Junior League Fail

Let's pick up from where I left off last Saturday night, shall we?

Having returned from our Bournemouth outing around 9:30, we readied ourselves for an event I had been calling the "International Late Night Snack Pot Luck Supper." We, the foreign teachers (Spanish, French, German, American) had each been planning for several days to cook a dish from our respective homeland.

The quiche lorraine had already cooled, the kaiserschmarrn was receiving its last dustings of powdered sugar, and somewhere across campus the Spanish tortilla sat on a tabletop, thick and hearty with egg and potatoes. Julia and I had not yet begun our dishes. Both were simple. Neither would give us any trouble, or so we thought.

Julia was planning on making guacamole and bringing chips. She was doubtful that this was "American" enough, but I reasoned that guacamole is quintessentially American, precisely because it originated elsewhere. Can I get an amen for the melting pot?

I, on the other hand, chose a more values-and-principles based approach to my dish. I decided to make cupcakes from a Betty Crocker box recipe.

What, after all, is more American than individualized cakes made from plastic bags of pre-mixed ingredients, according to instructions so simple a child could understand them? In the country that worships convenience and womanhood (hopefully not together), cupcakes-from-a-box are the holy grail of domesticity.
And I, having lived for three years in houses full of women who could pull together a dessert party at the drop of a hat, thought I could whip up cupcakes with my eyes closed.


I thought this way until I couldn't turn on my oven. The British outlets are tricky; one has to flip a switch for power to flow through the outlet, but still the oven wouldn't warm. As I say, we only had half an hour, so a French-teaching, clear-thinking friend suggested we go to her flat instead.

At her flat, I set to mixing the ingredients while telling the Classics teacher about the film we'd just seen. Cavalier and devil-may-care, I casually tossed the necessary objects into a stew pot (we had no mixing bowl): Water, oil, milk, bag of brown powder. Done and done.

While describing the themes of grace and redemption in Toy Story 3, I gesticulated boldly enough to knock a chocolate-covered butter knife to the floor, smearing the carpet and pausing the discussion. Smooth. Finally having scraped blobs of the remaining mixture into little paper molds, I flung it all in the oven and dusted my hands in triumph. I began to mix the frosting (included in the box) -- and that's when I finally read the instructions.

Ah. So the milk goes in the frosting. Not into the cupcake mix.

And the cupcakes need eggs? Aw, hell.

That is when the Irish wife of one of our favorite fellow-teachers, seeing my despair (I had slid to the floor at this point), suggested "Nah, just keep 'em in. Everyone likes chocolate. They won't even notice. To tell you the truth, I don't even think eggs are really necessary."

So we kept them in. And I served them. And every single one got eaten.

Poor Julia. Her avocados (purchased Monday) had still not ripened. So she brought good, old-fashioned, made-from-scratch Doritos to the table.

Suffice to say, I don't think we'll be starting a Bryanston Junior League anytime soon.

The Bourne(mouth) Consumerism

It had been a long third week. I had taught a Roald Dahl story to some German exchange students and put 64 rambunctious children to bed (some amid squeals of, "Can I make a seating chart for our English class so I can sit next to Jack?"). I had graded papers, coached rowing, taught surly fifteen-year-olds about the psychology of advertising, learned about Child Protection laws, and gone running on two blissful occasions.

It was time, come Saturday, to break out of what is commonly known as "the Bryanston Bubble." To do this in a pinch, one can simply walk the half-hour to the little Georgian village of Blandford and mulch around (taking note, Julia and I hope, of an excellent secondhand bookshop sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with banks on the high street). In our case, however, a truly great escape meant shopping and a movie in Bournemouth.


Allow me to explain: The Bryanston Bubble, it seems, serves as a horizon-shrinker. If one stays too long without reminders of the outside world, one starts to regard daily life as a tedious grind rather than an abundant blessing. One needs a place like Bournemouth (the footsore shoppers, the smell of the sea, the guy handling a boa constrictor in the square) in order to recall that working and living at our school is not normal.

So we shopped: Marks & Spencer (basics), Zara (trendy staples), H&M (just trends), and a shop Julia required we visit called "Mango" (expensive trends). We plundered the shelves, took no prisoners, scooped up the sale prices and skedaddled. The hunt was good and the gods were pleased. This skirt at Zara even caught my fancy, along with a striped boatneck top at H&M. My reasoning: just because all the kids are wearing it shouldn't make a classic shirt off-limits.

