I’ve decided that I won’t be recounting any of my own teaching tales on this blog but that those of my graduate compatriots are fair game. A good balance of ethics, I believe.

A friend of mine got a job in a Catholic school despite being as far from Catholic as one can get. She has to take part in biblical role plays at the start of staff meetings and her teaching partner is a 70 year old hunchback nun. At Friday night’s celebratory drinks my friend arrived wearing very little, explaining that she needed to wear her “sluttiest” clothes in order to make up for a week of conservatism.

In class last week the kids pointed out a very large spider on the wall directly behind my friend’s desk. The kids were baying for spider blood but my friend knew she had to do the right thing according to the school’s religious values.
“We can’t kill it,” she said. “It’s one of God’s creatures.”
I nearly snorted my pint of Kronenbourg out of my nose upon hearing those words come out of her mouth.
“What did you do next?” I asked her.
“Waited till the kids went out to lunch and then emptied a can of Mortein on the bastard,” she sneered.