My school does the DUMBEST things

A tribute thread, to all those insane little practises which your schools deem to be sane, but which you know come from a place of utter madness.

Here are my current nominations.

  1. The 24 hour photocopying rule. Not only can you not do your own photocpoying, you have to give it to the school owner a full day before they will guarantee they can complete your request.

  2. The one week photocopying rule. A knee jerk reaction to questions about nomination 1 led to the owner declaring that all photocopying for the entire next week must be handed in on a Thursday night. On the Monday you then receive the whole weeks copies at once. It has been mentioned that as schedules do not apper until Friday, it is hard to work out the day before, what it is you will be doing the following week. This point is no doubt being turned into some amazing new rule too.

  3. Signing out dictionaries. I teach adults. 11 of them. I need 11 dictionaries. But every day I have to sign out all 11 dictionaries by hand, and then sign them back in. A process of some 30 minutes.
    Past or present, what are your favourite special stories?

Off the top of my head…
After years of negotiating (zender knows this one), the school finally agreed to provide teachers with complementary bumwad, as opposed to the studes, who had to fork over the traditional NT$10 to the tissue vending machine.
Accordingly, the buttwipe was kept locked in the custodian’s storage room and meted out a roll at a time, upon request.
The in-use roll sat in the teachers’ room, atop the fridge.
Resulting in:

  1. Only one teacher being able to crap (or, in the case of the lady teachers, do anything) at a time, unless the potential user had the moxie to stand in front of the room and wrap what they deemed to be the necessary number of sheets around their hand and then head off to TCB.
    B. The cessation of any pretense of gentility among the co-workers of both genders (good or bad, you be the judge), it being patently obvious to all when a given teacher was heading out to drop The Browns off at The Super Bowl.
    III. G-d help us all if you happened to have a bit of Taipei Tummy and the roll ran out while Jack or Raymond (RIP, G-d bless him) was out running an errand.
    Naturally, being Taipei English teachers in the 90’s, we all had attitude up the ass and would rather make in our kecks than actually pony up the dime in an emergency.
    Don’t get zender started…

At my office, I have to punch in and out each day, even though I’m paid by the case, not by the hour. I hate time clocks!

Also, one day they decided to replace the old squat toilet with a new…squat toilet. Yes, I still have to go to Mos Burger to poo.

:grandpa: Like the chief says, “Don’t get me started!” The toilet paper did eventually come back, and the reason they stopped putting it in the stalls for a while was because kids were throwing rolls out the window.

TomHill, I remember teaching one class at Gram years ago, and they had the goofiest photocopying rules.

They said, “We encourage you to make one photocopy every day.”

“Oh, the (clueless) secretaries (God knows they had enough of THEM!) will do it for you.” (If they can find the key to the copier and figure out how to do a two-sided copy.)

“Just leave what you need copied with them, and you’ll get it the next day.” :fatchance:

And, Chris, thanks for reminding me; Gram had (has?) time clocks to punch in and out.

My company refurbished the men’s bathrooms a couple of months ago. Now, if someone opens the door, everyone in the office can see you at the urinal taking a leak. :s

One of many:

I work at an elementary school so it’s the standard 8-5. That being said, you may only teach a few hours a day out of that. Now, being a form-loving school, you need to fill out a form for basically anything you do (I know, normal, but that isn’t the dumb part).

The for to request a leave (full or half day) has a nice little box for you to get the person subbing your classes to sign. Again, not a big deal. The annoying part is that you need to find a sub even if you don’t have any class.

  1. Admins: “Classes from 8:20 - 11:40…leaving at 12:00…who is your sub?”
    Me: “Uh, what?”
    Admins: “Your sub didn’t sign.”
    Me: “I don’t have a sub.”
    Admins: “You won’t be here. You need a sub.”
    Me: “I don’t have class after 12.”
    Admins: “You still need a sub.”
    Me: “A sub for what? I don’t have class.”
    Admins: “If the children need something.”
    Me: “I don’t have class. They will be with their homeroom teachers. No English class. If they need something that are in their homerooms with their homeroom teacher.”
    Admins: “You need a sub.”
    Me: “Can you just fill in your name?”
    Admins: “Oh no, that is too much responsibility. I/We are too busy.”
    Me: “I DON’T HAVE CLASS!!!”

  2. During winter break, I had to fill out the same form. I was going to be in America and the school full well knew this before hiring me. They said it wouldn’t be a problem since their isn’t any type of camp during the winter, and the students weren’t here. The teachers still needed to come in and do office work though, so I had to “request leave” for those office days. So this time, I still needed to find a sub. There were no kids in the school, but I needed a sub teacher.

Timmyjames, that one is definitely retarded!! :doh:
I’m also at an public elementary school and thank goodness they don’t do that.

How about meetings that last 5 or 6 hours, the main subject of which is “Why isn’t any progress being made?”

