Seriously?

I have had a slow introduction to the Quebec Education system. I had a temporary contract at a private school for three months last winter and have done some substitution work at a private school for learning disabled kids. At the special needs school, I noticed my first day that the classrooms were pretty old looking, the books, having been used for twenty-some years were falling apart and that for a class of ADD children, there was an alarming amount of reading in the curriculum, with very little hands on learning. The school is 75% French and 25% English, and my first experiences there were on the English side. Then I worked on the French side. With new books, new desks and even blinds for the windows! Coincidence? I've been in Montreal too long to believe in that.

So finally after a lot of running about, I finally got all the appropriate papers to the smaller school boards to apply for teaching. I'm still missing the mandatory exam, but I'm hoping I may have found a way around it. At least for now. A few days later, the Commission Scolaire de la Pointe de l'Ile (Tip of the island school board) called me and proposed two positions. They were both teaching drama, one at an elementary school and one at a high school. I told her I would prefer the high school and set up an interview for the following day, Friday. I made my way up to Montreal North and approached the address I had been given. I reached an enormous building on Henri Bourassa East and the sign on the building confirmed that I was at the right place. I made my way to the front doors, just as a student leaned out the window and yelled "Hey Sexy!". I began to question whether high school was the place for me. How hard would I have to work to get respect from the kids and the staff if I was mistaken for a student at my interview? I walked into the building and began to feel slightly overwhelmed. A group of security guards were huddled around the reception desk dealing with four awkward looking boys. I tried to get their attention and eventually asked one of the guards for directions to human resources. Up the escalators to the third floor.

The human resources lady greeted me excitedly and informed me that they had been looking for a drama teacher for awhile. She directed me to the principal's office for my interview. He seemed immediately unimpressed. For the next forty minutes, I was grilled about my pedagogical vision. I struggled to find a way to explain that it was difficult question, given that drama isn't like science or math, where students are coming in with a particular set of skills. I gave examples of exercises and activities, long term goals and tossed out the idea of each semester culminating in a final performance for the school. He seemed unimpressed. How would I go about preparing a lesson plan? According to my goals for that class. Here are some examples. I was getting flustered and frustrated that his questions seemed to be coming out of a standard interview guide, without room for understanding that the arts cannot necessarily be taught in the same way. I struggled between helping him to understand how important the dramatic arts are in the school curriculum and sounding too artsy. I soon discovered the reason for his hesitation, his barrage of questions and his insistence that my plans need to be more concrete. I was being interviewed to teach nineteen classes of thirty students each. I suddenly understood and became quite uneasy. With six hundred students, how likely is it that I would even learn all of their names by the end of the year? How effectively would I be able to help them reach the goals that I had set for them, if I only see them for seventy-five minutes every nine days? Most importantly, with nearly six hundred students to keep track of, how quickly would I lose my mind?

And so continues the quest for the perfect job- or at least a tolerable one. ..