Keep in mind, this is more so just venting, just nowhere else to share.

Last week I was thinking I would detail my experiences as a teacher at the primary school I started working at and I guess I am going to give it a go. If you don’t know about me, let me tell you how I got here in a couple words.

I applied to several teaching jobs as I finished my first year at university and I needed a job desperately. I was thinking I might be asked to do some kind of assistant work or something like that, because I don’t have the qualifications yet. Well, at the end of this summer, a school not far from where I grew up hired me, as there is such a shortage of teachers, that they need to hire anyone who is roughly capable to do the job.

I got hired and as I said, I am not sure that it was because they thought highly of me. Well, the 15 people working there (staff included) were distant, expecting me to quit, maybe still do. This was in September. I am still there, still alive, although heavily scarred.

I have lived most of my life in this region, which is the poorest in Hungary. I wasn’t expecting anything unrealistic, especially because my school-years were very similar if we think about the basics. Nonetheless, this place is bad. I don’t know how much I should write about it, if at all, since technically I have a secrecy contract I need to keep. But, ATP, the things I will tell you are known facts to everyone living here, and I don’t think they will surprise any of y’all reading about them. This is a small village, roughly 150-200 people living there. It collects kids from the surrouding villages, even though those other villages tend to have schools too. It does this, because this place is educating 90% roma kids, who are very poor and are provided with no outlook in life. This place exists solely, because the law demands everyone to attend primary school, but you should think of this place more like a daycare for not-so-small kids. Teaching is close to impossible and learning is not something these kids “want” to do.

Even here however there is a spectrum of the amount of wealth these families and therefore their kids have. Some parents can give more. But most of the kids are extremely poor. They are often sick, from not being able to eat at all or because of malnutrition (eating badly (?), eating chips and sugary things from the local shop). They have a daily menu that they are eating at the nearby kindergarten, but that is the only food they eat, in many cases until the next time the following day. The kids have no clothing, or at least no appropriate clothing, meaning many of them are in t-shirts even now, in december. The school starts at 8, but they are so cold at home, that they are there by 7 to possibly be allowed inside early. They wear something, until it can no longer be worn anymore and they get something cheap instead, or the more likely scenario, get gifted something from the nearby Maltese organization. So, they smell, they have bugs in their hairs, and they don’t really experience a day without some kinda pain. Every day several of them need to go home, either because their rotting teeth are torturing them, or because of hard tummy pains, or quite frankly being hungover/having withdrawal symptoms. The kids drink, from 2nd grade ‘til 8th, in my experience. I have a lot of kids in zombie mode, not being able to sleep at home, or still experiencing the drugs from the day before. (Although I am not an expert in this field.) The young ones don’t yet know that they “should be ashamed” (you know what I mean) of asking for food, so in 1st and 2nd grade they often just tell us that they are hungry, they don’t have money at home to buy food and they ask whether we can give them something else on top of their rations. Ofc, we are not allowed to and we can be put to jail if caught, but we try to cheat wherever we can (for example ordering for more kids when we count them at morning despite there aren’t that many kids at school that day, etc.) We know of kids who are drug users/addicts on a daily basis and we have kids smoking too. You can imagine how all this affects their time at school and how they behave under influence.

I went through a lot of shit in this half a year and I have acted in ways I never would have wanted or thought I would. I never shouted before, while in the first 2 months, I did many times. I never thought I will not like a kid up until now. I never wanted to give up on someone, now I kinda feel like I can’t care more than they do about their studies. I never knew I can digest or process being disrespected, hated, cursed out, etc, until I simply had to. I never knew capitalism can destroy a society like this (now primarily focusing on education), until that moment the first day. I committed many mistakes (like not handling a situation correctly, etc.), despite trying my best. I have seen many mistakes from other teachers as well, not to mention the principal or the parents. I have seen crazy amounts of bad things happening and I am someone who had their fair share of it as a child too. I try to continue, gather the strength every morning, because even though they hate school, this is the only safe-ish space for them. 5th grade onwards, they don’t really care about learning, so you can’t invite them in for participation, but younger kids can still forget about the bad at home or just generally in life, by paying a little bit of attention to something somewhat interesting of a topic/class. Nonetheless the older they become the more they hate studying and me trying to teach them.

