After Grog Blog

LIGHT BLOGGING

Fluorescent lights, ok, you've all seen them. Chances are you've even turned the odd one on, or off. Or both. Could be you've even had one flickering at home and done nothing about it, just never turned it on again. But you know what the best thing is about fluoros? No? Well, they're gold for explaining inductive spikes. Transistor outputs, clamping diodes, interposing relays, hydraulic solenoids. V = L di/dt, is what I'm saying. Keep it in mind.

And, yes, they work without the capacitor.

DEAR ME?

Yesterday was assignment day, the day I hand out next month's work. The usual wailing ensued: "Tooooneeee, you give us too much work, and it's hard," they grizzled, before getting all misscheeveeous. "C'mon, really, how much would it cost for you to pass us?" And they tossed up some pathetic numbers - $100, $1000, a slab of beer. Fuck all, basically. The responsible teacher in me tells them that if they do the work, they won't have any trouble passing. Afterall, the questions in the workbook and on the assignments are virtually the same as in the exams. The smartarse teacher in me then jokes, yes jokes, if they offer to pay my full salary for the next twenty years until I retire, CPI linked of course, with benefits, we'll talk. "Jeeeeez, Tooooneeee, you're expensive," they cavil. "No, I'm not expensive," I explain, "I'm just not cheap." They look at me blankly so I expand on the difference between expensive and not cheap, something everyone ought to know. Cretins! Sisyphus has nothing on me. At least rolling a rock up a hill is character building, AND you're outdoors, not so banging your head on a whiteboard.

PAROLE CALL

Yesterday one of the students was absent:

-- "Buggalugs? ... Bloggs, where's Buggalugs?"

-- "In jail, Tone."

Yeah, right - everyone's a comedian.

-- "Good one, Bloggs."

I filled in the roll - Buggalugs: Absent 8.00 to 12.00. No reason.

No reason? Au contraire. In the afternoon we found out Buggalugs was indeed in jail; had been for two weeks. No one seems to know what he was in for, nicked a fork-lift or some such caper, but neither did anyone particularly care. He's always fucking around, and worse, he's a cretin who thinks he's clever. We were happy to be shot of him.

On the whole, our job would be a fuck sight easier if they put ALL the bad kiddies in jail. Damn those civil libertarians and their modern ways.

***

Jail is no bed of roses, I'm told. Another of my students (his brother had done time) told me how this grass had a length of pipe stuffed up his arse. A little uncomfortable, you'd imagine, and maybe the done thing in prison. But when the pipe was yanked out it left behind a length of barbed wire that was hidden inside.

UTTER FINGERED

"The thing -one of the things- that makes my life so wretched is that as well as teaching these appalling cretins, I have to teach everyone else's cretins too, because my colleagues are snivelling tossers who pretend to be sick all the time," writes my good fiend Harry.

Snivelling tossers, sure (my colleagues take a sickie at the drop of a rat); snivelling cowards, more like.

Remember Utter Fuckwit? Yes, I'm sure you do. Well, Utter has gone and got himself in a spot of bother. Called up before the head of department, he was. He'd been up to no good. Not sure of the exact details, there may be legal implications which I won't guess at here (feel free to do your own guessing), but he was due an extreme telling-off. It wouldn't be pulling any punches to suggest he was in for IT.

Instead of facing the music, though, you know what the snivelling coward did? He took two bastard weeks off. Scarpered, he did.

Yesterday we All received this email from the boss.

Hi All.

Utter won't be in for two weeks, so if No.2 asks you to cover, please help out, we're a bit tight for numbers at the mo.

Thanx
No.1

Mo? Thanx? Shit and derision! But I digress... do you know the best part? When Utter is teaching, so am I, which means that not only can I sneer at him until his cows* come home, I can also jeer my colleagues who must pick up his load. I remain unaffected.

Cave Laborem. That is MY motto. "Deep holes thy work"

CLASSHOLE

When I first started teaching my mate Mad Mick told me "At a new job, the first person who talks to you is always an idiot."

Mick was wrong. The first person who talked to me was an utter fuckwit.

How so? Well, the fuckwit complains. I mean, he really complains. Moans, whines and whinges, too. Everything is rotten, and there is nothing in the world he can't do better. Iraq, ABS braking, crop rotation, royal tennis - his way is the only way. It doesn't matter he couldn't possibly know anything about a subject. "The space shuttle? Idiots! Why don't they use unleaded?"

The other day he ordered a pizza for lunch. "Fuck me, what a rip-off. I ordered seafood, but half of this fucking wog-wheel is prawns and fish bits!" We all laughed AT him and took the piss, but he didn't seem to notice. He never does. He just sits there oblivious to our derision; smiling, nodding and laughing at whatever it is going on in his head. I think he is mad.

He's an ignorant racist, too. "Fucken rag-heads! I wish they'd all fuck off back to the synagogue." What a moron! Everyone knows Moslems pray in a Mosk.

Aaand, he is the best teacher. EVER! Just ask him. "I am the best teacher," will be his unambiguous reply. Seriously, he says that. Even if he was, which he's not, do you think a smart person would actually say that? Not just that, either. He often advises new kids they should ask for him when it comes time for the advanced subjects. "The other teachers aren't as qualified as me." It has never occurred to him he only ever teaches the basic subjects. The boss won't let him within cooey of anything difficult.

