For many people school is a pretty serious place, one of enforced silence and rule obedience, very judgmental exams and report cards that are nearly always sad news.  IT can hardly see a place of humor. And yet for many it can be.

When I was in school I walked by the gym that had a sign on the coach’s door that said’ If you don’t rock, don’t knock”  I thought it very clever and was also completely intimidated by it. I never knocked.

Sometimes other signs are an enigma too.  One I frequently walk by says outside the gym, something that makes me think of evangelical churches “You must be changed to enter this facility”

In the library is a sign “Alarmed Emergency Exit only.”  Fair enough but under that it says “Push Until Alarm Sounds’

At the teachers’ door from the parking lot there are often deliveries and the sign says “All vehicles must not leave motor running” I assume that if a few do that’s OK.

The rules can be confusing “No food or drink, except water”

Assemblies for elementary kids rarely now involve setting up hundreds of chairs. The kids are to sit in rows on the floor and keeping these restless little bodies still is a challenge.  How schools handle it varies. At several the person in charge walks to the front of the gym and rather than yelling Quiet several dozen times simply raises her arm in the air. All the little kids dutifully respond raising their arms and they stop talking. The grade 6s are bored with this but they also usually raise their arms and when I first say this happen it looked like some huge underarm deodorant commercial.

The signs in teacher work rooms can be fun too. Above the photocopier “Out of Order, Again!”  Above the duplicating machine some warped and burnt  papers, “Do not put transparencies in here or they’ll look like this”

In the movie Up the Down Staircase there are odd rules pointed out, and the school system may have fewer illogical ones than “Don’t go up the down  staircase” but it still has a few. Security systems are so intense now that at one school  kids actually have to carry walkie talkies and go in partners to the washroom if they are heading from a portable to the mian building for the washroom.  And because the main school doors are usually locked, I have to phone the office to alert them to open the door so the kids can come in.  At some schools classroom doors are to be locked at al times, to keep intruders out, so if kids to have to leave and come back they have to knock and someone, often the teacher has to get up and open the door, disrupting the flow of some lessons. In a few young classes the little kids are so excited when there’s a knock at the door that several charge toward it to answer it, explaining why some teachers designate a ‘helper’ just to open the door. But occasionally I have seen where a teacher has been fed up with these super securities and has just propped the door open. In fact the door would be closed more often if there was not such tight security.

Schools have become overrun with lingo too and the insiders use it as the efficient shorthand all jargon becomes. But from the outside it can be odd. The report card system that is Individual Program Plan, named IPP, sounds obscene. The gifted and talented education program, shortened to GATE, is for the best and the brightest or for those whose parents really make  a strong case for same . GATE in French however also means spoiled and indulged.  One teacher who does Advanced Placement assessments for students good at a skill and wanting credit for it , but not planning to take further courses, calls the group the AP group but also, uses affectionately a French version ‘ames perdus’ – lost souls.  The IB league is the international baccalaureeat and I always found it odd that the required grade 11 course for career and life management, how to handle finances and life is shortened to CALM.

When I’m teaching I can’t help but notice how the assigned lesson ironically may apply to m life. One time I am listening to a presentation by the local electric company about ways to avoid electrocuting yourself and the little play garden and house model he has is cutely wired to zap small dolls who make mistakes.  There is a little figure that is trying to do some roof repair and by mistake touches an overhead wire with the ladder and zap he’s gone. The problem is that last summer I was trying to cut down branches that were too close to our overhead wires in the backyard and for one fleeting moment I actually did stand on the ground trying to dislodge the branch I had cut but that was not still leaning on the wire. How I did not get electrocuted now amazed me. I also could not help but notice that his advice to not stick your hands or metal objects into electric equipment like the toaster, resonated with me.  I had only recently been in a school photocopy room where the machine jammed and the directory had coached me though what panel to pen and where to stick my hand in to unlodge the jam.

One time only five days after I had accidentally bumped my head on a low-hanging ceiling as I entered a basement, I was asked to read to the students about a skull fracture  in which the main character becomes delirious.  My head suddenly seemed to hurt more and I had to laugh at myself for how creative my imagination was.

One teen tells that the class that his parents motivate him to work hard in school. He says his dad told him “Do well in school or I’ll live with you when you grow up”

Sometimes the signs were logical at the start but a thousand creative minds have walked by them and a few changed items.  One sign urging awareness of shark slaughter had a key letter ripped off and now read “54 UN Nations have vowed to stop the laughter of sharks”

Teachers are middle class, not wealthy but we teach kids of all social classes. Sometimes this shows. One day a bunch of teachers were sitting in the staff room when a parent pulled up outside our window in his Lexus. One of the teachers speculated that he would be coming in soon to ask “How much for the school?”

At another meeting about promotions staff was looking at academic records of the students in the iffy category for our 3 year junior high, maybe going to pass, maybe not. One of the teachers looking at one kid’s record said, prison-warden like , “But he’s already done four years here hasn’t he?”

In the student essays for high school the kids are to tell a mythical immigrant student about their lives.  One writes that her dad loves to buy big things and the other day he had been to the store and bought a photocopier bigger than a piano. The family had been so aghast that now he was not allowed to go to Ikea alone.

Staff meetings are so long that one can only hope there is some literal truth to the idea of a ‘break-out’ session. I have heard criticism of all the red –tape stuff as being ‘administrivia’ but I would not dared have used the word in public  Yet recently I heard a principal use it at an entire staff meeting, and not to mock the word.

