Back to Hell (Oops, I Mean School)

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Back in October, one of my co-workers suddenly quit. Although he returned for about ten minutes to collect his belongings, he basically just stopped showing up for work. He said, "This is the worst school I've ever seen."

I've felt slightly envious of him ever since.

Anyway, that left an opening in the humanities department. Since I'm qualified in both science and history/geography, I asked the vice principal if I could switch departments. I like humanities better, and I don't like working under Manir. The VP said he'd see what he could do. He wanted to talk to Manir about it and probably wait until they can find someone to replace me in science. That said, I wasn't holding my breath on getting the humanities position.

However, the last day of last term (the same day I got my flight changed), the VP pulled me aside and told me that I can start in humanities at the start of the new term in January.

So here I am, teaching only one history class, one geography, two foundations classes (which is basically "character education"), one religious education class, and FOUR enterprise classes (which is business plus citizenship).

I'm not a business teacher, and I don't understand this "coursework" stuff they have to do. My understanding of coursework is this: I teach them some stuff, then give them an assignment, and they do it. They save it up during the school year, and at the end of the year, if they've done everything correctly, then they receive a GCSE in enterprise, which they can use to help them find jobs. (They can say, "I earned a GCSE in enterprise," on their resume.) And that's coursework. I know that's not really what it is, but I don't know WHAT it is! My understanding is warped by my American education, because we don't have coursework there. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be assigning my students. I don't know how to earn a GCSE, so how can I help them do it? Furthermore, what kind of a school makes a teacher teach something that she's not even qualified to teach? I've never taken a business class in my entire life!

My classes are wild. I hate this place.

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Comments

[Ann]

GCSE
I thought GCSEs were stupid as well. No grade motivation at all, of course, and bunch of teaching to a test (for English GCSEs...basically 3 months of prep, and I even volunteered to teach a day of revision during a break...not because I loved the kids of course, but for the extra money). In English, they just were marked and went into a folder which collected work over the years. That was submitted for a percentage of their GCSE grade. However, I for the life of me, could not get my students to turn in my work. I've told you before that my department was very organized, the staff were friendly, and my Head of department was on top of things...she began chasing kids for work and reminding me to get them to turn it in. Like I hadn't tried! They would just listen to their MP3s and ignore me, save the good ones.

[Ann]

practise tests?
Sorry to leave so many comments...doesn't your department have practice tests? I tested my students about once a week when we were revising with old tests. This helped me understand what was going on there a lot.