I just loved my old school’s 27 degrees or higher air-con rule. Retards.

[quote=“kjmillig”]Timmyjames, that one is definitely retarded!! :doh:
I’m also at an public elementary school and thank goodness they don’t do that.[/quote]

Don’t even get me started about the paper policy.

yup, my school has boxes of used paper we are supposed to copy with. The parents pay enough money as it is…I’m not pasting things into their portfolios that has other kids signing up info etc on the back! We had training once a semester when I started there…now we have two 2 hour long training sessions a MONTH. Where most of it is spent showing what you did…then directors and one of the ET teachers judge you on it…grade you, and the winner gets NT500…we are 3 branches, so that’s more than 10 ppl …and were supposed to take our posters off the wall and bring everything in. And have a whole 2 minutes to present. The ET that wins has to be a judge next time…I got a 3 out of 5 from one of my friends and I think I’m going to block her on facebook. Ha.

It’s just a waste of time and money. And my boss just sent pics of the other branch and said we have to make our school look better than theirs. But she’s not willing to buy the containers and paper and posters etc etc that they have. Even the notices to parents etc are photocopied on 4 individual A3 papers and stuck together with sticky tape. This is out in the street for everyone to see. Summer camp…but we can’t afford to spend NT20 on a piece of poster paper. Yet they bought a NT15 000 air hockey table we cant use…and put in a state of the art kitchen.

Meetings where everyone sits there communally slurping and spluttering their way through a lunch box while not discussing anything.

Having to work on Saturday to make up for the day(s) you missed for national a holiday.

Especially since tonight is Frinight and tomorrow is Saturday…starting with an early morning. :neutral:

TomHill, school photocopying has always been a mystery to me. I have always wondered why every single educational establishment owns a very low spec cheap copier, despite having very high usage. It can’t economically smart, but every school has a crap copier, compared with pretty much any office.

I got around it by never bothering to copy stuff. Living language! Dogme! Bollocks to ‘worksheets’. The UK is far shittier than Taiwan in this respect. Part-times at this joke of a school that expected me to ‘create a syllabus’ for a rolling enrolment 15 hr a week ‘IELTS for non-English speakers’ course. The manager seemed to be under the impression that I would create/copy from the pitiful ‘resource shelf’ 15 hours of material a week for 15 quid an hour!

The chief, this also requires a level of forethought, planning and commitment that weemin rarely make before the act of seating themselves. Unless there is a pressing need most of us just go with the flow, no pun intended, and do not ponder the logistic sheetage, pre-partum.

I could write a whole bowlful of idiot/irritating/dangerous/exploitative/insert negative adjective of choice anecdotes about my superduper ex-teaching career, but I can’t be arsed with the severe level of brain pain it would produce. The things that caused me the most self loathing were

  1. Level testing. You are all B1 level, unless you are particularly thick, or over 40. If you are Swiss or Polish, you are B2-C1.
  2. Marking homework. I wanted to get a stamp made that said: ‘Check subject/verb agreement. There is/are, not there have. ShiLin nightmarket is not famous and does not have very delicious snake. Now go and sign up at Global Village and leave me alone.’
  3. Teaching ‘bilingual kindy’ when I knew it was a very bad thing to do. I’m really sorry, kids, but your horrible parents would have paid someone else to have wasted your childhood instead.
  4. ‘Training sessions’. Fuck the fuckity fuck off, you fuck-witted fucks.
  5. Teaching exam prep to future marketing graduates.

Ok, the paper thing:

Ok, I want to start this out by stating how important paper actually is to class. ALL of the material is teacher-created minus the textbook. We make: homework books, tests, quizzes, worksheets, test reports, semester reports, communication book slips, and a random assortment of extra crap the admins wants. Therefore, we need paper for all of this.

That being said, we ran out of paper probably 3 times during the first semester. Not me, the whole school. There was no paper in the school on several occasions, and it took several days to get more. How can a school run out of paper? Why does it take 3 days to get more paper?

The solution to this problem the second semester was to order only A3 paper, and have us cut it in half whenever we need it (I guess its double the paper for close to the same cost). I wouldn’t call this a big deal if it didn’t turn out to be a daily event.

And, we now can only order paper maybe twice a semester because we need all the teachers to order at the same time, so you order in bulk. This causes me to get 3 packs of A3 at one time. So? So what’s the big deal? Well, I can’t leave it on my desk. The Admins will think it’s messy. So, the admins forced me to order 3 huge packs of giant A3, yet I can’t put it on my desk? Um, where the F can I keep it?

All this crap over PAPER!!!

AMEN!..as I sit in my office this beautiful (and now wasted) Saturday morning waiting for my first class. :raspberry:

AMEN!..as I sit in my office this beautiful (and now wasted) Saturday morning waiting for my first class. :raspberry:[/quote]

SO true. I would have preferred to just work the original day. Getting a weekday off to only have to make-up on the weekend is more of a punishment than a holiday.

