My second English teaching job was with a Dickensian-ly dismal school located near Termini station. In a neighborhood of internet caffes, some of the worst Italian restaurants in town and some of the best Korean, was a building with a door large enough to allow in a horse and carriage. Through this door you followed a rather dingy red velvet carpet up a couple stairs into the school that was located on the ground floor level and in the basement. Every room had been turned into a rabbit warren of tiny booths made of thin particle board, painted white. In each cubicle was a desk, two chairs, a trash can and sometimes, if you were lucky, the CD player to use for listening exercises. It was always cold. And the basement was dark. No bats though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every Sunday I received my schedule by email and would find out how much time I\u2019d be in \u201cthe cell\u201d and therefore how much money I\u2019d make that week: Monday 9-10, Tuesday 10-13:30 etc. When you came in, you had to ask for your room assignment slip at the front desk. 9am-11am in aula 1 (room 1) then 11am-12pm in aula 5. Who were my students? I didn\u2019t know until they were literally sitting in front of me pushing their little booklet across the desk so I could see what they had done in their last lesson and could take it from there. The pay was \u20ac9.50 an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, to get your slip with your room assignments was a cultural challenge in and of itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The front desk was presided over by terrifyingly mean Italian women, a type I would get to know over the years as unfortunately common but which I had yet to become acquainted. Their hair was dyed, their clothes always seemed to be strange patterned nylon (strange because patterns aren\u2019t usually a \u201cthing\u201d in Italy) and their faces were more or less obscured by an inch thick layer of make up and scorn. I\u2019d stand in front of the desk while they chatted with each other (something I was to learn would be repeated in 75% of clothes shops, airport info desks and post offices) until I finally coughed a little bit and said something captivating like: \u201cciao\u201d upon which they would stare at me like I\u2019d just asked if you could be their \u201cbwand new fwend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d They\u2019d spit out the word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy room assignments?\u201d I think my shyness irritated them more than the disruption of their conversation. After a huge sigh, some eye rolling and glancing at each other like: these idiots, youknowwhatI\u2019msaying? One would place my slip on the desk next to my outstretched hand (not in it) and return to their chat. This was a fundamental American vs. Italian difference. As an American I knew to politely wait to be asked what I needed. It doesn\u2019t work like that in Italy. You have to march right up and say what you need and they\u2019ll give it to you. This is also how they drive. This is how you get the check in a restaurant. This is how you get anything done. If you wait around on the sidelines, you\u2019re deemed a little bit dim and quite frankly, you\u2019re wasting everyone\u2019s time. If you don\u2019t make your intention known what are they supposed to do about it, intuit your every need like a baby? As a pathologically shy introvert, always trying to avoid stepping on others people\u2019s toes, this was such a challenge for me that it bordered on torture. But wasn\u2019t that why I\u2019d moved half way across the world without a plan? To find Laurenissima? To find out if I was capable of toughening up and asserting myself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there was the teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was English for people who had too much going on to commit to any specific time each week or who liked the flexibility of having a bunch of different teachers. I think this method could work for someone at an advanced level but for the beginners I\u2019m pretty sure it was an endless variation of \u201cHello, my name is-.\u201c They could request certain teachers but it wasn\u2019t always guaranteed. More than once I was met with a disappointed, \u201cOh, you\u2019re not ___(fill in the blank of other, better, life-changer teacher and not my wretched self)\u201d. There was the student who just wanted to flirt with English teachers\u2026 a lawyer trying to improve his skills for work\u2026a newly-wed couple trying to improve their English together\u2026 a young woman applying to school in England who needed to pass the dreaded IELTS to qualify for an application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhy do you want to go to school in England?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are opportunities there,\u201d she said. \u201cWhy did you come to work in Italy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m figuring that out\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I got the basement duty I\u2019d have to talk to Olaf who would tell me about all the numerous books he\u2019d written on medieval something-or-other which didn\u2019t sell so well because the general public \u201cwas not very educated.\u201d In the hall I might pass the red-haired Francesca who flirted relentlessly with every student. She didn\u2019t flirt with romantic intentions, she flirted for lessons. \u201cOh darling how aaaare you? I didn\u2019t know you had a lesson today,\u201d she might say to a student sitting with me. \u201cOhh, why didn\u2019t you tell me, would love to see you for the next one. In fact, let\u2019s schedule it right now together, I\u2019ll go tell the girls at the desk, ok?\u201d and effectively hijack the student I\u2019d just spent the last hour trying to convince to choose ME for the following week. English Prostitution 101.