My Friday class was naming the teachers they don't like. "Best not go there," I said, heading them off before they started shit-canning staff members. They still got one in, though. "Utter Fuckwit, Tony, he's a nightmare."

I nearly told them off.

CHAIRMAN OW!

We once had a colleague who knew nothing whatsoever about teaching; even less than me. Topping that, he knew nothing at all about the subject matter. At least I know my onions.

How he came to be teaching is anyone's guess. He arrived in Australia in the mid eighties claiming political asylum from Bulgaria or Poland or Romania or one of those countries with bad dentists and applied for the first job he saw in the papers. Teacher Wanted read the advert. He rocked up to the interview, presented some paperwork (we later speculated it was a wad of $50 notes) and stated,  "I am teacher!" Next thing you know; he is teacher.

Not surprisingly; he is hopeless.

His stock-in-trade was a not-so elaborate technique educrats like to call Copy That Down. Walking into class he'd look at what the previous teacher had left on the board and command the class to "copy that down." It didn't matter what that was, it could have been a story about a mathematical cow. "It become handy," he'd sagely advise the puzzled students. It became a running gag that other teachers would leave jibberish up there on porpoise.

It wasn't long, though, well a year or so, before the powers-that-be twigged. But better than flick him, they made him the department dogsbody. Bloody handy he became, too. He'd do all the photo-copying, get all the printing organised, all that kind of stuff.

His great love, though, was invigilating. This was a doddle because he didn't have to do much more than hand out the papers, order "Start now!" and count down the time "1 hour left ... 30 minutes left ... 15 minutes left" etcetera.

He took it seriously, too. Muck around in his tests and you would be summarily out on your ear.

In fact, he took it so seriously that one day he sat his chair up on the front desk so as to better observe the room. Trouble is, he fell asleep. And you see the wheels in the picture? That's right, you guessed it. Down he crashed in a bundle of arms and legs. Right on his back.

He never returned, but rumour had it he was working for the education department, and last anyone knew, he was still there. Mind you, the older teachers have managed to keep up with his shenanigans by reading the Herald Sun letters page to which he is a consistent, if not obsessive contributor.

Last October he ran for Federal Parliament.

BETTER LATE THAN CLEVER

I let my students sleep in class. It's the best way to keep the troublemakers quiet; it's not as if they listen while they're awake, anyway. But apparently this ain't no great idea. A colleague of mine (Bob is as good a name as any) has the cautionary tale.

Bob was invigilating at his previous school. "This student rocked up late for an exam, but instead of tearing into it, just put his head on his paper and went to sleep," he said. "I ignored him, of course, it's not as if I could force him do the test."

About now I tuned out. Stories of gormless students are pretty much conventional fare around here so I payed only scant attention. " ... after about an hour I decided to send him packing and walked over to wake him up, but before I got to his desk fell flat on my arse. A classic pratt-fall, it was, and I felt like a goose." Naturally I tuned back in. For entertainment value it's hard to beat people falling over. Young, old, fat, sick, arms full of breakables; who's to say which is funniest. Had I been there I would have laughed like a drain. Bob continued "As I got up I realised I'd slipped in the student's blood; it was all over the shop. Turns out he'd quietly slashed his wrists and wasn't so much sleeping as slumping and was almost dead."

For this reason Bob doesn't let his students sleep in class. The lunchroom nodded in agreement; calling the ambos was no problem, but imagine the fucking paperwork.

***

Ad rem dozing in class. Just last term we were doing pre-test revision and half the class were asleep. The other half were babbling the sort of shit teenagers talk about; cars and Big Brother and cars. "OK, these are what you'll get in the test," I said, doing two examples on the board. Only one guy looked up to pay attention. Not surprisingly, he was the one guy to get them right in the test. The rest blew fifteen gimme marks. Christ, nearly the whole class left the question blank! As you'd expect, most failed, many by less than fifteen marks.

You should of seen the looks on their faces when I gave them their results and told them the questions on the board were exactly the same as the ones in the test. Scha. Den. Freu. Duh.

WITLESS FOR THE PROSECUTION

We have a hole in one of our classroom walls into which the students often stuff rubbish.

Tony Teacher: "OK, then, who squished the banana into the hole in the wall?"

The Class: " ... "

TT: "Right, then. We sit here through lunch until someone cleans it up."

TC: "Aww, Tonyyyyyyyyyy."

TT: " ... "

TC: "C'mon, Argy, just clean it up."

Argentina: "Dobbers! Did you know it was me, Tony?"

TT: "I do now."

Arg: "What if no one owned up?"

TT: "Someone always breaks."

Lebanon: "What are you going to do to him, Tony?"

TT: "Nothing. IF. He passes the subject."

Arg: "Will I pass, Tony?"

TT: "Yes. IF. You work hard."

Arg: "And if I don't?"

TT: "You won't."

Arg: "I don't think I will pass, Tony."

TT: "Neither do I."

Serbia: "Do you care, Tony?"

TT: "Yes."

Serb: "Really?"

TT: "No."

Greece: "Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, you know."

TT: "I didn't know that."

Arg: "What is wit?"

TT: "That's a very good question, Arg."