I am to supervise 10 minute prep times for an oral exam and need a timer so I bring one from home.  I leave it at the school because I’ll also need it Monday and that weekend burn the biscuits, forgetting how much I use it at home too.

The kids are often the source of an unexpected smile.  In a junior high the teacher has told the kids to bring food tomorrow for the food bank, or to bring money.  There is  competition among classes to see who brings most and the prize is a pizza lunch.He says and I am listening at the back of the room” Everybody bring 20 dollars and bang, we’re there”. One student immediately comments ‘everybody bring 20 dollars and bang, we’re broke”

Sometimes the desk set up is amusing. The teacher has left me a candy right on top of the instructions. The teacher has put a pair of gloves in the teacher folder on a cold day with outdoor recess.

In the bilingual classes the kids often get giggly for the double-meanings of some words. In German the word ‘to go ‘is fahren and the kids usually break up laughing when they hear the first time that to say he goes you say’Er fahrt”.  When French students hear that mass is ‘la messe’ or that candle is ‘bougie’ or that leather is ‘cuir’  – pronounced queer-, you may lost them for a few moments.  The verbs in French have a wide range of conjugations by one particularly hard one is the verb to sit ‘assessoir’. One teacher herself was stymied about how this one operated and wrote part of it on the board then stood deep in thought. The kids laughed at her since she was staring at the word’ ass’.  One student is translating about a drink that tastes like Coke and says it has ‘saveur de cock”

I heard a story a few weeks ago about a fellow sub, in her seventies who was dealing with a very unruly group of students. She has been there, done that, for most situations and it occurred to her that if she could just tell them to be quiet, in their native language, that would be surprising enough to them that it might work. She took aside one student of the same background and asked “How do you say Shut up in your language?” He stopped a moment, then wrote a few words on paper and told her how to pronounce them. He said’ Just say this and you’ll have no more problem with them”.  She taught the next class and there were no problems but the one after lunch was bouncing off the walls so she got out the paper and said very loud the words written there. There was immediate silence.  She was pleased of course but later a student on leaving asked if she realized what she had said. She said what she thought but he told her she had just said “F – off”.

We are asking the kids to complete proverbs and one says ‘If at first you don’t succeed, cheat, lie and then repeat” “A fool and his money are soon heard” “

In the English as a second language classes the kids often struggle over some of the real oddities of our language and I wish in my heart it was not so crazy myself.  We are looking at the sentence “Neither the student nor the teacher is here” and I point out how you have to say ‘is’ not are because you are dealing with one at a time. One students says if no one is there, why does it matter? She then wonders, and I am stymied why we then say’ Neither the teachers nor the students are here” then using the plural.

Sometimes the kids’ answers stop me.

I love skying

I like playing at the game on the computer. I don’t do any sport

I am born in French. I do bicycle near my house

My bedroom is to fill of poster and picture

I like listen rock

I likes chewing gums and hoilidays

My house is quite and beautiful

I have not sister

He is my little bother

In my country we bury the people who are dies. Other people light candies and everyone stil quiet for one or two minutes
Palestina was the longest composer
After the death the family can people for party after one week

Everybody go to the cemetery dressed with black clothes all off the people

The mother and daughter and sister sing a sad song or they cry parallelly

I am reading to the students a news story about recent science developments. The article is about how so many people are allergic to peanut butter than food scientists are trying to make a new butter spread from yellow peas. The article says, and I am reading it out loud, that the product, pea butter, is very close in color to peanut butter but.. and after this there are cascades of laughter, I read “Most people like it but some say it has a distinctive pea flavor”

The teacher of senior high English has a widely used stapler and 3 hole punch but to keep them from wandering has, as most teachers do, labeled them. She has labeled them “George” and “Alice”

The teacher who is middle aged has a poster on her filing cabinet of Mel Gibson, in his youth. He is of course very handsome but someone has also put above his picture a large police type caption “Wanted”

The grade 7 teacher has police tape around her desk reading “Police Line. Do Not Cross”

A grade 4 student comes up to me and shows me his pet rock. He says he is teaching it to drop and play dead, and that sometimes he sees it on its own practicing.

The elementary school has 14 female teachers and one male.  He is new to the school and I notice this because it is September and last year he was not here. I am subbing for him and so very many young female teachers, not knowing he is away, happen by.

In the French challenge exam one student tells a mythical immigrant student that he plans to visit Freance one days. He has heard there are nude beaches and he plans to do research there.  One tells the mythical French stranger to come visit but to not even think of trying get into the bathroom before 7 Am because the 3 girls in the house monopolize it.

One teacher has posted on her wall the rules of a bygone school era, from 1818, and it does keep things in perspective.  The number of lashes to be meted out to kids is 5 for fighting, 4 for gambling, 7 for lying, 3 for ginvg each other ill names, 8 for swearing , 8 for drinking liquor, 2 for having long fingernails, 1 for climbing a tree above 3 feet.

I am teaching at a school named Queen Elizabeth and over the noonhour phone a friend to say hi. Her daughter answers and I hear a rush of excitement as she has apparently seen the call display. She is saying to her mother “Mom, it’s the Queen!”

Some schools have jokes in the teachers’ washroom, often jokes in the women’s about men’s incompetence or in jokes about signs of aging.  If I happen into the student washroom sometimes the stalls have graffiti there that the caretaker did not yet get to.

If you’ve only got one life to live, well you gotta live it right

When the power of love overcomes the love for power, the world will know peace- Jimi Hendrix