By the time we acknowledged our need for dinner, the movie was due to start in an hour. We inhaled our Wagamama entrees and waddled up the road to the theatre to claim our seats for (what erudite film, you ask?) Toy Story 3. In 3-D.


That's when I realized that British cinema has made advancements about which I've hitherto only dreamt.

There was a Ben & Jerry's in the lobby. Colorful. Euphoric. Gleaming with an earnest kaleidoscope of flavors.

United States movie houses, listen up: if you wish for cash to rain from heaven like glitter eyeshadow at a Taylor Swift concert, you shall not get it with $6.00 popcorn. Phish Food, my friends. Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz. Vanilla Toffee Crunch. Cherry Garcia. All normally priced, but located just before the door to the movie. I'd buy it. I certainly did on Saturday.

By the time we got back to school, it was, as the English say, half-nine (meaning 9:30). The countdown to our next big project had begun. More later.

Parcel and Prepositions

My mother is a woman of many, many gifts; assembling a kick-ass care package is one of them.

A slip of pink paper appeared last week in my pigeonhole (my mailbox in the faculty workroom, because, as you know, I'm a gainfully employed adult) notifying me of a "parcel."

I collected the box from the porter's office, took it to my flat, and left to coach rowing practice. I played it cool. Things like parcels seem better, after all, if you let them sit on your kitchen table gathering a little hard-earned dust and anticipation. Like a nice sauce, simmering low on the stove, marrying flavors. I thought, "maybe I won't even open it until tomorrow. Then it would be even more fun!"

Lies, all lies. When I returned from the river, I used used my teeth on the packaging tape. Thank you, sweet Jesus, that the metal coffee can inside hadn't set off the alarms and delayed delivery.

Inside I found exactly what I had longed for: instant grits, Cafe du Monde coffee, chocolate, and a few surprises in the form of clothing that my mom had picked out. Like I said, the woman has a gift. Right down to the thoughtfully composed card, which I displayed in my kitchen window.

The Parents and I even got to skype a few days later, talking for about two hours before I finally acknowledged that yes, it was one in the morning my time, and I should probably go to sleep if I wanted to remain sane for the children.

Speaking of the children, I have realized that teaching grammar is a great way to catch mistakes in one's own speech. I can't very well harp on their ending sentences with prepositions if I do it myself.


But don't despair, fellow recovering perfectionists. I justify the occasional grammatical gaff by just not caring.

Moral of the story: Praise the Lord and split my infinitive; the real coffee has arrived. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

The Bryanston Bestiary

Julia calls our time here the "Best Life," and rightly so. Bryanston just propels us from one pleasure to another. Rowing practice, tea time, team teaching, morning runs along country lanes, and drinks at the Head's house. It all seems too good to be true - a scholastic Camelot.


Thankfully, we have found a chink in the armor: badgers. They are the "short-legged, heavyset omnivores in the weasel family" scruffling through rubbish bins all over Bryanston. Translation: These suckers are bigger than a breadbox and ugly as homemade sin.

Of course, the grounds and surrounding acreage teem with wildlife of several (if not all) shapes and sizes. Rooks nest in the one tree where they won't be fired at by local farmers, pheasants warble and flap in alarm if you jog past their covey too quickly, and squirrels dart from tree to majestic tree, pleasantly small and skittish.

None of the local fauna, however, excites as many stories or powerful emotions as the badger.

The conversation last Friday evening had been chatty and jovial until we inquired about the weasel's cousin. Spectacles were swiftly adjusted, eyebrows were furrowed, and our interlocutors grew deadly serious.

We learned that despite their proximity to the school, badgers are staunchly feral; they are the illiterate lumberjack of rodents. They are allegedly "only violent if cornered." Most importantly, they move more quickly than one would assume.

Later that very night, I saw one galloping / undulating / scrabbling up a hill. Approximately the size of a runty thirteen-year-old, its talons glinted in the moonlight.

A somewhat braver colleague, who had actually named this badger "Phil," suggested that, in the event of a confrontation, I simply drop-kick it. Right. Like I'm going to drop-kick an animal the size of Julia.

Perhaps I exaggerate. Suffice to say, although I have left the land of poison ivy and copperheads, I still have to keep a watchful eye out for Nature.

By the by, I find that the advice for encountering the great outdoors runs close to the advice for teaching a class. Say it with me now: They are more scared of you than you are of them.

Bits and Bobs and Bedtime

In England, "bits and bobs" describes an assortment of things. For me the phrase conjures the image of spools of thread rolling higgledy-piggledy across a kitchen table, then being swept into a neat little basket.

