Ms. Brick and her annoying antics.

I first heard that I'd have Ms. Brick for English from Niamh, who told me near the end of third year. I hardly knew Bricky, thankfully, how happy I was then, and I didn't know it. We had her for Religion class maybe twice when Holy Healy was out, probably at a funeral. I knew she didn't like bold word and always shouted big words at the class. Mr. Halpin was out one day for woodwork, which happened regularly in third year now that I think about it. Anyway, Ms. Brick took the class in the TG room, room twenty something, down by Garro's room. I was curious about the potential leaving cert teacher sitting in front of me. I asked her was she going to be our new English teacher. I'm not sure if we knew that Scano was retiring at that stage. Bricky got very worked up about this. Not Scano retiring, her teaching my class! I was later to learn that she gets easily worked up over everything. But, she kept asking me where I had heard about it, which I didn't disclose to her. I keep my sources to myself. Bricky if you're reading this, Niamh is an alias. This seemed to point towards the truth in Niamh's prophecy. It came true and the gates of hell in English opened and the newly formed 5A1 were dragged through.

We had numerous problems in English almost right from the start. Some cannot be blamed on Bricky. The English course for Leaving is very long and tough, and that's not her fault. But it is her fault for telling us that fact 20,000 times every week! "I don't write the course." Or, the famous, "the bar is set, I didn't set the standard," or something to that effect. We started with the poetry of Yeats, I think. BuuhhhUuHHH! That fella is annoying. We started with "The Lake Isle of Inishfree." Nice poem I think many people will agree. Bricky covered Yeats in a decent manner. Patrick Kavanagh was done over a shorter time and possibly effort! At least back then we read through the notes in class. Those notes were good-ish. They were funny because they had so many mistakes, including spelling mistakes, punctuation and general sentence structure. All we did was have them read out, but it was better than what we did in sixth year. At least we didn't have to take notes and cover the pages with scribbles. "This is important," she'd say, "take this down," and then she'd call out about 10 lines of text, which we were to fit into 2cm X 2cm of space. After Kavanagh, poetry went downhill and a hell of a lot faster. Two poems in one class became the norm. "Ok, today we're going to do Prufrock and The Great Hunger all in 26 minutes." Exaggeration may have featured there just a little bit. But she certainly pushed the accelerator hard with both feet/ Maybe, that's what was needed, I don't know, but compared to other classed, we did almost twice as many poets. In Dominican's, they're studying five poets, while we did seven. Niamh's class, again the alias, did four. Why did we do seven? The milk is spilt now, no point in complaining.

Bricky has completely lost the head a few times. It's quite funny sometimes. There yesterday, she pulled a mickey-fit, big-time. Most people hadn't got the work done. It was the first bit of work after the mocks and nobody bothered to do it, apart from Zidalee, Louise and Yombo. As I like to put that, because the people she banks on didn't have the works done, she pulls a fit. As far as I can remember, it's happened before. If twenty people have no work, but either David or I have work in, it's ok. It's a strange way she works. Anyway, the fits are really all the same, they all include threats of dropping to the ordinary class and doing "ordinary level English"!! Nothing new ever comes out. Do ordinary level, I didn't write the course, I didn't set the standard. That sounds familiar? It should, it's stuck in all of our minds.

At some stage in fifth year, we had had enough. After tension building up, and THAT Macbeth test on "themes" that happened to be about something else, can't remember now. Adam kicked up a fuss over that, fair play dó. Anyway, eventually, we got sick of it really. So, we tried to sort it out a bit. Classes had a heavy, uncomfortable atmospere for about a week, and it was only worsened when things got nasty. An open floored debate, aka a riot, broke out one day which most people talking, but, unfortunately, no real points were being made and no solutions or alternatives were being suggested. At one stage, Dave and I decided we'd try to give the debate/riot some shape. But, she went ballistic at us, so I said, "Fuck da anyway."

