Today has been a criminal day.
I got up early to get some new students. If you want to acquire a new
recruit and you do not count on the financial ressources of Madrid RFC you have
no alternative but to hand out do-it-yourself flyers at the gate of Palma schools.
I walked down “Socors” street to achieve my goal, despite of knowing that I was
breaking a Mallorcan regulation which forbids the distribution of any written
information in the streets. No decent MP would had ever dared to violate such
regulation the way I did.
I stood near a school gate, in a quite discrete point, trying not to
disturb pedestrians.
-
Good
morning! – I greeted to parents accompaning their children, smiling and giving
them a criminal flyer with my guilty
hand at the same time.
What took the biscuit was the presence of two local policemen at the school
entry. In fact, the local government has decided to protect our children,
ensuring that they cross properly and that drivers stop when they cross. Such officer’s
presence is absolutely welcome. However, it is very stressful for someone who
is an outlaw.
My criminal attitute increased during the day: I went to the language school
were I work WITHOUT HAVING PREPARED the lessons in advance. I had struggled
with serious inconvenients and had scarcely rest in the night. A Little Red
Riding Hood.
Suddenly I got a call from the school principal, warning me that I would
have a routine control at the young learner’s class in the evening. This was
like a kick-in-the-pants. Preparing lessons for children takes a lot of time:
they require a lot of games and attractive stories. And, given the fact that I still
had to teach other lessons in the afternoon, I could scarcely prepare a draft and
download some photographs from the internet. I always use this kind of photos
to pre-teach vocabulary, adding the corresponding word (which the photograph
introduces) with Picassa software. Of course, the result was predictable: an absolutely
awful one. The last straw was that I called a girl by a name which was not
hers. I did not even notice. I must have done it unconciously, maybe to fulfill
the family tradition: telling the names of all kids, one after the other,
until all have been mentioned. The correct name is always the last one to
pronounce (Pablosorrycarlossorryrafasorrygalisorryluisa...). The cyclist hero would
have hit me once and again with his yellow paper stick.
I rode on the bike and went to another school centre in order to teach the
last class of the day. And I was still under the influence of the related negative
verdict when I went home on foot, thus leaving my bike on the sidewalk.
Once at home, I decided to be condescending with myself and I made a very
different balance of the day. Today I have worked in maintenance (cleaning the
house), graphic arts (performance of flyers), direct marketing (flyer distribution
at a school, with a permanent smile and helping mums enter baby seats into the
school), general administration (calls and reorganization in order to attend
tomorrow’s staff meeting), velocipedism (cycling throughout the whole city of
Palma and the border area of Son Fuster to get to work), psychology (listening
to complaining students). As if that were not bad enough, I have conducted five
and a half hours of class. Let me make a toast to myself.
... And I also make a toast to all my friends. I add a photograph of 2009
for the “throw back Thursday” and go quickly to search for my bike.
Copyright Luisa Fernández Baladrón
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