Oh, I have another one…

There was an outbreak of Hand, Foot and Mouth disease (this happens every semester). If you don’t know what this is, it’s a nasty virus that cause sores on, in and around the mouth, and on the tongue. It can cause death (google it). The primary way to stop the spread of said disease is by washing hands with soap and water.

An entire 5th grade class had to stay home for 10 days because several of the students contracted the disease. So, what does the school do?

They decide that it is time to fill up the swimming pool. While doing this the water in the girls bathrooms doesn’t work. Instead the girls wash their hands in the drinking water. (and they cannot flush the toilets). Add to that the fact that there is rarely soap in the bathrooms.

So what happens? An entire 4th grade homeroom ends up having to stay away from school for 10 days. And the bast part is the admins said “Usually the low grades get sick (1-3), but for some reason this year the high graders did.” No F’ing shit!!! They are washing their disease-ridden hands in the drinking water, and they don’t even have soap.!!!

Needles to say, I don’t use the drinking water anymore.

AMEN!..as I sit in my office this beautiful (and now wasted) Saturday morning waiting for my first class. :raspberry:[/quote]

SO true. I would have preferred to just work the original day. Getting a weekday off to only have to make-up on the weekend is more of a punishment than a holiday.[/quote]

A-Men to the that - I think this year should be named “the year of punishment”

  1. no pay rises
  2. no bonus
  3. inflation up
  4. no national holidays (i dont even get may day off)
  5. 3 times we have to earn our “holidiay” with make up days - anyone else remember the weeks before CNY? two 6 day work weeks in a row - ouch,

However, this thread is about all keeping me from returning to teaching, more complaints please!

The soap in the toilets used to drive me insane, our school NEVER has soap, teacher had to bring in their personal stach, but the kids never had any - my office did the same, the VP stood up and said swine flu is dangerous and we should wash out hands WITH SOAP at least 5 times a day, but the tap in the mens toilet was broken and there was no soap in the company :fume:

never had major issues with paper, I just picked up the recycled paper and ran “eclectic” classes when similar happened - amazing how quickly you can train the kids to write, cut and make their own handouts :discodance:

i taught SATs at one school with no access to exam papers (school refused to pay) so had to use the students ones / printed off internet without answers (5bucks to get the answers) - we just found the conflicting answers (between me and all the students or majorities of the students) and dsicussed the best answer, they love it when teacher is wrong, but they learned a lot from my mistakes as well as their own

my biggest fume was when I was working two jobs, one at an intl school and other at buxiban, the former had hired me too late to give full notice to the latter so rearranged my schedule so I had all 24 hours contact time in mornings and then burned on a scooter at 100ks an hour across town to get to the buxiban and teach full contact hours there… big mistake, the buxiban ripped me off and fined me for breaking contract and the intl school reduced my salary by the amount of hours between 8 and 3 that I wasnt there, literally had a spy “clocking me out and in” so after doing 55 hour contact weeks for a month I ended up no better off :fume:

[quote]
A-Men to the that - I think this year should be named “the year of punishment”

  1. no pay rises
  2. no bonus
  3. inflation up
  4. no national holidays (I don’t even get may day off)
  5. 3 times we have to earn our “holidiay” with make up days - anyone else remember the weeks before CNY? two 6 day work weeks in a row - ouch,

However, this thread is about all keeping me from returning to teaching, more complaints please!

The soap in the toilets used to drive me insane, our school NEVER has soap, teacher had to bring in their personal stach, but the kids never had any - my office did the same, the VP stood up and said swine flu is dangerous and we should wash out hands WITH SOAP at least 5 times a day, but the tap in the mens toilet was broken and there was no soap in the company :fume:

never had major issues with paper, I just picked up the recycled paper and ran “eclectic” classes when similar happened - amazing how quickly you can train the kids to write, cut and make their own handouts :discodance:

i taught SATs at one school with no access to exam papers (school refused to pay) so had to use the students ones / printed off internet without answers (5bucks to get the answers) - we just found the conflicting answers (between me and all the students or majorities of the students) and dsicussed the best answer, they love it when teacher is wrong, but they learned a lot from my mistakes as well as their own

my biggest fume was when I was working two jobs, one at an intl school and other at buxiban, the former had hired me too late to give full notice to the latter so rearranged my schedule so I had all 24 hours contact time in mornings and then burned on a scooter at 100ks an hour across town to get to the buxiban and teach full contact hours there… big mistake, the buxiban ripped me off and fined me for breaking contract and the intl school reduced my salary by the amount of hours between 8 and 3 that I wasn’t there, literally had a spy “clocking me out and in” so after doing 55 hour contact weeks for a month I ended up no better off :fume:[/quote]

Ha…yeah, this school has spies too, but we know who they are, so it makes things even more pathetic. I really thought a private elementary school would be better than a buxiban, but boy was I wrong.