My First Day of School

I think I was more nervous today than I was before any of my actual first days of school. After the stories, tales and anecdotes I’d heard from Maddy and Jen over the weekend, I didn’t know what to expect. Well, I did, it just wasn’t what I wanted to expect, you see.
The morning didn’t have an auspicious beginning. The only alarm clock I have at the moment is one of those cheap travel ones and the battery is half-gone (or more) and it doesn’t keep accurate time, so needless to say my alarm never went off. Maddy and Jen like to wake up right before they have to leave and they hop in their clothes and head out the door in less than 10 minutes. Well, they forgot that I didn’t have an alarm clock so I never got woken up until I heard, “Come on, Geoffrey! We gotta go!” Hello, first day of school!
I jumped out of bed and threw whatever I could on as fast as I possibly could. I had about a minute to get ready, so I felt a little disheveled when I was walking out to the headmaster’s car, my shoelaces still untied. Our headmaster, Ralph, lives in the same giant apartment complex, a suburban neighborhood of Izmir called Mavisheir. We catch a ride with him on Mon/Wed/Fri at 7am so we can miss all the traffic and take a swim in the pool before school. Otherwise, we take a service bus at 7:15 that’s hired to pick up all the school’s teachers in Izmir and have us delivered to the school by 8:20. With Ralph, we get there in 25 minutes, with the service bus, it’s an hour, so it’s worth it to leave an extra 15 minutes early.
We drive through Izmir to get to the school, which is situated in a giant rubble field adjacent to a cement factory on the very outskirts of town. As we pull up, we have to go through a large gate and a security checkpoint to gain access. In fact, there’s a giant high wall around the entire complex. Gee, a school that could actually double as a prison if it had to!
The three of us go for a morning swim, which was quite refreshing, but it had me wiped out about 3 hours later (there’s a reason why I like to exercise at night when I’m home). We have a Monday morning school-wide pre-school teacher’s meeting, and Ralph introduces me to the crew, saying I helped direct and produce a movie in NYC that will be coming out early next year. I’m thinking, “Uhhhh, no I didn’t!” but apparently this Ralph likes to stretch the truth to make himself and the school look better than it really is. Not a good sign of things to come, people.
I’m told I’m going to shadow Jen around for the 1st half of the day, which is fine. I think the directors actually wanted to throw me into a class all by myself with no introduction whatsoever, but Jen and Maddy stuck up for me and told them that was utterly unreasonable and stupid. They don’t want the same things that happened to them and others happen for a 2nd time to me, too, so it’s nice to have some people fighting for me on my side before I even arrived.
Jen’s 1st class is pre-school, where she makes cookies with a bunch of 4 year old. They’re a little wild and not extremely well-behaved, but hey, they’re pre-schoolers. You can’t expect perfect angels.
After that, we move onto a 2nd grade class that lasts an entire 80 minutes (most are only 40, but there’s one 80 minute period each day). These kids were…monsters. This school, Isikkent, is the 2nd most expensive school in all of Izmir, so all these kids, in a broad, blanket stereotype, are mostly rich, spoiled children who never hear the word, “No.” These kids are yelling, getting out of their chairs every 5 seconds, and begging for Jen’s attention at every available moment. They’re not very used to waiting for things. I’m sitting in the front watching what’s going on with these 15 problem children, and I’m going, “What on earth did I get myself into? This isn’t school. This is Romper Room Turkey-style!”
This school has the sort of philosophy that rarely disciplines its kids or tells them no. You can’t even really send someone to the principal’s office if they’re being bad. You just gotta deal with it somehow and move on. Apparently the school’s enrollment has gone down since last year due to a NATO Intl. School opening up nearby and some parents have been very unhappy, so Isikkent has made a conscious decision to always tell the parents that things are going great and their children are wonderful, even if they’re the worst kids and students in the world. It seems like a conflict of interest to me, and, well, just plain wrong. Jen, Maddy, and I are also completely breaking the law by teaching here, and they tell parents and school board members that we have master’s degrees or specialized advanced certifications, which we most certainly don’t have. Great, huh?
