This post is unimaginatively titled because there isn't really a word that can encapsulate the depressing subject matter of the entry.
Yesterday I was consulted by my betreuungslehrerin, for a talk which I initially expected to be along the lines of "Max, one of your students has complained. The game's up. We know now that you don't have any idea what you're doing, and we're sending you back". It actually turned out to be "You're doing another hour per week with this class".
In all truthfulness, I can't work out which I would actually have preferred to hear. This is due to a number of very important reasons which, since the little consultation, have put me into a kind of angry 'Hulk-smash' mindset.
This class is a challenge for me at the best of times. I've raved on about it before; the fact that its mixed ability and finding shit to please everyone is a morbidly boring affair. I clung to the hope, at least, that I would be assigned to a real teacher on these friday sessions.
This is not the case. This is as far from the case as is humanely feasible.
I've become a maths assistant.
A fucking maths assistant.
Which invisible clause of my "FOREIGN LANGUAGE ASSISTANT" form qualifies me for this? What possible aspect of assistance are they expecting me to bring to the table? This class has 12 people in it, and are taught by possibly the most insanely clever man I've met. What else can they need? Another key area they seemed to have overlooked is that my maths is worse than my German. That really is saying something.
"Rapidly decreasing standards in Maths and English in the Rheinland area; foreign teaching staff blamed" seems a fitting headline for Süddeutsche Zeitung to run in about 6 months time.
Tomorrow I'm going back to Cologne to see people I miss, because whereas snow makes Neuerburg look prettier, there's still fuck all to do here, apart from scour the temperamental internet for english grammar summaries and learn how to explain maths.
