Another day in paradise

I just got home from work. I’m completely brainwashed. It wasn’t a bad tay per se, but it was a tiring day.

There is a class in the school where I teach that no one can handle. Twenty six kids, aged 14. Police officers left the classroom after 15 minutes with this class when they came to give them a short lecture about law. Trained psychologists refused to remain in the same room with those kids after trying to make them do just one socializing activity. And I am supposed to survive 45 minutes AND teach them English. Three times a week.

Yes, I manage. Gods know that I am one of the two teachers in the school who are able to have more or less normal looking lesson with those kids, but it’s horribly difficult. I have to be perfectly focused, pay attention to the smallest noise, detail, movement. I have to be careful when to yell at them and when to reward them with a praise. I have to react within miliseconds to prevent any disturbance in the workflow – if I don’t, it all goes downhill immediately. The kids start laughing, yelling, running all around the class, the boys start fighting and the girls insult one another in the most dirty ways… and so on. Not a chance to continue the lesson then.

So after just one class with those children, after mere 45 minutes, I feel like a coal miner after 12 hours of hard work under the ground. I’m simply exhausted, my brain is dead and somehow my muscles also refuse to work properly. I don’t think I would be able to even say my name if someone asked me, especially on a day like today when they are even more irritable, uneasy, uncooperative than usual. Thank gods it was my last lesson today and I could go to sleep on a bus on my way home.

And now I think I’ll go back to that image I started working on during the weekend… Being creative never fails to relax me.