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The days I saw fellow teacher Adam reminded me that there was humanity left in the world. Adam, another teacher in the school, brushed and combed his hair so he looked like Frank Sinatra, always wore a white button up shirt with a thin black tie, and sturdy black studious looking glasses. I couldn\u2019t tell if he was straight or gay but I didn\u2019t really care \u2013 he was the only person in that entire building who clearly didn\u2019t loathe everything around him and who hadn\u2019t descended into bitter pettiness. He was a happy, positive person and he shown like a candle in a cave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This place was clearly a stepping stone for him, he was on his way somewhere. I didn\u2019t know where but I knew it would be better. He even made the atmosphere in the school better. Time passed around Adam. It pooled around the others, clung to them, dragged them down, sodden and suffocated. Adam moved. You knew Adam was just always nice, with everyone. He didn\u2019t single anyone out. But if you were nearby you received some of it and in those first months, those were the kinds of interactions that I really needed to get through a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I got another kind of language lesson from Adam. One day in what could have optimistically been considered a break room consisting of a photocopier and some old books, he wrote out for me all the words and gestures that I needed to know to make it in Rome. At the top of the page he wrote: \u201cRomanesco,\u201d the Roman dialect, and then proceeded to beak down various hand gestures, swear words and colloquial phrases he thought would come in handy. Perhaps he saw I needed some tools to help me speak up for myself. The result was, I still couldn\u2019t carry on a conversation in Italian but now I could tell someone to go fuck their dead relatives! In Italy, it\u2019s all about family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This school is where I learned a lot about Italy, about the crocodile women, how to act like I knew what I was doing without having the faintest idea, what to do and what not to do. I learned to be like Adam: this is your stepping stone and don\u2019t, under any circumstances, get stuck here like the two (possibly British) women who ran the school. One, who seemed to have perpetually greasy black hair, would bring you into her office and tell you how various tests worked: I guess this was job training. Everything about her sagged from the bags under her eyes, to her shapeless clothes to what seemed to be her very soul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou start with a \u2026\u201d pause in which she pondered the meaning of her life\u2026\u201d listening exercise.\u201d She turned the paper toward me:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHere it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I looked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRight there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes. I see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd they answer the questions. Sometimes there are 8 or\u2026. even\u2026. 10\u2026.. questions\u2026. for them\u2026\u201d Long sigh. \u201c\u2026.to answer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no way this woman was not deeply depressed and I always left our interactions worried for her well being\u2026 and mine if I stayed in this school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other manager was a bony blond, the kind with no softness or curves, just elbows, shoulder blades and one of those low buns that kept her hair close to the skull. Everything about her was cutting. Adam informed me in a whisper in the hallway once that her accent was entirely fake. She wasn\u2019t even British she was from Ohio but had gone to school in England for a few years at some point as a child and now, had \u201ctaken on airs.\u201d I\u2019d never know if this was true or not but I seriously hoped it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She\u2019s the one that if you passed would tell you what you were doing wrong:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHmm, that\u2019s a lot of paper to be using,\u201d as you made a few copies on the machine, trying to impress your student that Francesca was drooling over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or: \u201cWhy is your binder being kept like this? No. No. No.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then: \u201cPlease turn the volume of that down, other teachers are here too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every pointer was a thinly veiled reprimand. And the only time I remember being in her office to learn about the IELTS test, she stopped in her monologue once and looked down at the page I was scribbling my notes on. \u201cOh,\u201d she said simply, looking up at me as if I\u2019d been caught texting my boyfriend instead of listening to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat is it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou do see what you did, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turning red, looking guilty, having no clue what she was on about, I went for the answer of last resort: honesty. \u201cNo, what did I do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe word \u201cEnglish\u201d that you\u2019ve written there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I looked where I\u2019d scribbled \u201cIELTS: int. english lang. testing system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat about it?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe word \u201cEnglish\u201d should be capitalized. You do know that \u2026 don\u2019t you?\u201d I looked down at the page covered in my own version of chicken scratch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell, these are just notes for myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIncorrect is incorrect,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
People like Francesca, Olaf, the two directors and the desk harpies had been there for years. You could feel the frustration and the boredom crusting around them, mutating them into spiteful or desperate or just plain depressed people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now I think, probably all those bitter women could see that people like Adam and me and the other new American ugg-wearing teachers would be in and out, making naive comments about how the bus was sooo late and how it was just \u201ccrazy\u201d that the metro was shut down\u2026 again. Who knows what they thought of us. We were skaters, gliding through their world, having our little \u201cforeign experience\u201d while they were stuck there, paying crippling taxes with few job options, trying to steal students for less than \u20ac10 an hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soon, I\u2019d be gone. Are they still there?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My second English teaching job was with a Dickensian-ly dismal school located near Termini station. In a neighborhood of internet caffes, some of the worst Italian restaurants in town and some of the best Korean, was a building with a door large enough to allow in a horse and carriage. Through this door you followed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=74"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74\/revisions\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=74"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=74"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenmouat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=74"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}