This week was ruined by casual protests. A swarm of teachers pulled me from my exam to recruit me. They had a movement. For whatever good that movement meant, it hardly seems like it would do well for my students. Their week of final exams was naught. A single vocabulary test is all that we could manage to produce as a grade for this final portion. A vocabulary test more important now than it seemed at the time.
Teachers are meant to be bastions of thoughtfulness, action built out of thorough reflection. How short we fall! This week, I had no choice. My foreigner place does not give me the luxury of argument and going against too many grains. Oh that I could have spoke freely! When petitioning the government, what is the difference between taking the test and refusing to give the grades and refusing to give the test? Both would accomplish the same task, a shutdown of the school’s apparatus. Yet, by not surveying the exams, we have hurt our students. Their opportunities to gain those few extra points are lost in the bumbling smoke spewing forth from the exhaust pipes of fleeing teachers. They are off to gather and casually chat.
In the meantime, I will wait out the remainder of the week and nod my heads at my kids as they pass me on the road. They will shout “It isn’t easy, sir!” and I will reply, “I know” with a wave. The stress of the moment will leave me but those missing hours of lessons will never find their way into those smiling heads. Something is lost in the muddle even if the teachers have found their higher pay.
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