Meg's School

A few weeks ago, my students went on class trips, and I was left behind to hang out in my office. I thought it would be a good time to take some pictures of my school.

This is a fairly standard classroom. Most classes have between thirty-five and forty students. They sit in double rows; most teachers have boys and girls sit side by side in order to decrease talking. I’m not convinced it works to keep them quiet, but it is more convenient for copying homework, or ‘cunning’, as they call it here. It also keeps them closer together, which is nice. I have one class that has the desks a bit more spaced, and the students seem so far away and so close at the same time. It feels strangely crowded and uncomfortable.

In the back are the student’s lockers and a closet with cleaning supplies. The stay in the same classroom all day and the teachers rotate, so each classroom really belongs to the students. Each class has a homeroom teacher who is responsible for a lot of paperwork, decorating the classroom, and making sure that the students clean their room every day (Most schools don’t have a cleaning staff; ours is responsible for the bathrooms and hallways, which, from what I hear, is really nice – apparently leaving 7^th graders in charge of bathroom cleanliness doesn’t work so well.)

Other than what their homeroom teachers dictate, the students have free range over the classroom. I was amazed at first when I saw some of them doodling on their desks – sometimes even with whiteout or permanent marker – and sometimes right in front of teachers – but each desk belongs to the student as well. (Somehow they manage to take any writing off their desks either with an eraser – one that can remove pen, maker and whiteout – or, if the super-eraser fails, they can simply use the sharpy knife they all have in their pencil cases.) I’ve even seen students standing on desks and chairs. Before the beginning of term, all of the returning students came back to the school for an hour one day (in their uniforms) and moved their desk to their new classroom. My coworker explained that they’ll keep their desk for the three years that they’re at this school. Of course, it makes me wonder if they throw out the desks when the students graduate or if they give the new students some really beat-up desks. From what I know about this school, I’m sure they don’t know what they’ll do.

One of my first few days here, my coworker brought me to a classroom full of desks and chairs with a sign outside that said “Language Lab.” She told me that we would use the classroom when the new school year began in March; the school wanted to trade the desks currently in the classroom for new ones. Next door to the Language Lab was a room labeled “Native Speaker.” She explained that I would have my own office in the new year as well.

And so I waited. Three day before classes began, they moved me from the main teachers office downstairs to the room next to the Language Lab. The Native Speaker sign, however, was removed. My coworker told me she would be visiting me often. I think this was to prevent me (or the other teachers in the school) from thinking I was too important.

Two days before classes began, they moved the old desks out of the Language Lab to get ready for the new desks and the new year. This is what it looks like now. Sometimes I use it to practice cartwheels.

Though, I can pretty much do cartwheels in my own office. This is my desk and computer and the blanket I wrap around me when it’s too cold. There’s also a teakettle and piles of worksheets from my extra classes as well as two of the desks that used to be in the other room. I’m not sure what they’re doing there, but I don’t really need the space, as you can see. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that my office is larger than anyone else’s reading this blog and definitely larger than any office I’ll have in the future (about 25x13ft). Too bad there’s no leather couch and rock fountain.