Sum­mer usu­ally brings the worse stu­dents, along with those too busy to take classes the rest of the year and whose only chance is to come to school when the Par­lia­ment isn’t in ses­sion. I don’t mind those ones. They’re usu­ally focused on their stud­ies because they’re des­per­ate to pass their French test, which will enti­tle them to a pro­mo­tion or a pay rise. But the weirdoes…

Some stu­dents are sent to French train­ing only because no one wants them around at the office. Men­tally unsta­ble. Bossy. Slack­ers. Those who don’t give a damn about French and made it clear from day one. Those who are used to praise and can’t take criticisms—let alone basic gram­mar cor­rec­tions. These are the ones we teach dur­ing the summer.

My Mon­day morn­ing started off fine. I didn’t miss the bus and arrived early enough to grab a Coke and a muf­fin. I made my way to the class­room and met the school prin­ci­pal on the way. “Who are you teach­ing today? Oh… him?” I sensed some­thing was up with the stu­dent I haven’t met yet but didn’t have time to inquire fur­ther. Oh well, we’ll see.

Once in the class­room, he looked nor­mal enough. We started off with a gen­eral con­ver­sa­tion, cov­er­ing basic top­ics. The week-end, work etc. Two hours later, after we took a small break, I fig­ured it was time to ask about his expec­ta­tions so that we could make a plan for his upcom­ing exam, in Sep­tem­ber. I shouldn’t have said any­thing. He with­drawn and stared at the win­dow for a cou­ple of min­utes. Then turned back to me: “you’re really piss­ing me off right now. Get out.”

And so I was kicked out of my own class­room. That’s the first time that ever hap­pened to me, but why not? I went down­stairs to see the prin­ci­pal. Turned out his majesty doesn’t like to coop­er­ate with teach­ers much and would rather talk about him­self non-stop. A study plan? Out of ques­tion! Lucky me, my boss usu­ally takes us, the teach­ers, pretty seri­ously. I won’t work with him any­more and they gave him one last chance to behave (he was appar­ently kicked out of two schools already). None of my busi­ness anymore.

Yet, this month, I had to work with:

• A hyper­ac­tive stu­dent: by the time I arrived in the class­room at 9am, he already had 3 cups of cof­fee on the table. He also had to go out at 10am, 11am and 12pm to… well, to get a refill, what else!

• An emo­tional lady: I say some­thing, she cries. I com­fort her, she cries more. I test her, she cries. Very repet­i­tive classes ahead but at least, she’s consistent.

• A black­berry addict: 9:01, reply to an email. 9:02, started check­ing his emails. 9:03, answer the phone because one employee didn’t reply to his 9:01 email. When asked to put his crack­berry away said it had to keep it because he didn’t have a watch and he needed to know the time.

• The depressed: failed his exam 15 times, about to fail another 16^th time. Not that he’s going to ques­tion him­self any­way. It’s the teacher’s fault, the government’s fault and the FBI’s fault. I want to believe…

• The dys­func­tional class: 50% male and 50% female. 50% employ­ees and 50% exec­u­tives & direc­tors. 50% mak­ing more than 100 000$/ year, 50% on short term con­tract and belong­ing to a staffing agency. Good luck, heated work argu­ments ahead.

In Sep­tem­ber, the usual stu­dents will be back. Sure, they will com­plain non-stop about the fact learn­ing French is use­less, that the exam isn’t fair and the exam­in­ers are biased. I can deal with that.

Mean­while, I’m a psy­chol­o­gist with a teacher’s salary and with­out the Dr. benefits.

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