The Spy

To keep those of you, both far and away, happy, I need to alternate between the school life and those few hours of life that happen outside it. So today's story features one of the newest developments in my teaching career here in Colombia.

Three weeks back or so, my boss told me that they would be hiring a new assistant to work with the 6th and 7th grade classes. Okay, I thought, that might be nice, to get a little extra support and have another set of eyes and hands in the classroom. Now, I guess when you learn that it is the head of the schools brother, and he has no background in teaching, and shows up about this time of the year annually, looking for a little extra cash, be wary.

Schedule arrives in my inbox, and for some reason, he is only scheduled to work in my classroom and in one of the other 3 middle school classrooms. Odd, I think to myself, but this is an off week, so maybe it is just to get him acquainted with the students, and then he will start to rotate more often.

"What can I do to help?" he asks me the second day in the room. I instruct him that at this point, I really just need another set of eyes to watch the ridiculous behavior that occurs in the classroom, and to circulate and help keep students on track and focused. Well he takes this as, sit down and read the novel that the students are reading. Hmmmm, I think to myself, really?

Day three, he plops himself down again in the last desk in the back of the classroom, book in hand and reads silently, it isn't long before I see him dozing. Grey head, bobbing up and down. Wow, what a help! The next day he tries to be helpful, I ask him to pass out the students cursive books, that it will be a good way for him to get to know their names, but tell him he will have to use a somewhat loud voice, that the classroom gets quite noisy. (Yes a classroom management skill I still need to master, but Costenos are really loud too!) Well, by the time he had them passed out, bell work time was over, and it was time to collect them and put them away. Great, so the assistant, who is getting paid, actually needs to be babysat, just like another student. No self-direction and hard of hearing on top of it.

Inside my head I am screaming, "Come on people! This is my first year teaching! It is hard enough, and first year teachers don't get student teachers for a reason! Get me an assistant who can actually DO something." A couple weeks pass, and it pretty much continues this way. Him sitting in back of the class, reading the book to himself. Not circulating and keeping kids focused, like I have asked, not reminding students of the way they should behave in a classroom. And then the clincher comes...

The man has found something to do now, sitting at the back of the class. No longer with the novel in hand, but with like Brit with the Clipboard, a white binder, filled with pages of some sort of charts. So I am unavoidably distracted by what these charted pages are, especially as I see him taking notes on them, after I scold the students, or after a student acts out in class. Walking slowly by, trying my damnedest to eavesdrop with my eyes, and figure out what it is he is doing, but I have no luck. I can't believe it they have sent in a spy!

Days pass, and our interactions are uncomfortable, not really interacting with each other. I don't know what to say to this guy. I mean, he seems pretty incompetent to me, so not really sure what to give him to do, and now with this mysterious white binder. After many days of just pleasant salutation, good mornings, he has the nerve to point out to me, that I have used the wrong patients in the power point slide. Like I didn't notice that I had written doctors patience instead of patients! "Ahhhhhhh," another internal brain scream.

The last thing I needed on top of dealing with 90/100 poorly behaved 6th and 7th grade students, spoiled rotten, with low attention spans, motor mouths and attitudes that would make my 6th grade teacher give the "attitude" speech, is a 70 year old man, taking notes on my falters and my inabilities. The anger inside my chest builds and I just want to run over and rip the binder out of his hands and yell, "what have they put you up to? Spying on me? Spying on the students? Instead of being mister check happy, why don't you actually stand up and walk around and tell the kids to shut-up!"

I am not a person who like confrontation, and I am bombarded with it nearly every single day in my classroom. I know my co-workers are tired of hearing me bitch, about the old spy, but it is so hard to even get a minute and humanly ask him, what it is he is doing. Or if it wasn't the brother of the head of the school, and my boss' brother-in-law, marching my fattening self into office headquarters and stating, "This guy is a joke" wouldn't be so hard. "Instead of hiring an assistant 10 weeks before the end of school, why don't you just pay us underpaid teachers his salary. I could really use a few extra pesos to stick in the baby fund, or really just so I can actually buy groceries and pay my bills when the end of the month hits. Insisting in an answer, "Why have you sent a spy? What is it you are trying to determine?" But until I get up that courage, or get so frustrated, I will avoid confrontation with brother-in-law boss, and continue silent brain screams.