Morning in Melbourne

by Nicole Taylor

  Louise was interrupted by a very distressed looking young woman from the front row. “We alway got the answer,” she explained, looking to her neighbour, who nodded in agreement. Her English was pretty good but she spoke with a heavy accent. “That how we learn.”

  “I won’t be giving out the answers. However, we will work through many examples in class and you will then have solutions to the problems we have done. It’s the same thing.”

  “What if we miss a class?” It was one of the tall, loud young men from the back row.

  “Well, I suppose you do what students have done for centuries when they miss a class. They ask one of their friends for their notes and copy them.” This resulted in groans and looks of dismay. The class was not starting out as Louise had envisaged.

  She decided to change tack. “I’ll put the unit outline here,” she made a pile on a desk at the front of the class. “You will be able to see which chapter we are studying each week, and which problems we will be doing.” The students filed up and collected these papers. Finally they sat back down.

  Louise tried to speak with authority and compassion. “They are probably scared,” she thought.

  “The fact that you are all here, in the fourth and final semester of your diploma, means that you have already passed the preceding three subjects and know your way around a set of financial statements. What we will be learning about this semester is the proper compilation of a complete set of behind-the-statements accounts, which allow manufacturers and retailers to measure their profit for both management and taxation purposes.” She paused and looked at the class. No comment. “Good,” thought Louise.

  “We are going to measure the cost of goods sold, also known as COGS.” Louise wrote on the board. “There are basically two ways to measure COGS: First, the direct method, and secondly, the absorption costing method.” Louise turned to write on the board, and when she turned around she saw that almost all her students were peering into their phones.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  Jo answered. “We are trying to find the answers on the internet.”

  Louise was so surprised she didn’t know what to say. Jo continued.

  “If you won’t give them to us, how else are we going to get them?”

  “Found them!” A female student had been peering over the shoulder of her boyfriend, who had a better phone than she had, announced his victory. The young man looked up smiling. “Don’t worry,” he said to the class, “I’ll email it to you.”

  Louise waved her hand at the class to get their attention. “Whatever he has just found on the internet is not the answers to the problems in this textbook.” The class quietened and looked at her. Louise continued. “In order to force us to buy new books each year, the publisher brings out a new edition and changes the problems and the answers.” Louise had their attention. “Besides, the answers are often wrong.”

  It seemed that the students knew that this was the case, since a few of them shrugged and nodded to one another.

  Louise frowned. “If all you want is the answers, why do you come to this class? There are no marks for attendance.”

  One of the international students answered her. “We can’t get our PR if we don’t come to class,” she explained politely. “We have to attend at least 90% of the classes.”

  “PR?” Louise asked, confused.

  “Permanent residency,” explained the girl.

  “Oh. I see.” But Louise still didn’t see.

  The student took pity on her and, sensing her ignorance, tried to explain more fully. “We have already done accounting in our country, but now we have to do again, and be student here for some time so we can stay.”

  Louise was beginning to get the picture. “I see.” Now she did. “So, you just want me to mark your names off the roll at the beginning of each class, and give you the answers sheets to all the questions, so you can go away and do the problems.”

  “Yes!” said about 20 students happily. At last she understood!

  “I can’t do that,” Louise shook her head.

  “Then we will have to change into another class,” one of the back-row boys stood up and noisily collected his things to leave. “That’s how all the other teachers do it.”

  A loud discussion ensued, from which Louise discerned phrased such as “This is the only time I can come to this class” and “Who does she think she is?”

  Louise held up her hand in a “stop” sign. “Look, let’s sort this out. I’ll go and get Zoe.”

  Zoe was her subject co-ordinator and Louise knew that she taught economics. The students looked relieved – they clearly had some regard for Zoe, and Louise thought she may have done something right at last.

  “Wait here,” she commanded.

  Louise found Zoe in the staff room. “Zoe, can I speak to you?” she asked.