I just couldn’t get over how badly behaved the kids were. I NEVER remember kids acting up like this in my elementary classes. It wouldn’t have been tolerated for a second, but for here, it’s the norm. It’s like the patients are running the asylum, although I can’t figure out of the patients are the students or the senior staff. And just think, it’ll be up to me to control a whole classroom of these hellions!
It’s a long school day, too. Class starts at 9:10, but I’ll be there at least an hour before, and class doesn’t get out until 4:20. Yup, even kindergarten and ore-school go for 7 hours. Pre-school for me was half a day! To counter-act this, all the kids get lots of breaks in between each class after lunch. 10 minutes each time to do whatever they want- play inside, have a snack, go outside, go to the gymnasium, whatever. And there are no bells in this school. When a class ends, music starts playing in the hallways, and when it stops playing, break time or hall pass time is concluded. That’s an alternative school for you.
It feels weird being in a school that doesn’t really discipline its kids. And the English classes the English teachers run, it doesn’t really matter what we accomplish, or how we do it. I guess as long as we’re speaking native English with the kids, they’re happy. Technically, you could be the crappiest teacher in the world, and they’d be pleased as punch with you. Apparently, Jen, Maddy, nor I would never be fired. We’re so valuable to them, we’d probably have to shoot someone or burn the school down to lose our jobs. Hooray for job security, but I won’t get any satisfaction unless I can actually get through to these kids, make them listen and behave, and have them learn something while they’re here. Because some of them have dreadful English skills for their grade level. For instance, the 2nd grade is better at English than the 5th grade, and while it’s baffling, it’s NOT good or acceptable. There’s so much work to be done, but there’ so little organization and strong lesson-planning going on, it turns into a bit of a mess.
Today the school heads told me that in addition to teaching 25 hours of class a week and being in charge of putting on a full-scale theatrical play with the middle-school drama club, I’, in charge of the yearbook. But they don’t want just any yearbook. They want it all burned onto a DVD, and they want me to videotape all the kids, and transfer old VHS tapes to digital format so we can put it on there (you need a special machine for that), and then edit it all together with some video editing software like Final Cut Pro, all set to a nifty soundtrack. Who the hell are they kidding???!!! That’s a professional job, first of all, and second, it would take freakin’ forever! I’ll make some sort of yearbook with scanned in photos in Microsoft publisher and have it printed on glossy paper and bound, but a DVD? They’re living in an unreasonable dream world. We have NONE of the equipment for that, too. They want something, but they don’t have a clue as to how it’s done. I’m gonna put my foot down and tell them it’s flat-out impossible, and that what I have in mind will be just fine.
On a few positive notes, the school itself, aside from the prison walls (is outside security really that necessary? Do they think one of these rich kids is gonna be kidnapped?), is very nice and modern. Great pool and gym, and the food (at least today’s meal) was delicious.
The key to this whole experience is having Jen and Maddy with me, and what I do with my weekends and free time. The three of us, and a few other disgruntled teachers, set up a solid support network and sounding board for each other.
I’m taking this intensive Turkish language course that starts tomorrow night with my 2 roommates and the headmaster, Ralph (he’s been here 2 years and still barely knows a lick of the language. Amazing, eh?). We’ll meet after school for three hours a night from 6-9 and for 5 hours on Saturday, so we get 20 hours a week for 4 weeks. And I was exhausted from the school day at 5! I’ll have to work on my energy conservation techniques this month, and get lots and lots of sleep whenever I can. So, no traveling this first month, but come January and beyond, Jen, Maddy and I are gonna go all over, and come April when it really warms up, it’ll be a different picture-perfect beach every weekend.
It’s all sort of a trade-off. Rough job and crazy kids who don’t want to learn a thing, but I get to live in a gigantic, free apartment with 2 other cool people and have access to everything Turkey and the Mediterranean has to offer. And I love how everything’s so cheap over here. I don’t think that’ll ever get old.
And the day has finally arrived that 300 people at my workplace call me Mr. Stevens. Mr. Stevens??? Man, that sounds so weird.