Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Again with the drastic unannounced schedule changes!

Let me walk you through my usual morning routine.  My "normal" work hours are 0830-1630 with the earliest class beginning at 0900.  I typically arrive at school around 0815 and begin sweating furiously.  The heat isn't so bad but the humidity in the school is very high and I'm wearing a shirt + tie.

First things first:  I climb 4 flights of stairs, enter my classroom, and turn on the AC and computer.  I want to have the sweating under control by class time, so I like to give the AC 30+ minutes to knock the humidity down.  I turn on the computer because it takes like 25 minutes from power on for it to reach functionality.

Next I dip into my super-secret stash of extra-soft, absorbent toilet paper (left behind by previous teacher for who knows why).  I use this to mop some of the sweat off my face and arms.

Then we're off to my office space, where I deposit my belongings, turn on my other computer and drink some water.  The AC is not turned on here until 0830 if I'm lucky, so I leave quickly, bound for the staff lavatory where I mop some more sweat with TP.  (Motion speeds the drying process.) 

I was going through this sweat-control routine today when I was informed of a sudden, drastic change in my schedule.  I was already at work early because I had to teach a class that was rescheduled due to last week's typhoon.  My school likes to reschedule these classes for as early in the morning as possible, meaning I started teaching today at 0830 instead of 0900.

When I went to my office after turning on my classroom's AC, I was informed that my schedule today had been changed:  I would now be teaching all the day's classes back-to-back, in one big chunk broken only by 45 minutes of lunch.  This meant 5 straight hours in the classroom.  The other teachers considered it grueling and my supervisor made me drink both lemonade (for calories) and coffee because she thought I would collapse.  Why can't this school figure out its own schedule?

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