Bursar asked me today, “When are you leaving?”
“Next Thursday,” I replied.
“Is next Thursday this Thursday?” he said.
“No, umm… next week, on Thursday. So, you know, I have one week left.”
Bursar looked sad. “We live together all year, like a family. Now, one of us is going.”
(Aww… I’m gonna miss you, Mr Bursar!)
Things I thought I would learn, but haven’t…
• To build a beautiful, long Dewey number.
• To use BookCat to organise the library. The library still has no computers. Please send computers. You know the address.
• To make creative dishes out of island food using two pots, a gas bottle and no fridge. “Island cabbage” will always taste like sludge to me. I fed my “tin fish” to a cat.
• To live with spiders, rats, mice, centipedes and lizards. I still hate things that crawl around on scratchy little feet in the night and cover my house with tiny pellets of shit.
• To love Vanuatu String Bands. Brazil has Gilberto Gil, Italy has Eros Ramazotti, Vanuatu has… falsetto yelling and a ukulele.
• To enjoy “camping” and “nature” and to be a “hippy”. Sorry, Mum. That community school didn’t work. Moving to the country didn’t work. And neither did volunteering, apparently.
Things I’ve learned instead:
• Change management. It’s no good walking into a place and chucking out the old system straight away. You’ve got to listen, learn and compromise. And then you’ll probably learn that the old system had some good points…
• Things annoy you. Things are boring sometimes. But when you have a goal, those things don’t bug you as much. As much.
• Plan, plan, plan. And then change your plan when you realise there’s no way it’s gonna work.
• I can wear conservative clothing although I don’t agree with the reasons I have to. I can go to church although I don’t believe in god and don’t think I should pretend to. But I will never compromise on my independence or my need for personal space.
• I can live without the internet, but I don’t like it. I don't like not having instant answers to crucial questions like, “What did my Popple look like in the 80s and do they still make them?” CRUCIAL information, people! The developing world needs information such as this! Ok, maybe not that particular piece of information…
• There’s nothing like an SMS from a friend to cheer you up when you are feeling particularly down, and you barely have mobile reception, and there’s a spider in your water jug and you want to cry.
• Positive self-talk really works. “I am strong and brave! I can pick up this dead rat! This dead rat is not disgusting!”
• Marcel Proust was a jerk to his lady-friends, but geez, I gotta love him for keeping me company all year. Reading In Search of Lost Time was a good way to… lose some time.
• AND FINALLY, I know now why school librarians have that stereotype! That shushing, frowning, grumbling stereotype! It’s really, really hard work to get a bunch of kids to put anything back where they got it from, and to teach them effective information-seeking behaviours! But they do learn. And while they’re learning, they’re kinda cute.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
The last month in the library... Week number? I dunno. I’ve lost count.
There’s a kid in Year 7 named Leitare. She can’t sit still for a second, and was wandering around the library yesterday with a picture of Michelangelo’s David, pointing out David’s genitals to anyone who cared to look (She asked me, “Is this real?” I said, “Well, it’s a real statue. And it’s surprisingly large!”). But geez, this kid is smart. Not only does she finish her work first, turn in immaculate homework, ask intelligent questions, and spend a lot of time in the library, she also coaches me on how to be a better English teacher.
“Miss Romany?” she says. “Maybe we could do something like this tomorrow?” and points to some reading comprehension questions in a book (thank god she didn’t point to David).
There’s a girl named Stephanie in Year 9 who is similar. They may well be sisters. Once, I asked Steph if she could be a bit more serious in the library and stop disrupting people trying to study.
“No,” she said. “I can’t. My parents are divorced.”
Next week, the Year 8 and 10 exams begin. I asked Valentine, “So what happens if a Year 8 passes the exam?”
“They go on to Year 9,” she said.
“And what happens if they fail?”
“They go on to Year 9 anyway,” she said.
“So, what’s the exam for?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and handed me a biscuit.
Later, Valentine asked if I could help her with some questions from the practice test she was given. Actually, there have been a lot of kids coming and going with practice tests, puzzling over the map of the world we now have on the wall in the library. The map on the practice test is small, black and white, poorly photocopied and pacific-centric. The one on the wall is large and colourful, with North and South America smack-bang in the middle. The kids get freaked out. The questions on the practice test are all along the same lines: “Shade the country where the smallpox vaccine was invented.” “Mark with a letter C, the city where the next Commonwealth games will be held”. “Place an asterisk on the city with the highest population.” These are wonderful questions for a information-seeking lesson, but pretty silly questions for an exam (unless the exam is held in a pub on trivia night, and the dux receives a slab and a stubby holder).
Valentine and I looked up smallpox in the encyclopedia, but I had to phone a friend for the Commonwealth Games answer (sorry, I don’t do sport…). Val says these things weren’t covered in class and aren’t in her (slim, photocopied) textbook. I hope she passes. I hope they all pass. If they pass, if a senior school has space, and if their parents can scrape together the school fees, these kids will get two more years of education, which will hopefully expand their minds beyond the mindless regurgitation of trivia factoids. Cross your fingers for us all.
“Miss Romany?” she says. “Maybe we could do something like this tomorrow?” and points to some reading comprehension questions in a book (thank god she didn’t point to David).
There’s a girl named Stephanie in Year 9 who is similar. They may well be sisters. Once, I asked Steph if she could be a bit more serious in the library and stop disrupting people trying to study.
“No,” she said. “I can’t. My parents are divorced.”
Next week, the Year 8 and 10 exams begin. I asked Valentine, “So what happens if a Year 8 passes the exam?”
“They go on to Year 9,” she said.
“And what happens if they fail?”
“They go on to Year 9 anyway,” she said.
“So, what’s the exam for?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and handed me a biscuit.
Later, Valentine asked if I could help her with some questions from the practice test she was given. Actually, there have been a lot of kids coming and going with practice tests, puzzling over the map of the world we now have on the wall in the library. The map on the practice test is small, black and white, poorly photocopied and pacific-centric. The one on the wall is large and colourful, with North and South America smack-bang in the middle. The kids get freaked out. The questions on the practice test are all along the same lines: “Shade the country where the smallpox vaccine was invented.” “Mark with a letter C, the city where the next Commonwealth games will be held”. “Place an asterisk on the city with the highest population.” These are wonderful questions for a information-seeking lesson, but pretty silly questions for an exam (unless the exam is held in a pub on trivia night, and the dux receives a slab and a stubby holder).
Valentine and I looked up smallpox in the encyclopedia, but I had to phone a friend for the Commonwealth Games answer (sorry, I don’t do sport…). Val says these things weren’t covered in class and aren’t in her (slim, photocopied) textbook. I hope she passes. I hope they all pass. If they pass, if a senior school has space, and if their parents can scrape together the school fees, these kids will get two more years of education, which will hopefully expand their minds beyond the mindless regurgitation of trivia factoids. Cross your fingers for us all.
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