Penultimate Day

Well, I resigned. It's sad. I hate to face the fact that I've failed in this job, but as one teacher friend at church told me, "You didn't fail; the system failed you!" (She's referring to a dodgy issue involving an extra half-day planning per week that the Ministry of Education allows for all overseas teachers. But my school doesn't give it to me. They also don't give their beginning teachers a full-day planning that the Ministry pays for. More about that some other time.)

The second term ended June 30 and that was my last day. Fortunately, here in New Zealand teachers leave in the middle of the year frequently so my resignation was not all that unusual. Heaps of teachers go to places in the northern hemisphere (mainly UK) to teach for a few years and plenty of northern hemisphere teachers come to New Zealand. With the northern school year happening from Sept-June and the southern school year from Feb-Dec, there's constant turnover year round. At my particular school of 15 teachers, I'm the 4th one in two years who left before the year was over. That shows you how common it is. But it also shows you how tough my school is.

My second-to-last day was almost as eventful as the previous post I wrote. Here goes-

First of all, Curt rode off on his bike and took both sets of car keys with him. Remember, he's on a bike. He doesn't need ONE set of car keys, let alone two! Aargh. So I couldn't get to work. I finally got a hold of him 40 minutes later and he borrowed a friend's car (thanks, Jon) and drove home to deliver me the keys. I thought about having my sweet neighbour lady drive me to school, and I'm sure she would have been glad to ... but I needed my car at 10:30 to go to a job interview for a school library position. Meanwhile, I called my school to let them know I'd be late and that someone should unlock my classroom and watch over the kids while they change into their PE clothes for aerobics. I arrived right as the bell rings. No time to catch my breath, just hit the ground running.

I had already arranged for 2 other teachers to watch over my class while I went to the interview. But Maria, who was going to watch them after recess, was home sick so I scrambled to get a third person to help out instead. My first helper arrived right on time and my kids were playing Bingo with Maori numbers so they were behaving pretty well. (I had a Maori student call out the numbers because I can't pronounce anything "right" in English, let alone Maori!) I raced out the door and drove to my librarian interview, which lasted about 40 minutes. I came back to find my class in the hands of Maria's reliever (substitute) instead of the third helper I'd recruited. Oh well. At least someone was covering for me.

So far, so good. There have been a number of glitches already but it's worked out.

Then about 1:30, Tim got indignant about being told three times to stop talking, and threw a chair through the window. OK, it didn't exactly go though the window. It's more like it hit it and bounced off. But it broke the window big time. There was broken glass inside and outside. I sent Patricia to go get a principal or deputy principal. They both came and took Tim away. Later, they came to get a few more students/witnesses to tell them what happened. Meanwhile, I was still trying to carry on with the reading groups on the carpet at the back of the room and make sure nobody went over near the broken glass. At least they got REAL quiet after the glass shattered all over.

Eventually the principal sent Tim back in to apologise to the class for losing his temper. He will have to pay for the new window. And he will spend tomorrow in the office doing work all alone instead of in here with the rest of the class. He's actually thrown his chair once before, when I confiscated his orange-coloured drink to see if it was "fizzy." Carbonated drinks aren't allowed and teachers just pour them out. When I took his drink that day, he threw his chair and stormed out of the room. He walked all the way to the back of the property and started heading out the gate as if he was going home. But he came back about 15 minutes later. Anyway, it wasn't his first chair-throwing incident. Then there was also the chair-throwing incident with Zann and Mitch, but that will story have to wait, too.

School finally ended at 3:00 but I had to stay till 5:00 for a parent conference. We had conferences Tues. and Wed. earlier this week, but one mom couldn't come then so she came today at 5:00. We finished at 5:30. Everyone else in the school was already gone. I was the last one out. I locked the doors and set the alarm. It was dark and lonely. It had NOT been a good day.

On the way home, I realised I should be thankful that Tim threw a chair through the window today because it reminded me why I was quitting. Ever since I submitted my resignation, I've been going back and forth, wondering if it was the right thing to do, feeling guilty for abandoning the kids and deserting my principal. But having a day like this reinforced my decision. I'm still sad and I still feel like I failed, but I think I made the right decision anyway. Tomorrow I finally get to tell the students that I'm leaving. It will be my last day, which may be even sadder.

PS - I didn't get the librarian job.