Working London 2007

The English school I taught in was tucked inside one of those terrace houses that line New Oxford St (and for that matter, most streets in London). It had three flights of narrow stairs and ten or so classrooms perilously stacked up around them. Before and after class, the school would swell with students as they spilled out of classrooms and out of the front door. In summer, when the school was at full capacity, you’d swear the whole building was about to topple over.

I loved teaching there, which came as quite a surprise to me. When I had left Sydney I was burnt out. I had sworn that I was never stepping back into a classroom. But in London with a bank balance of Australian dollars being pillaged by the UK pound, I had to reconsider. And I am glad that I did.

Maybe it was the diverse and dynamic exam class I had in the mornings, or just being in a new environment, or the three months traveling I had just had, but somehow I got my teaching mojo back. Teaching was great, teaching was fun, and teaching was paying for my weekends away. Yay.

I guess it was the students. London had impressed me with its multiculturalism from the moment I got on the Piccadily Line from Heathrow and my English classes took it to a whole other level: there were the two sisters from Bogatta Columbia who forever changed my opinion on the seeming innocuousness of cocaine use, my student from Yemen who changed his mind weekly about his university choices, a rather temperamental Georgian with visa issues and issues in general ( I once remarked upon him being late to class again and asked what he was going to do about it. ”You can’t change me” he yelled in response “Nobody can change me”. And promptly walked out of my class), a Russian student who would occasionally freak me out by wearing purple contact lenses ( very disconcerting) and the grumpiest woman I have ever met, a ridiculously good looking partially deaf Italian who was brushing up on her English before taking a senior position in a bank ( she was great, when she learned I was heading to Berlin she told me it was her favourite city and wrote me a list of everywhere I should visit). And Lucia, who was working on her PHD on Brazilian literature and was also a Portuguese and Italian teacher ( - it was laughable that I was her teacher and not the other way round but she was my student and is now still my friend). And that is but to name a few…

And then there were my colleagues who were both highly amusing and highly likeable. Just as well as the staffroom was so small that when I pushed the chair back I would consistently hit the Director of Studies desk, threatening daily to send his milky tea sprawling all over his keyboard. ‘Oh no, not to worry’, he would retort to my daily apology with distracted politeness. But that small staffroom worked for the most part, mostly due to the quirkiness and general good nature ( generally) of English language teachers.
As the token Australian in the room I was the recipient of the occasional odd question -What is a flaming dingo? I think you mean Flaming Galah. - You don’t have real universities in Australia, do you? Well if we don’t who on earth is sending me those HECS bills.

Most of them I could answer

Robert, tall, lithe and kind of sexy for sixty came to me one Monday morning – “ Gemma, there are these Australian young guys live near my home and they have these parties with so much beer, so much beer. Why do they have so much beer? And they insist on wearing flipflops and shorts even in winter. Why do they do that?

I just don’t know, Robert, I just don’t know.