I tried to tell my ninth graders that a good way to organize their folders is to have one divider labeled, "Miscellaneous," a word which of course they couldn't spell, and of which they didn't know the meaning. After I explained that "miscellaneous" could refer to a variety, a mishmash, a hodgepodge, or a gallimaufry of items or ideas, a thatchy-haired boy in the front piped up,

"Can we just label it 'bits and bobs'?"
I paused. "You can label it whatever you like, as long as it makes sense to you." Bits and bobs, I thought. Well, it does make sense. Plus it's shorter, easier to remember, and more fun to say. Knock yourself out, kid. Less is more.

When I was putting the girls of my boarding-house to bed, the youngest ones attempted to distract me from turning the lights out by telling me to See certain things.

See that I'm almost finished getting ready, I just need a glass of water?

See how big my hair gets when I brush it?

See how I have to put away my dance-lesson bag before I can clean my teeth, which means I'm trying to go to bed, I just can't yet, but before I do, see how I can flop onto the bed like a penguin?

And of course, they all have to try and flop on the bed like a penguin.

But once they're actually in bed, my hand pauses at the light switch as one of them asks me what my "other names" are. I tell them.

"Sarah Kate," she repeats, smiling. "So American." And then, "Can we call you "Miss"?"

They know so little about me (my name, nationality, and that's about it), and now they call me even less.

I hope that, here too, less is more.

Well, they didn't eat me alive.

Of course, they needed explanations and repeated instructions and more time to retrieve their favorite pencil. They took every split second of silence as a command to ask One More Question. They like to talk the way you and I like to breathe.

I had them do a five-minute writing exercise where they described their summer holidays. It seems half of them went to their villas in Paraguay, and the other half "just drove to France for a few weeks," which was evidently "quite nice," but that taking their new pony to pony camp was better.

So in some ways, they live on another planet, and in other ways they are each the quintessential early adolescent. Oh, the insecurity is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

And after Lesson 1, I floated out of that classroom.

I know it's premature to say (ask me again in two weeks), but I think I may love teaching.

I had a lesson plan, but I got plenty of chances to improvise. I got to make dry remarks that went over their heads, I got to tell them to be quiet and see them obey (we'll see if that ever happens again), and most novel of all, I got to tell them things they didn't know before. (usually I'm talking to adults who have more life experience in their little finger than I have in my whole body). Oh, it was such a rush.

But it wasn't just teaching them. As soon as I started grading that stack of nigh-illegible paragraphs, I fell in love with the kids who wrote them. At my most selfish, I probably loved the prospect of seeing them improve because of my guidance. On the other hand, I don't think that's the whole story. I think I just want to see each of them, as a person, flourish, period.

So when I walked into that classroom, I'd set my mouth in a thin line and was prepared to draw a hard one with these rambunctious hellions. One lesson, 35 minutes later, I was all in. Signed, sealed, delivered.

Batten down the hatches, kids; here comes Miss Neall.

Among Schoolchildren

As I write this, the girls of my boarding house just been put to bed. I shadowed the other resident as she roamed the hallways, admonishing the youngest girls for being rambunctious and clarifying to the older ones that yes, indeed, it's time for lights-out, yes, your bedtime's 10:30, yes it's 10:30 now, go to bed, Poppy, turn off your fairy lights, good night, girls.

And tomorrow I actually teach them. Several of the ones I just put to bed are in my first class, actually. We'll see how that goes.

For my lesson, I have a little course description all typed up, along with their first assignment. They are to write me 400 words on the following question(s):

Are stories safe? Can they be dangerous?

I got the idea from a Eudora Welty quote, which I include on the assignment, about Welty's mother being relieved Eudora had chosen to be a writer of stories, "for she thought writing was safe." It may be a bit abstract for 14 year olds, but I'd like to see how they handle it.

I also have to administer a spelling test, which slingshots my memory right back to fifth grade (spaghetti, if you're wondering which word I'll never get wrong again).

I've been told by other teachers to be Very Strict for the first fortnight. Minimal smiling. Get right to the lesson. None of this chatting about where-you're-from and learning of names. Children love boundaries, and if I'm not abundantly clear about mine from the get-go, they'll walk all over me. I get the sense, from others' advice, that the ideal first lesson would be a rather grim and abrupt one. I will try to find a balance between me and the "ideal."

Wish me luck, and we'll hope for a well-oiled machine of a lesson.