  Zoe frowned up at her. “Aren’t you supposed to be teaching cost accounting?” she asked, in a none too friendly tone.

  “Yes, I am – I mean I am teaching them. There seems to be some misunderstanding though.”

  Zoe looked at her crossly. “What is it?”

  “All the students want is that I mark them off the roll and hand them the answers. They don’t want to stay and learn about cost accounting in the classroom.”

  Zoe was surprised. “Oh, don’t they?” She got up from her chair. “What room are you in?”

  “333, just next door.”

  Zoe turned off her computer. “Wait here,” she said. “Give me 5 minutes with them.”

  “Thanks,” said Louise with relief.

  Five minutes later, Zoe was back. “You can go back now,” she said. “They are a difficult class that one,” she said. “We will be glad when they graduate at the end of the semester. No one else would take them again – that’s why we had to get you.”

  “Oh,” said Louise.

  “Do you think you could give them the answers?” Zoe asked.

  Louise looked at her, thinking she must be joking but could see that Zoe was serious.

  “No, Zoe, I cannot give them the answers. That is my whole lesson!”

  Zoe shrugged. “Well, here’s some advice. Keep a roll of every class. I don’t just mean who you see during the time. Each class is 3 hours with two sets of ten minute break. If they arrive or come back late, make a note. If they leave early, make a note. It isn’t hard to get to 10% if you do that. It’s all you’ve got. And, if I was you, I wouldn’t allow them to use their phones as calculators in tests because they will just look up their notes and copy if they can. They even email one another the answers.”

  Louise nodded, taking it all it.

  “But you can’t come running to me with every little problem,” Zoe warned her. “You have to do the job you are paid to do and let me do my job.”

  “Would you like to swap classes with me?” Louise wasn’t going to be totally passive.

  Zoe smirked. “I can’t teach accounting,” she smiled for the first time.

  “But I can teach economics,” Louise smiled back at her. “And if all you have to do is mark the roll and hand out printed answers, how hard can it be?”

  “You’d better get back to your class.” Zoe had already turned away and was re-booting her computer.

  Louise turned and left without saying anything.

  *

  The Certificate 4 in Training and Assessment commenced that Tuesday night. Louise arrived at the designated lecture hall to find it locked. She waited outside and soon a group of similarly fated TAFE teachers collected around her.

  At last a man in his 30’s arrived with a key. “Sorry to keep you all waiting,” he announced. “I didn’t allow enough time to get here from my day job.”

  This man was, apparently, their teacher.

  “I’m John Hurley. Actually, as of last week, I’m Dr John Hurley.” He chuckled softly to himself. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  One of the male teacher/students offered an opinion.
“It means that if any of us has a heart attack, you will be able to deliver CPR?” Louise couldn’t help noticing that the person who offered this suggestion looked far from coronary failure. In fact, he was trim and fit to the point of being definite eye-candy. Louise decided to pay more attention.

  Everyone laughed. John Hurley laughed too. He’d opened the door and they were settling themselves at tables. “There is always a wise guy, isn’t there?” Then he turned to the speaker and addressed him directly. “I’m a real doctor! Not one of those blood and bones guys we call ‘doctor’ as a courtesy title.” John paused and looked around the room at his students. “No; my being a doctor allows me to charge this institution an extra $7 per hour for my services.”

  This elicited a few disbelieving guffaws and exclamations. A ‘you are kidding!’ could also be heard.

  The eye-candy guy spoke next. “Then why did you bother doing it?”

  “I ask myself the same thing when I have to work out my HELP payment!” John was sardonic. “No, really, it gives my parents the biggest thrill you can imagine.” John settled himself in front of his desk, sitting on the edge of it and facing the class. “And my doctorate is in educational psychology, so there are many applications. I’m really only doing this as a favour to a friend. And for the money.”

  He looked around the class, who were all engaging with him now and surreptitiously checking each other out too.

