Returns

Met who I could in Athens, including some former students, mostly from my advanced class.  I also dropped out to the school to say hello.  The school receptionist very nicely asked me if I wanted to pop my head in to one of the classes to see some more pupils of mine and one of the teachers.  I agreed, and was invited in to sit in the class for a while.   

Just to explain a little bit about how the system worked in the school I was teaching in – I was the native language speaker, and took each class (approximately half the classes in the school – the other native speaker had the other half) once a week for an hour, or two hours for exam classes, to work on their communication skills (speaking and writing).  They had the rest of their classes with a Greek teacher who would do grammar and various other fun things with them, the theory being that native speakers cannot teach grammar (a theory 100% accurate in this case).  This meant that I had more students than any of the Greek teachers (in excess of one hundred names and faces), and come report time, had to write an account of their progress and speak to a parent for each and every one of them.  By Christmas I had still been struggling to remember student’s names when I had them sitting in front of me in a classroom, never mind being able to give an accurate description of what they were doing, and I also had not realised that I should be taking notes of their grades until half way through the first semester, so I didn’t even have those to rely on.  For the most part meeting the parents wasn’t too bad, because I always met them with my Greek counter-part, who usually chattered away to them first allowing me to catch key words of the conversation such as ‘grammatiki’ (grammar) or ‘lexikos’ (vocabulary), which would then allow me to make it look like I knew what I was talking about, spouting out things like:

“Well, George’s work is quite good, but he needs to focus on his grammar.” [Parent and Greek teacher nod]  “He also needs to focus on his vocabulary as he has been having problems in that area.” [Parent and Greek teacher nod once again in agreement] 

Now, sometimes I’d leave it there, but other times I’d feel things were going really well and I’d get carried away and decide to add something of my own, such as:

“...but he also needs to pay more attention in class…” [Parent and teacher’s eyes widen, teacher turns head to look at me, amazed, and tells me she’s never had that problem with George] So I’d back-peddle rapidly with something like, “…but what child doesn’t need to pay more attention, haha.”

Now, the teacher giving the lesson I dropped in on the other day was the one I hated doing parent-teacher meetings with (the most), because he always let me say what I thought first, before he gave his report.  I never thought that he did it purposefully to upset me or make me uncomfortable.  However, that all changed this week when, once he had me sitting in the class he asked me if I could remember the students in the class – and I did recognise most of them – and then went on to ask if I could remember their names.  Which I couldn’t.  So the kids all looked disappointed, I looked like a twat, and he sat at the top of the class with a big smile on his face.  He is, as the Greeks would say, a giant malaka.

In other news, the other volunteers travelling from Athens managed to coordinate ourselves, and get out to Kefalonia with only minor complications with buses, ferries and camping.   But we got here, and are now already five days in.  I’ve been out snorkelling in the evening three times now, and have seen four turtles, one of which was a green turtle, which doesn’t really belong in these waters, but seems quite happily lost, and he’s nice to see, so it’s alright.

The first tracks and nest were discovered this morning, which is terrific as it means that night shifts will begin tonight, and I’m first up.  Exciting times.