My last unofficial day at work

Today was probably the worst day of work I've had in a long time. Yesterday was great. Yesterday was the two classes with the debate kids, and like I said before, I really like these kids. We had a pretty good set of debates. There was one small problem, however. The previous week, one of the girls accidentally broke the handle off of the door where we hold the class, so you basically can't shut the door unless someone is inside the room. Well, of course, fate struck and the kids were outside of the room when one of them accidentally shut the door, locking all of their stuff inside. So, after I realized that there was no other way to get into the room, I had to do what I was trying to avoid, and that's break into the classroom using my skills at lock picking, one of the few skills that I tend not to bring up in public too often, even though it was taught to me by the government when I did what I used to do for the military. Anyway, I did it when one of the girls wasn't watching, and once I slipped into the classroom, I thought I got away with it, but she had actually seen everything and was so excited that her teacher could pick a lock REALLY FAST that she had to tell everyone. Well, I just said the government trained me and leave it at that. Of course, try telling something like that to kids.

Anyway, fast-forward a day and this was a new set of classes that I went in to teach. I was mostly tempted to just skip teaching, but to be honest, my apartment was roasting around that time, and my sole reason for going into work was because I was about to faint from heatstroke. Anyway, once at school, I listened to the new girl talking about how she's nervous about staying because she realizes the school is definitely not doing well and is probably going under.

It turns out there was some information in this conversation because I found out that she used to work for the guy that is now the big name in our school, some thirty-five or so year old Korean guy who "graduated from Harvard" who has been spending his entire life charging young mothers of young kids money to hear his motivational speeches about how he got accepted to Harvard. Granted, he hasn't done anything since Harvard, other than have motivational speeches, but that's his big schtick. Anyway, it turns out that the girl I'm working with once worked for this guy in the past. Turns out, he pays as well as the school does. He owes her a lot of money, and he "promised" to pay her, yet never got around to doing so. I'm starting to think that this kind of thing runs in this particular circle of school management.

So, I taught the first class, which was mainly one 6th grade student who is pretty smart and always interesting to communicate with. I like him, so that was okay. The second class is the class from Hell, which is with a bunch of kids that have no concern for learning and want to play games all day long. They yell and scream, and they started today's class by calling me all sorts of Korean insults, laughing because they were convinced I had no idea what they were saying. Then they'd pull the typical 10 year old tactic of "teacher, do you know what she say?" And after ten thousand renditions of that, imagine how fun that class was starting to be.

So, I just stood in front of them and let them go on. And on. And on. About half an hour into the class, they started trying to get me to actually start the lesson because when your teacher is standing in front of the room, leaning against the white board, just staring, it starts to get a bit uncomfortable. So I continued just standing there. They then found their page where they remembered we were and asked to start the class. I began the lesson, and immediately after, almost on cue, they started going nuts again. So, I stopped and said nothing. And just stared at them.

Then they started the name calling routine again. I looked at my watch and said: "Class is finished for today." And then I walked out. I said goodbye to the other two teachers (the young girl I've talked about here, and some guy I've never seen before), and then left. I told the secretary, who I've known the longest that she's probably not going to see me again, that I'm going to be flying Wednesday. She asked me if I wanted to talk to the big boss. I said no. The last time I talked to her, she promised me AGAIN that she was going to pay me on a certain date (the fifth time now), and I had no desire to go through another session of that. So, I said no and wished her well. She told me she was probably going to be quitting on Friday.

Then I went home and made myself some eggs for dinner. Not really a dinner kind of meal, but I wasn't feeling like having the usual kind of thing. It means I have nothing for breakfast tomorrow, but that's tomorrow, and I'll face down that demon when she comes.

Stumble It!