I love a good stoning. Don’t you?

Good lord we have the most ridiculous staff meetings sometimes. Two weeks ago, the class teachers gathered to discuss a variety of matters. This one was a rare beauty of a staff meeting replete with all manner of wildly preposterous proposals and totally inappropriate discussions. Central among matters (actually, the ONLY thing we did) were our official appointment letters confirming that yes, you are indeed a class teacher. Happily the appointment letter arrived only five months late.

The appointment letter detailed all of the responsibilities of a class teacher. Some were obvious and I have been performing them for months already. The self-important pomp and circumstance of the letter in general was so laughably at odds with its delivery.

First up: a discussion concerning how to properly field requests and complaints from your students, including passing those concerns on to relevant administrators (or, a deep, dark void from which no request returns). Instead of a constructive discussion on protocol and timing, our Dean of Studies launched into a comedy routine/public lashing of a Senior Six class teacher. Now, this teacher’s name is Omoding. Is Ding in any part of your name? If so, you probably aren’t given benefit of the doubt very often. It’s just such a short leap to Dingbat. Honestly.

So, the teacher in question had submitted a handwritten request at the behest of his students. The primary issue was the time at which power is switched on in the morning. Our school has some serious debt issues and we pinch pennies every where we can. Power is currently turned on at 5:00AM and shut off at 11:00PM. Apparently these students (who, I must confess, I do teach) decided that 3:00AM was a reasonable time to turn power on because they needed to study before class.

I almost choked on the water I was sipping. Evan nearly fell out of his chair. Our Dean of Studies and three other teachers began laughing hysterically. When asked his appraisal of the request, the class teacher simply stated (I shit you not), “I haven’t decided yet.” If not for a sense of burning embarrassment for the teacher, tears of uncontrollable mirth would have streamed down my face. My side did hurt very badly from laughing so hard. There is not a joke good enough to encapsulate the utter stupidity of the entire conversation.

Not to be outdone, we were then treated to the lame, peevish grumblings of our assistant Dean of Studies. His pet peeve is our school’s dress code and many students’ disregard for it. This teacher can carry on a conversation with himself for nearly an hour on this very topic. Unfortunately, he sucked other teachers in, and we found ourselves knee deep in a discussion on whether students with untucked shirts could eat meals in the dining hall. In the meantime, the school is running millions of francs in debt, teachers dodge their own lessons, and water at school is becoming spotty, among other more pressing issues.

After recovering from flips flops and exposed shirt tails, we moved on to safety drills. At this point, I actually perked up because I think there are some serious safety issues that should be addressed. Unfortunately, our DoS decided that the nurse shouldn’t be responsible for addressing those issues in a school-wide assembly. Instead, a bunch of first aid-illiterate teachers should handle it individually. What’s more, there was a relatively brief thirty minute discussion on whether one should tilt a student’s head back during a bloody nose episode (doh!).

Now brace yourselves for the real kicker. We jumped quickly from nose bleeds to contingencies in case a thief breaks into school. Leaving aside the fact that the worst thieves at school are our own students, there was dissension among teachers as to how to proceed. For the briefest of moments, it seemed there was the proverbial elephant in the room, but Evan and I couldn’t quite catch what that elephant was up to. Then someone mentioned stoning. Wait, stoning? You mean, like, stoning stoning?

Well, for almost forty-five minutes we discussed all the potential uses and consequences of stoning as Evan and I sat in stunned disbelief. We protested vociferously along with our Dean of Studies and a couple other teachers against any potential stoning. Sadly, some teachers seemed to see it as a necessary last-ditch effort to contain a thief. The most pressing concern was in fact how to prevent students from stoning each other instead of whether stoning was even appropriate to begin with.

There was no discussion of detaining the intruder simply for trespassing. Nor was there of the likelihood that a teacher would ever be at school late at night, hanging out with students observing possible thieves. It’s all so ludicrous, but “we” spent nearly an hour reaching the following conclusion: if, after having ascertained that the intruder is indeed a thief, and if said thief’s escape appears imminent, you are to organize a small group of capable students to stone the intruder to subdue him. Otherwise, just organize a few students to tackle him or something. Yea, whatever. Put it in a memo.