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“You’re not qualified to teach primary school children?” he asked, a worried look passing over his face.
“Well, yes, I suppose,” Ava said. “I mean, I have a general teaching degree and I did a rotation of heavily supervised elementary teaching. Heavily supervised,” she said again to underline the words.
“Well then, I’m sure it will all be just fine,” smiled Jake.
“No, no it won’t,” Ava practically screeched. She’d wanted to deal with this yesterday afternoon when school ended. But unlike in her US schools, when she’d gone back to the admin offices after the bell rang, they’d been empty and locked. So instead, she’d been forced to come in early.
“It’s just a case of the nerves,” Jake said soothingly.
“No,” said Ava. She got up out of her chair and paced around the small office. “I’m not experienced doing this, I have no idea what’s going on, I can’t teach these children.” She sighed in exasperation. “For God’s sake, I’m used to teaching teenagers about the symbolism of color in The Great Gatsby, or the use of metaphor in T.S. Eliot. I’m not used to singing the alphabet song ten times a day.”
And even that she’d got wrong nearly every time, with the kids correcting her pronunciation of ‘zee’ to ‘zed.’
Jake leaned forward now and put his hands on his desk. “I see,” he said, sounding sad and slightly irritated. “Alright, I suppose I can take this up with the program administrators. I’ll give them a buzz and see what they have to say. That’s the best I can do for the moment.”
Outside, Ava could hear the high sound of children’s voices in the corridors. The bell was about to go any minute. “And what about right now?” she demanded.
Lowell shrugged. “I can’t work miracles. You’ll have to go in there and do your job. You have lesson plans written out for you, you got along fine yesterday, you’ll just have to hold on for the next couple of days until we can sort something out.”
“But you are sorting something out?” Ava said, pushing for a promise.
With a weary sigh, the headmaster nodded. And then the bell rang.
Out in the corridor, Ava felt like she was walking through fog. She was tired and had only herself to blame. She’d spent half the night on Zoom with Quinn, talking through what had happened, trying to figure out a way to solve the problem.
In the end, they’d each opened a bottle of wine and had ended up no closer to a solution, though Ava had come close to tears at the thought of missing her old life.
And now, well, she supposed that Jake Lowell was right, there wasn’t much that could be done at the moment. She’d have to buckle down and hope that the exchange program would correct their mistake.
In the meantime, she had children to deal with.
Small ones.
Including the precocious daughter of the irritating woman next door.
She shook her head as she stepped to the side, narrowly avoiding a running boy.
Who would have thought? She supposed that Whitebridge was a small town and it was somewhat inevitable that her neighbors would end up being her students. Still though, right next door? And with a badly-behaved cat to boot?
Plus, of course, the woman was the school secretary or receptionist or something. Just to add insult to injury. The one person that Ava would have thought she could rely on to get a little help and it turned out to be the one person in town that she’d already pissed off. Perfect.
A small girl yelped and Ava practically had to dance to get out of her way.
This was not turning out quite as she’d imagined. Though if she’d wanted a change she supposed she couldn’t change much more than this.
The fact remained though, she was completely unsuited and under-qualified to deal with small children. And that was the end of it.
Another boy bumped into her and Ava took a step back and years of training took over. “Stop!”
She didn’t shout exactly, but her voice carried and the busy corridor ground to a halt as dozens of pairs of eyes turned to her. Ava put her hands on her hips.
“No running inside. No shouting inside. No bumping inside. Now please calm down and get to your classrooms.”
There was a second of silence, then the crowd of children began to move again, more calmly this time, with a buzz of light chatter as they made their way to their classes.
“Nicely done,” said Amy Littleton, who was standing outside her own classroom. Her face wrinkled into a smile. “I see they teach the ‘teacher’s voice’ in the States as well.”
Ava grinned. “How would we survive without it?”
