The Case of the Flying Keys ... and Wallet and Cap and .....

Monday 25th May 2009
Well, this is a kind of follow-on from the last blog diary entry in some ways.

Having had the key-throwing incident in class, I was advised I should report it under the Disciplinary heading. I filled out the rather short form and did just that. All I was able to write was a very brief sentence to say what had happened. Thought I'd need, at least, to give more detail of what had led up to it.

OMG!! I've just realised that I'm jumping the gun and you haven't a clue what I'm on about! Last time it was the fish, this time something new. Though definitely NOT something I'll remember with much fondness.

OK, now I'm trying to get the details right properly here before I tell it to you. As you might have guessed already, this incident involved “everybody's favourite”, pair of idiot students – the monitor/supervisor and his 'friend' who I have called 'Leg Man'. Most of it revolves around Leg Man this time, and the results from what happened yesterday have continued through today.
OK, so .... students and mobile phones. NOT a happy combination when it's inside the classroom, though most of the time there is little we, as teachers, can do about it especially when our students are normal adult ones. THESE, however, are childish soldier boy teenage-minded types and in THAT case such things as the humble mobile phone become Weapons Of Insanity. Insanity for the teacher when they are constantly going off and interrupting almost everything you do.

The thing is, what I'd LIKE to do is go round with a bag at the start of every lesson collecting them up and taking them away, switching them off and giving them back later. However, it would not be a good idea here (or anywhere) really. Students are, as we all are, very attached to their phones and don't like to let them out of their sights. And how would I feel MYSELF if the teacher wanted to take MINE away? Wouldn't work well, would it? So THAT is not a road to go down.

Of course there ARE those students who have no consideration for the fact that this is Lesson Time. The mobile phone is not supposed to be the central point of my lesson. And yet, CONSTANT ringtones which are on the highest volume level never stop. Drives me ABSOLTELY POTTY!! Of course, they say, “Sorry, Sorry!”, but don't actually do anything to, for example, put their phone into Silent Mode which would help things a great deal.
And then there are the students whose mobile phones ARE their centre of attention. Not me, not the lesson topic and not any worksheets that come around but their own bloody PHONE. After all, if you don't understand or don't WANT to understand what is going on, then your mobile phone is the way out, isn't it?

OK, as always I digress terribly. On this occasion (yesterday during, I think, Lesson 3) the usual Leg Man talking and distracting others was going on. He and Monitor Man (from now on) were doing what they always do – talking over me and playing with their phones and NOT doing any of the lesson work.

Monitor Man has two phones. One of them kept going off or he was listening to his music on it and we could all hear it. Basically my idea is that so long as those two are not distracting others with their idiocy, then I leave them be. So I told him to turn off his phone once. “OK, OK”, he said, but then surprise, surprise AGAIN it happened. And again, a third time or maybe fourth time (don't remember, but whatever it was, it was ENOUGH!). THIS time I'd had enough of this. So I went over to Monitor Man and took his phone away and placed it on the large 'lectern desk' at the front and continued.

Nope, cos then MORE phone noises. Turned around to SEE Leg Man WITH his phone out of his pocket doing 'something' and looking at me. It was obvious he was doing this JUST to wind me up (and was succeeding!). So THAT WAS IT and I went over to him to take it off him too as I'd just done with Monitor Man. He wouldn't give it to me. I stood there with my hand held out and waited. “Who are you?”, he said, as if to say, “What right do YOU have to take MY phone away? You're not police!”. He'd said that to me before. Thinks that I have no right to take it away, except that I DO!

Well he wouldn't give it to me. In answer to his, “Who are you?”, I replied, “I'm the teacher and who are YOU?”. “Student and soldier!”, was his reply. “Ohh, a STUDENT! Really!”, I quick-fired back. “A student with no pen, no paper and no books are you?”. This, “Who are you?”, had really annoyed me and I wasn't going to let it lie.

And now my reply seemed to have got to him for some reason. When I was back on the “stage” at the front, he decided he was going to do something. What he did was say, “OK, so HERE you are! Take this!”, and with that he THREW his three sets of keys, cigarette packet, cig lighter, army cap towards me on thew stage.

None of them hit me or that really WOULD have been trouble. I stood there looking at these things of his there on the floor and thought, “RIGHT!”. I went over to the class bin and picked it up. It was about half full of coffee cups and other random things. I said, “OK, I see you don't want your things so we'll just put them here in the bin!”, and took the bin over to his things there on the floor.

I really WAS going to put them, ALL of them right there in that bin. SO ANGRY I was inside, but didn't show it outside of course.

WHAT A THING for a student to do! Who the BLOODY HELL does this guy think he is?

Throwing things at me? Yes, and all the other students were there to see this.

So there was I, bin in hand going for his things. Perhaps it wasn't a wise thing to do. However, THEN, he and his stupid friend Monitor Man got up to pick those things up and they got there before me. Monitor Man of course with his stupid smile that is fixed on there. I wanted to TAKE those things and put them ALL in that bin, but I got none. They had picked them up, I brought the bin to them but they, of course, didn't put anything there. The idiot even wanted to put Leg Man's hat into MY pocket, which was too small in any case and which I for SURE didn't want anywhere near me.

So the things were picked up, and I returned the bin to its normal place. But that was IT for me! I finished off the lesson by just giving them out grammar worksheets to do by themselves with little input from me.

