The Class From Hell

A tongue-in-cheek look at every teacher’s worst nightmare; unruly pupils, culture shock and an assault on the senses. Originally, ‘the class from hell’ referred to a particularly challenging group of teenagers at a private secondary school and featured in: https://eflmagazine.com/teachers-stories-teaching-secondary-school/. While this creative writing piece serves as a kind of update where various individuals in different classes or groups appear together in ‘the class from hell’ somewhat collectively. Of course, it should be pointed out that the vast majority of adult students when teaching business English are a sheer joy and never pose a problem. These are the exception to the rule.

Not What You’re Accustomed To

When students speak in their L1, i.e. Dutch and you ask them to speak in English while in class, this shouldn’t be a problem; right? Wrong. Well, it depends. There were two sets of students doing an in-company intensive course; the first were respectful after being read the riot act. The second were more anarchic and one lady in particular needed to be told umpteen times. Ironically, she had worked in a prison and was soon to be a fully-fledged customs officer, so, one would assume, would be used to authority? Go figure. One gentleman who did not understand something, repeated three times that he was confused, which he was told, was rather excessive. Although he had mentioned he had dyslexia, after careful explanations, he went on to retort ‘I believe you, but just don’t get it’. To be fair, those with such learning difficulties, can/do take longer to register information. Whenever the chance arose, all concerned would be transfixed, not to their lesson notes mind you or the flipchart with each carefully written bullet point, but, alas, time for a heavy dose of realism with contemporary flavour, at their flaming phones. A bit like taming a wild horse was a thought that came to mind. Unbelievable outbursts like when one lady jokingly retorted to a colleague's remark: 'I'll throw diarrhoea at you' or, in the other class, the reason why a student disappeared when she had been granted some time to spend on homework in the lesson was, in her words: 'due to my period; women's stuff'. Although, it was a fib. It was just like teaching those youngsters from yesteryear in the earlier piece, those terrors from the depths of purgatory. Just like before, they test your boundaries, sometimes they wear you down gradually, like a group of lions maiming their pray before moving in for the kill, and, last but not least, they need their own user manual.

A Cut Below the Rest

To those who have had a horror show over a series of weeks teaching a group of tax advisers or an autistic teacher during a teacher training course, join the club. The former started out fine, but, slowly but surely, there were moments where they showed their true colours. Truth be told, one gent was as nice as pie, and, indirectly, helped the teacher to stay sane. The others were, let’s say, miserable and pessimistic, had big egos and were petty and somewhat hostile. One even insinuated that the Dutch had been made fun of, even though the accused is a Dutch citizen himself. The cherry on the cake was an older lady (early sixties) who claimed to have been singled out when asked to parrot a word after she had mispronounced it. Further, she had an inferiority complex regarding her speaking English and cried when she was given a few minutes extra more than the others and couldn’t finish something. It got worse, despite all the best intentions, whatever she was told was not acceptable to her and she just dropped out and was never to be seen again. The latter was an example of someone who couldn’t accept what she was told, i.e. that the details of her grade would be sent to her as soon as possible. It was not possible to say exactly when, so she kicked up a fuss. After writing a dismal evaluation of her teacher, she changed her tune completely, when she was informed that she had made good progress and had gone up a whole level. The moral of the story is that you can’t make everybody happy all of the time.