We thought we were making a first step at fixing Bricky in life skills with Garrigan one day. Pointless class really, but it proved useful that day. He was asking us the usual, "how are things going?" sort of stuff. I can't remember who started it, but somebody said that English was particularly difficult. Then the ball started rollin', and it kept rollin'. Garrigan listened, as he does, and fair play to him, he had a meeting with Dave and meself after school one of the days. Apparently, life skills class wasn't the proper stage on which we should have aired our views, but, that was irrelevant now. He asked us what was going on in that we found annoying. As far as I remember, he then went and spoke to his superior, Derek McGarrigle, about the situation. Obviously, it wasn't going to go any further after that, we knew that. Bricky already had Derek in to the class and he waffled on about work and how Bricky was wonderful. So, it was end of the line really. Garrigan, the voice of the students, came back to us with no results. But we respect him for giving us the time. Derek talked ot us one of the days too. He waffled on again, saying how Bricky has seventy-four master degrees and is aiming to beat the record of phDs achieved in twenty minutes. (It's set at 5 by some Chinese fella.) End of the road for the revolutionary 5A1 class. Or so it seemed.

Bricky then took a turn. Now whether it was a good turn or a bad turn, I can't say. She seemed to think it was great altogether. But, our opinion didn't quite match that. I thought it wasn't any better but it could have worse. But I'd imagine the rest of the class thought that she'd got completely to hell, with no chance of return. She changed the class, so that she read notes aloud, and we wrote down what she was dictating. So, I suppose in a way, chance of discussion fell to zero and the Mussolini like dictatorship stood firm once again. The power of students was trampled. We showed disapproval, and nothing was done to improve our situation. If Derek was running for Leinster House, his student constituents would think twice about giving him their number one.

Teachers teach us, as it says in their job description. But they also give us work, collect it, correct it and give it back to us. Ms. Brick has done all of these (she's especially good at the first one) but, this process is very slow with the Leaving Certs. Let me give you an example. In mid January, Ms. Brick gave back a Macbeth test from...wait for it...mid October! Yes, three months later, I get a "corrected" test handed back to me. That's probably the worst example of material not returned that I have, but the others aren't far behind. On the side of correcting, we don't think her correcting is particularly precise or good either. Recently, she has found a great way to get out of correcting essays. For the last week, we've been writing two paragraphs of an essay a night. This part of the method I like, it's not all dumped on us in last class on Friday. But, about three people read out their paragraphs on Monday and Tuesday. She read sample essays yesterday (Wednesday) and today (Thursday), this is the best, we had our essays completed. We read each others essays. We read each others essays, what a way of dodging correcting them. Wow. One could almost congratulate her on that idea. We'll learn from one and other. That's a load of bollocks, well, in my own humble opinion. Our mock papers were sent out to be corrected, at a price of €7.50 for each of the two papers. Why? We want an outside viewer to correct our work? Not likely. Who suggested that they be corrected outside? Ehh, oh yeah, Bricky. Couldn't be arsed, don't know how? You choose.

I started this post back in March sometime. I added bits to it since then too. It's now 1 May. Although all this shit is very funny, ridiculous and even monstrous at times, recently I've came to the conclusion that I must let it go. At this late stage in the year, I really, nobody really has the time to complain very much. Especially about the state of teachers. Unless there's something very wrong. Bricky is re-reading her notes again for the last time. And instead of moaning, I think the attitude that should be adopted should be "right, I'm gonna listen and get the most out of this, even if it's not perfect." Many I've been enlightened by some divine force that decided that we should give her a break, that she's trying. But, in any case that's how it's worked out. I don't expect Bricky to do anything else mad or even slightly cuckoo after this time. I think I can finally call this the end paragraph. It's surely been a roller coaster ride of a two year course of English classes with Ms. Brick. Some classes descended into absurdity. But on the other hand, I wrote some interesting essays during some of the English classes. All of my essays somehow ended up to be Ireland-glorifying propaganda that dismissed any ideas that modern Ireland was good thing. Strange, but let's you see how I was thinking during the year. Well, that's it really. Goodbye now, take care, and in the words of herself, "BWWOOOOOOOHH!!!" (1,771 words in total)