Exam Week Part 3 and Contract Endings

I wasn't too good yesterday so took a day off. Why not, I am entitled to 3 days a semester and this was only my second day.

Anyway, come back and find out someone has given a class an exam in my absence. Bollocks! Now what I am I going to do for the other 2 periods? Teach?! :)

It seems like the scores in the P3 reading and writing are considerably lower than they were last semester. No wonder. It is really a totally new type of exam they got from any others we have given them. I think the average mark will come in about 50-55% which is shocking when you think about it. But it all comes back to the same thing, that if they actually do some work themselves in the class instead of me having to pull them reluctantly in the direction of work, they would be finding things a lot easier.

Now onto another end of term possible horror story. As you know the agency lost the contract with the school as of March 31. Come the beginning of March, the school will be closed. No thai staff, no janitors, nothing and next week we have to leave our staffroom for refurbishment. The agency has no new school positions to offer anyone and only a couple were approached ( quietly ) for corporate full time teaching - and that was only if they were already doing it. So basically the situation is this. Out of 20 teachers here and another 5 at the senior branch of the school, about 4 are staying with the agency in an admin or corporate capacity. No one has been given a job in another school because the agency hasn't got any new contracts.

The ones they now do have are very small, around 5 teachers in, maybe 4 schools. There is a nasty rumour now going around that when the semester ends here in a couple of weeks and all the report cards have been marked Etcetera that instead of - as has been done before - giving a bonus of a couple of weeks holidays and letting people go early, they are instead wanting to make people come into the main office to do "make work". They are apparently thinking that teachers can do this or can leave early but with NO PAY.

So lets clarify

This year. With no job to look forward to, no schools to prepare material for, they want 20 teachers to continue to report for work in the main office after finishing marking and report cards and cut out stuff from newspapers and prepare material for who knows or walk away early without pay.

Last year. With teachers coming back or going back home, we finished the marking, writing report cards and then sat around doing nothing for 3 weeks in our staffroom and they let us away a couple of weeks early.

If this is true and at the moment I don't know if it is for certain, it will be a total slap in the face for everyone who has worked here. The contract is ending so why not end it on a good note with a sense of "you have worked here for 2 or 3 years so thanks and goodbye". THE AGENCY HAS ALREADY BEEN PAID FOR THIS PERIOD. So, this is not a case of them losing out, it will be a case of them been penny pinching bastards. But, I will now hold my ire and fire until I know for certain. A thread on ajarn.com could be soon arriving.

There was supposed to be a meeting today to announce something - probably the end date and the end of term arrangements but it was cancelled. Supposedly because the school hasn't told the agency when it will cancel the work permits. This is the most worrying for me because it goes with the Visas. I want to go home in March if I get away early but I don't want to come back from holiday to find out that I have entered the country on a cancelled Visa.