My pupils are missing

The fun and game that is my school’s class schedule continues as normal this week. I think I can remember, maybe, a hand full of weeks during my more that a year here that weren’t changed. Usually I am informed of the changes roughly 5 minutes before they actually take effect.

What follows in this paragraph is my normal schedule for a Monday. I leave out the meeting before the first period because I don’t attend that because it is all in Korean. I suspect that this is where the changes are announced, but that will still not make any difference to me as THE MEETING IS IN KOREAN and I don’t get a running translation. You would think that one of the three English teachers would just jot down the changes as they are announced and leave me a note, but nope, to much thinking involved there. This is the schedule:

Period One: Class 1-3 & 1-4, Mixed, Higher Level
Period Two: Class 1-1 & 1-2, Mixed, Lower Level
Period Three: Adults, Higher Level
Period Four: Adults, Higher Level
Period Five: Open
Period Six: Class 1-3 & 1-4, Mixed, Lower Level
After School: Nothing at the moment

The mixed class thing is a headache. I don’t see much difference between the various classes and it is hell to assign scores when you have to figure out who belongs in what class.

This morning, five minutes before the start of the first class and long I arrived early to prepare for my Monday after the classes, I was informed that the first and forth periods were cancelled. This was because they were visiting some or another high school. My new schedule looked like this:

Period One: Class 1-3 & 1-4, Mixed, Higher Level
Period Two: Class 1-1 & 1-2, Mixed, Lower Level
Period Three: Adults, Higher Level
Period Four: Adults, Higher Level (no actual effect)
Period Five: Open
Period Six: Class 1-3 & 1-4, Mixed, Lower Level
After School: Nothing at the moment

I looked at it for a minute and then realised what was amiss. My questions were: “Firstly, if students from classes 1-3 AND 1-4 are going, then where are the others students in this grade. Secondly, what happened to my other class that is a 3 & 4 mix? Where are those students?”

It turns out that we reverted to the old system the looks like this:

Period One: Class 1-4, Mixed Level, Same Class
Period Two: Class 1-1, Mixed Level, Dame Class
Period Three: Adults, Higher Level, Same Class
Period Four: Adults, Higher Level, Same Class
Period Five: Open
Period Six: Class 1-3, Mixed Level, Same Class
After School: Nothing at the moment

This means that I now have, after carefully working out how to fix the mess that was last week’s changes, one class without scores for this week’s work. I continuously grade the pupils. This is my own invention in the absence of any official or organised rating system for my part of the English curriculum. Further more, I end up with a class/period where half the pulips already had this week’s lesson.