My 'Bin Threat' obviously hit a raw nerve. At the very end of Lesson 4, all the students had gone and I was tidying up. Leg Man stayed behind. Not because I'd asked him to, but he seemed to want to tell me something. But his English is so poor that he couldn't express himself properly enough. The two things he did manage to say were as follows: first he showed me his (wedding?) ring which he told me had cost 40,000 riyals. “So what?”, I said and carried on tidying up. Then he was going on about the Saudi king, that he lived in his palace and had lots of people around him and that, I think, in comparison with HIM our Queen of England was nothing.

Well, BOTH times I had NO IDEA what he was trying to say or the point he was making. But what I figured is that it was a veiled THREAT to me. Perhaps I'm paranoid, but it seemed to be along the lines of, “I've got lots of money, look at my expensive ring, Saudi king good, English queen bad, you are like THAT! Don't mess with me!”. That is my interpretation, but it may be an incorrect one. However, he DID say it to me with a serious face which is NOT a face he has that often. So I take it he wasn't complementing me.

Went back to school early because I'd been told I was needed to invigilate in some test or other. Told one other teacher about this that had happened. Now, this teacher is one of the more experienced ones, and he suggested I submit a Student Disciplinary Report because we can't have this sort of thing going on. Seemed like a good thing to do so I went and got one. As I said earlier, there wasn't much space to write about what had happened, but I filled it in anyway. The secretary showed it to our Head of Department who reacted with an, “Ooh!”, like this was something he hadn't seen for some time. He then took it upstairs to whoever it was meant to go to with a typically dismissive, “Don't know what good it'll do!”, type of comment.

SO now we come to today and today's lessons over at the normal military location I do. As always, Leg Man was late and so I marked him absent yet ONE MORE time. Didn't matter to me so long as he wasn't here. Shortly after the lesson start, a knock at the door and in came .... well I don't know who he is or what his position is, but he had a lot of stripes on his shoulder and some of those “coloured strips” that military types have above their left breast pocket. I remembered that I'd seen him before as he was the man in Week 1 who had told me not to mark Monitor Man absent because he had been helping him. Anyway, obviously a man of importance and rank, and he asked if Leg Man was here. “No, he is late as usual”, I replied. “Well, when he comes in, could you send him up to my office please?”, he replied. He then looked back into the classroom and was saying something to the students in Arabic and moved a chair. Instantly they all got up and moved THEIR chairs back into the 'rows and columns' arrangement it was in at the start of the course. Later he came back AGAIN looking for Leg Man and spied that one student had a coffee cup. He reminded me that no drinks were allowed in lessons. I actually hadn't seen this coffee cup. But anyway, EVENTUALLY he DID get his man.

This was good because THIS was the guy who I had intended to speak to myself during the long break. Now it seemed I didn't need to as he was fully aware of what was going on. My Disciplinary Report had VERY quickly been acted upon!

HAH!! The wheels were in MOTION! NOW I'd have this guy's ass hauled over the coals! And maybe, just maybe, THIS would be the final straw and he would FINALLY get booted out where he belongs! Back next year, asshole!

Well, Leg Man didn't come in until, apparently, late into Lesson 1. I didn't see him come, but when he did, I gather he had been called into the office together with Monitor Man who, I suppose, was there in his role as supervisor (and PAH to THAT!).

The other students knew what was going on. In fact, so did the students in the OTHER class. When I went out for break later, the officers were looking at me as though THEY knew who I was too. Had I created SUCH a stir? Well, GOOD if I had, because THIS incident was NOT going to get away lightly!

Leg Man was in and out of the classroom at various points during the day. A little later on, the shorter, fat officer who has the office next to the classrooms came in to take him out. And THEN in Lesson 3, the multi-striped and decorated man returned to take Leg Man out again and said he was taking him TO THE COLLEGE!

WAS THIS THE END?

Seemed to be, except that right at the end of Lesson 4 he was back again.

So is he out or isn't he?

Chances are that even if he IS out, his dad will have some influence somewhere and he will then reappear “as if by magic” a few weeks later. That's the way it often works here.

But I'm VERY pleased at the speed by which those officer guys have dealt with this situation. It could easily have been just a report which, after submission, could have just laid on someone's desk uncared for. But THIS time it was acted on with swiftness and effect.

This is the first time I have EVER had a student of ANY kind throw things at me. I hope it's the last. Now, if you wanted, you could argue the toss over the INTENT of this guy. You could say, “Well, he didn't intend to hit you because if he HAD then he would have thrown these things properly!”. I DON'T CARE what his intent was. The POINT is that it was an act of TOTAL INDISCIPLINE and there is NO WAY I am going to have such a thing happen in MY classroom. I want this guy NAILED and I want it done properly. The guy NEVER does any work, hardly ever brings a pen or paper, and as for books? Well, dream on! He does nothing all lesson, and his only contribution is to distract everyone. The others seem to find him amusing to a point, and often I see various people turned around talking to him and his Monitor Man friend.

Ah, one more thing I forgot. After the key-throwing and after they were all picked up, I had a go at them all reminding them ONCE MORE that, basically, if they want to get to the college next year then they have to get good marks, have good attendance etc. etc. but even THEN this moron was not listening to me. And now something interesting because he and one other very vocal, strong-willed student from the other side of the classroom had quite an argument!
Certainly shut HIM up for a while! And it showed me that at least I do have support of some kind from within the class in my “battle”. And that's ONE positive thing to take from this. This guy AND Monitor Man remain mostly isolated in terms of the fact that they do nothing and most others work quite well. Yes, there ARE the distractions, but we must keep in mind that the MAJORITY of students in this class are no trouble and DO want to be there and to learn. NOT the case that they are all like these two idiots!

Phew! That'll do for now. I was going to talk about the new teacher who has just arrived and is whipping up a storm of his own. But I'll save it for next time. See ya!