so there's a lot of downtime.

The only annoying thing I've had to deal with so far is how I've been treated by my coworkers. They've all be nice, but they treat me like I'm new at this, when in reality I've been teaching here longer than any of them. I just don't know the ins and outs of the curriculum yet.

The "Head Foreign Teacher" guy has been especially grating in this regard. Now, before I get into that, I have to explain just what exactly "Head Foreign Teacher" means. Actually, someone else can explain it for me:



Not every place I've worked at has a person with this title. In fact, in some places I suppose I could've called myself that. However, I don't have a massive inferiority complex, so I never did. The guy is nice enough, but he takes himself a bit too seriously. I think he wishes I had no prior experience so that he could talk down to me, but in reality I've been here longer than he has. But he still does talk down to me. He even insisted on sitting in on a class. He just sat in the back. About halfway through the class the students asked me who he was. He was clearly offended that they didn't recognize and respect his authority.

I think there's only one way to end this post: