Yesterday, school “started.”
I put “started” in quotation marks because, while all of the key players were at school, nothing of consequence actually happened. The teachers were there. The students were there. Even the principal, who is rarely at school, was there.
But I did not teach.
At the beginning of the year, during Pre-Service Training, the resource volunteers that came to help the staff were in the thick of the second semester. They warned us: second semester there will be almost no teaching. One of the volunteers said that she taught a total of 5 days, for the whole semester. A lot of us did not believe this. But, with the way the first semester went, I started to believe in the possibility of the truth to these statements.
So on Friday afternoon, I got a message from my co-teacher. There was a staff meeting that morning and we would be going to a show on Wednesday, so there would be no class. Harmless enough, I thought. It’d be a way to ease back into classes.
But she wasn’t done with the recap of the meeting. It was also discussed that there would be Sports Day. For the whole week. And part of the next one. It wasn’t yet decided whether the students would practice during school hours or after. At this point, all I could do was laugh. Oh, Thailand!
My co-teacher said, “You know, sometimes we cannot fix.”
Yes, yes. So I will be here, with everyone else, hoping that I will actually teach at least more than 5 days.