Unexpected

At the public school where I work a number of experienced teachers got transferred to other schools, and a number of other teachers were transferred in. One of whom is an English teacher. Which means I'm supposed to assist her in teaching English lessons. But last week we ran into some difficulty in getting one of the (somewhat dim) classes through one of the exercises. Sometimes a class will suffer what looks like a collective attack of nerves and even the capable students will freeze up. So I asked her if I could take over for a minute, distracted the kids with a little toilet humor, lobbed up a couple of softball questions to get them back, and then turned them back over to the main teacher.

Pretty simple stuff, really. But after the class, she said something that surprised me. It seems that this is her first year as a fully licensed teacher, and that she hadn't expected any assistant teachers to do that sort of thing. By which I mean "gauging the mood of the kids and adjusting the lesson accordingly." But that was enough to surprise her.

It looks like I may actually be good at my job. And not just in a strangle-the-troublemakers-and-draw-amusing-flashcards way. Imagine that. A six-foot-degenerate with a predilection for booze, sarcasm and offensive humor may be good with children. Har de har har.