One year down

This might be a little long and tedious and lacking in a sense of humor. Apologies.

In early January I was elected "English department coordinator." I was flattered, but I suspect my ascent to departmental greatness had a lot more to do with no one wanting to do more work for no extra pay, than any actual qualifications I may possess. After accepting the offer, I asked the director and other teachers exactly what the job entails, to which they all similarly responded, "You coordinate the department if the department needs coordination." Right-o. Thus, I assume that the position was superfluous and just needed to exist in name - and that someone would tell me if I needed to do something.

About a week before the second trimester exams, the director walked into the secretary's office where I happened to be standing with another English teacher. He informed us that the exams were to be the same across each level (this was not the case for the first trimester exams), to which I asked how that was possible with only a week's notice. He seemed surprised at my concern that there was no way all of the students would be prepared for the same material, and the English teacher immediately moved to defensive mode, saying that there had been no coordination. I stood there stunned, but nothing really came of it. We did our own exams for each class, and I finally learned what was expected of me. Yeah, I know the title is pretty self-explanatory, but when I asked what was expected of me, I got blown off.

With about two months to go in the scholastic year, I hit my stride. I busted my ass to track down the elusive teachers (two of whom I had yet to meet) and arrange a meeting in which we would decide what would be on the final exam, essentially laying out the syllabus for the remainder of the year. As I sat on the cusp of finally finding a suitable time for a meeting that wouldn't conflict with anyone's schedules, my boss decided to come to NDB to see how everything was going. During the subsequent meeting I explained where we were, coordination-wise, to him and the director. In the presence of my superior - a white Moor who pulls quite a bit of weight in this country - the director suddenly gave a shit where previously there was not so much as a fart to be whiffed. Ignoring my work, he set our department meeting for the next day when every single one of us had a class to teach. I was annoyed.

The next day we spent almost two hours deciding what to teach for the rest of the year. In front of my boss the director was in top form, feeding us milk and bread, taking everyone's phone numbers for easier communication in the future, etc. By now my opinion of the guy was pretty low. I watched him prostrate himself, and was disgusted at how transparent and child-like he was. I realized that I hated this guy as a representation of everything wrong with the system. But I thought I hid the sentiment well enough.

Because the students are notorious cheaters, we decided to create multiple versions of each exam. I spent a few entire days putting them together and making sure they were of equal difficulty. Only Ousmane helped. Three days before the final, the secretary told Ousmane that the 4th level exams would be provided by the DREN (the state-level education ministry). I flipped my shit, and with Ousmane at my side, stormed the director's office. I had finally snapped on eight months of inconceivably shitty administration. First I asked how long he had known about the new exam. "Depuis longtemps." For a long time. The answer I expected, so I lit up like a firecracker, asking why, after sitting in our meeting, he had neglected to inform us that half of our (my) work was totally unnecessary. First, he blamed us for not coming to school (not true), then shifted the blame to the DREN, and finally settled it on the secretary. I asked why he hadn't called me and he denied having my number. The image of him writing it down was seared into my memory, probably in expectation of that exact situation. I called bullshit, and fed off the third English teacher writhing quietly in palpable discomfort directly to my left. The director told me to sit down, I yelled at him to listen. I consciously shifted all my addresses to him to the informal. And throughout it all, he continued to invite other people in to say "hi," punctuating our discourse with tacit periods of impotent rage. Ousmane then showed him all the versions of our test, and before he listened to our plan to curb cheating, denounced it as impossible. Ousmane diplomatically took over, and the director finally conceded. We would use our exams instead of the DREN's, and I would come in the morning of the final to collate and prepare everything. We were victorious.

The final began at 10:00. I arrived at 7:50 to prepare. I just needed the director to give me the photocopies so I could start. He told me to wait, and continued to leave me waiting until 9:15. Then he handed me a box of about 1,200 exams, and I began. By 10:00 I had run out of 5th level exams because administration had not made enough. Proctors trickled into the secretary's office to pick up the tests. I had finished three of twelve 4th year classes, and by 10:20 people were getting frantic. I kept my head down and collated while teachers who had praised the idea of multiple versions the day before called it a failure. At 10:30 the director entered and screamed that if we had done it his way, we wouldn't have this problem. I informed him rather loudly that we wouldn't have this problem if he hadn't made me wait for an hour and a half for no reason. I finished at 11:00, an hour after the official commencement of the final. There were not enough copies for all of the students.

I shouldn't have lost my composure the way I did. After watching the director capriciously and ineptly run our school for a year, I lost it when his ego ran over mine. I focused a year's worth of frustration at all incompetent higher-ups (from the bank, from school, from my office building, from the police, from the government) into the explosion in his office, and he fucked me. No one advances based on merit. This place runs on nepotism, and suffers for it. And it isn't my fight. I graded my exams (incidentally, a practice deemed "a waste of time" by a disturbing number of other teachers), filled out report cards, and left for four months.

Next year ought to be fun. I suspect I'm going to leave the "coordination" up to some other sucker. I enjoyed the teaching, and will happily focus on that. My students did better than all others on their finals, and that was gratifying. But that doesn't seem to matter. This is a copy of this year's BAC (similar in significance to the SATs). You'll notice, aside from several copy-editing errors, that one of the first questions is literally impossible. And this BAC is one of the best I've seen.

I need a vacation. And some perspective.

The school.


One of my classrooms.


I didn't write that.


My 4th year Arab class. Unruly lot, but fun.