If I had to use one word to describe the institution, or education itself in this country, I’d use the word: corrupt. Whatever is on paper, it is misiniformation. Whatever goes on between 2 collegues, it is fake. Whatever happens here has nothing to do with a school. This is not a school, whatever this place is and a school can’t be mentioned on the same page. They just camp these years out (1-8) in a relatively safe space until they are teenagers and can go on their own paths. We are there to keep them safe, it has nothing to do with teaching. They aren’t there to learn, they are there so their parents still receive payments and they don’t need to be separated from them. It is however necessary to keep the theatrics for everyone’s sanity. We act in this play (I geuss by participating, I kinda do too). We act like there are standards to reach, kids to teach, behavioral norms, etc. This place is more or less anarchy. These kids can do almost anything. I have been called names I never thought possible to be called, yet the kids are still there, because there is nowhere else to send them. 1st graders have knives on them that the parents are giving them. Twice a week we have a fight between parents in the schoolyard, who are related btw. Police doesn’t do anything ofc, the teachers (not on my watch) don’t go out during the fights, so they don’t get beaten or knifed. The kids just watch. Sadly, many parents are not present because they are in jail. We have many parents doing prostitution at their homes, so the kids have to watch that too. Many people live in one room, and they can’t afford furniture. 5-6th graders have to stop school because of pregnancy, or because they have to go work somewhere to survive. I have kids who got abandoned and they live with their grandparents, which is common, but many are living with their cousins, who are above 18. So like, imagine a 20 year old “taking care of” 6 under 16 year olds. I have a girl from 6th grade who told me on friday that she needs to leave to Germany, because everybody has died around her and her brother is her only relative who is in Germany. We have trash everywhere, from the bags of sweets, chips, etc.

The kids don’t have notebooks, pencils, etc as they can’t buy them and the ones the school gives at the beginning of the year, they lose or break those (because they can’t use them or as stress relief, whatever). Now, you can imagine how or what they can learn in these circumstances. The kids are sadly illiterate. They are thaught reading and writing plus basic maths in 1-4 grades, but they just forget, as the skills are not practiced. Meaning, I should be teaching them complex topics (just open a 7 or 8th grader history book), but they can’t read or write. The amounts of words they know is minimal, basically just the daily necessities, so not much can be explained to them either sadly. All this could be navigated, but they refuse following instructions (if they understand them at all) and they simply say no to you. Now, obviously I am not saying anything new, maybe some of you have experienced all these as well, but like, it is killing me, whether I want to acknowledge this or not. Whether I fight it on purpose or not. I am losing my hearing from the constant yelling and clapping (they love the brazilian clapping songs they see on TikTok) I experience for hours.

Now, you might say, that they just need to be shown an example they can follow and I know this. I am trying and I am reluctant to say this, you can see some minor improvements if you are willing to look at it in terms of months and years, not hours and days. The thing is, I wasn’t applying to be a security guard, nor to be their parents. I wanted to teach, but this is not happening and I am not going to lie, I am not trained at all to handle this. Not to mention properly handle it. I am in my 2nd year at uni, I don’t have a kid, I am autistic and I get no support. The university is blind to this, they have no awareness of what is going on in schools, in the real world. All they talk about is liberal bs from the west that we should adopt. Whatever. So, like I can only rely on myself. I am making it up as I go. I teach from 2nd to 8th grade, although I spent 2 months in 1st grade too, as there were not enough of us to teach there. I “teach” them romani culture, hungarian culture, arts, civics (??? yk “adult life shit for 8th graders, like banking, putting money aside, etc), history and ethics. I study history and ethics at uni, although not like it matters, the whole university could have been a blog post, I am not getting anything out of it other than the diploma. So, the other 4 classes I know nothing of, or like I do know, but just as much as probably you do.

Idk. As I said, the whole thing is just a big theatrical play, that needs to work on paper too, therefore the corruption. The kids literally don’t know anything, despite most of us try to teach something. I am not blaming them, the opposite actually, we know from the Maslow pyramid, that they can’t be focusing on studies in an environment like this. To be quite frank, I think 60-70% of them probably has some kind of mental disability, or problems that limit them in their studies. I have autism, I see that being present in many kids’ cases too. So, yeah. We also just let them pass, because majority of them are so disruptive and bad in school that is is just not viable to keep them there. Meaning, I have many kids who I have seen like 2-3 times the entire year so far, yet on paper they are always there and have their grades settled by their head of class. We have kids who have been sacked from elsewhere, who literally haven’t lifted a finger all year, yet they get to pass too. We also have the other end of the spectrum, having to turn kids into homeschooled kids or just let them go, as they are too old for their classmates and they are not required anymore to go to school. We have a girl who should be in 6th grade, sitting in 3rd grade. We have many in 1st grade, who spend their 3rd year as a 1st grader. We also need to focus on (I mean the school, personally idgaf) having the necessary amount of kids in a class so they can be a class on their own, otherwise if doesn’t reach a certain amount, the classes need to work as one, so like last year the 1st graders were learning with the 3rd graders and the 2nd graders with the 4th graders. We also lack teachers, so most of the classes in the 5-8 grades are also like this. I have to teach the 5th and 6th graders as well as the 7th and 8th graders together. It is quite frankly impossible to achieve anything, or you need an imaginary Marvel superhero in my place.

Technology is non-existent. So, technically there are some projectors in each class, but they don’t work, the cables have been painted over dozens of times, the connectors are falling apart from rust. The laptops we are provided are 10-15 years old and while I can use it, thanks to dual-booting linux on it, others are exposed to expired Win10 installs. The library is just there for décor, and the 8th graders who have to use it as a classroom, because there isn’t any space for them ruin the books the moment you don’t pay attention. (Which I hate, because there are so many good old socialist books still there, but I can’t rescue them, because that is stealing if you look at it from their perspectives.) I have bought a fairly expensive projector for them to teach them with visuals, especially for history, but they don’t care, many even have it as a mission in their head to ruin those attempts. I also tried very hard at the beginning of the year, to do everything in a fun and project like way, but they hate each other and can’t behave well enough for that to work either. So they asked me to just write on the whiteboard and they copy it, as in their head that is what school should be like. I respect their decisions, but they don’t know anything this way either. I spend weeks and weeks of practice, repeating the same material for them to get good grades, yet they just hand in the empty paper every time. Meaning, based on performance alone, all of them should fail their classes. I have just been told by many of my collegues to just put in fake grades.

Idk what to tell you, I guess this belongs more so in the venting /c, but l geuss I am just sharing my sorrows. Maybe I could talk about their behaviours too, but like you can imagine, no? They are beating each other all the time, there are many injuries, they curse each other, they are very sexual in a bad way, etc. I have been messed with too when I arrived, not so much anymore. Meaning chewing gums on my clothes, spitting on me, putting nails on my chair, just bs things. Despite all of this, I try to give them as much of the knowledge I have, as possible. I also gifted them christmass gifts (which was a bad idea), and I try to light up the lessons, be creative and all that, but it is just not possible, you can’t twist this any other way. I might as well be nonexistent, they look through me. I have tried to prepare myself, I watched a lot of videos about how to start out as a new teacher, many TikToks, I read Paolo Fréire’s book, all them things, but nothing is feasible.

It is hard to ask for advice, generally speaking there isn’t anyone. My mother-in-law is also a teacher in a primary school yet she can’t give me any advice. My GF is a personal english teacher, so nothing from her either. I mentioned the university and my mentor at the school, plus all the other collegues of mine go through either the exact same or slightly better of a time there, so, they can’t tell me anything either, not like they would, I don’t think they like me. (But they don’t like each other either, so there is that.)

I have started my winter break on friday, I can think about all this for a bit more than a week now, so that is why I am sharing all this as well. I must be leaving many things out, or I could’ve done a better job telling you about this, but I geuss that is what I am capable as of now. I also feel like I am the only one not being racist there and who thinks of this as not being okay, so that’s that too. Nonetheless if you are too sensitive to read or talk about a mostly roma school and you think I complain about them being roma, then you have misunderstood the whole message of the post. This is what capitalism has given us.

I can teach them all about environmental consciousness or whatever bs that fantasy course plan expects them to know, when their lives are revolving around stealing wood after school, so they don’t freeze that night and somehow avoiding beating from the parents that day. I can give them as many bad grades as I want for not being able to behave or not having a pencil and a notebook, but they are focusing on getting drunk/high with their classmates that afternoon and putting some food in their stomachs.

Thank you for reading it! If you have insight, criticism, advice or anything in you, I would gladly hear about it! Grammatical errors and just general mistakes I did can be spotted!