  At that moment a woman entered the room. She looked to be about Louise’s age, but that was where all similarities came to a dead halt. This woman looked like a film star. She had black hair cut in a very chic, straight-edged shoulder length bob with full fringe, and she was wearing an expensive fashion label in turquoise and white.

  “And you are?” John the teacher pretended to be put out by this woman’s late arrival.

  “Oh, keep your shirt on,” said the woman. “I’m Katherine and you’re lucky I’m here at all.” Katherine took her time assessing the room, then approached a table near the front. She stopped in front of a fellow student who had been seated since they entered the room. “Can you please move so I can sit here?” she demanded of the chosen chair’s occupant. “I have to be near the door in case I need to throw up.”

  John Hurley blinked. “Are you unwell?” he asked. “Good thing I’m a doctor!” he said in a stage whisper to the rest of the room.

  This comment brought sniggers from a few, but most people were mesmerised by the events so far and didn’t want to miss anything.

  “This is better than TV!” thought Lou.

  “I will be if I have to sit through this whole course!” Katherine answered. She waited while the obliging fellow-enrollee vacated his chair for her, then proceeded to settle herself in it.

  “Well,” John wasn’t quite sure how to proceed but was clearly amused and determined not to be the first to give up the parry, “we will do our best to entertain you, Miss –“

  “I’m not a miss, I’m a Ms, and you can call me Katherine.” She paused for a second, then added “B.Ed.”

  “Aah!” John the teacher seemed to reach an understanding that had eluded the rest. “And you are pissed that you have to sit in this classroom for 4 hours a week, at night, after a full day of teaching real students, while I get paid to teach you how to suck eggs.”

  Katherine smiled and clapped her hands in mock applause. “He really is a doctor! You get to go to the top of the class!”

  John raised both his hands. “I hear you! But hey! Don’t shoot the messenger!”

  “Well, what should I do?”

  “Can you get an RPL for the course?”

  “Nope. Not all of it.”

  “Why not?”

  “You tell me!”

  “Actually, I can tell you. It’s because your Bachelor of Education is in secondary teaching, and this is tertiary teaching.”

  “That’s a load of bullshit and you know it.”

  John Hurley laughed.

  Katherine continued. “Tertiary my arse! It’s a TAFE for god’s sake! People who don’t have their VCE come here to study. What’s tertiary about that?”

  “I hear you, but many of the courses here do require that the student have a VCE.”

  “Yeah, a VCE that got them rejected by every university in the southern hemisphere.”

  Now the whole room was laughing.

  Then, an older man – possibly the oldest member of the group – spoke. “Now, now, young lady, I don’t know what you teach, but I teach refrigeration, and my students have to have a good level of VCE maths to get into my course. And we have a waiting list!” Mr Eye-Candy nodded his agreement to this statement.

  Katherine immediately dropped her screeching tone to a dulcet drawl. “I’m not talking about proper trades. I understand the difference, and I don’t mean to be rude or to denigrate your area of expertise, but I have a 4 year degree in education, a graduate degree in my teaching area and 15 years of professional experience, and I’ll be damned if I’ll sit through a fucking Certificate 4 because some deadshit in the TAFE system can’t accept the fact that a university degree in education pisses all over a TAFE certificate in education.” Katherine stopped only to draw breath.

  “Oh, yes, I see,” agreed the older man. “Well, in that case, please continue.”

  “Thank you.” Katherine nodded her thanks to him.

  They didn’t manage to get on to the topic set for the session that evening, but Louise felt she learned more about the structure of education in the state of Victoria than she ever could have from an authorised course. At the end of the night, Katherine stopped her as she walked through the door. “A few of us are going for a coffee at the rissole. Wanna come?”

  “The rissole?”

  “Yeah, you know – the RSL.”

  Louise could see that the “few of us” actually meant Mr Eye-Candy and his buddy, Sir Beefcake. “Sure!” she accepted with alacrity.

  Things were looking up!

  Chapter 6 – Love interest

  Eleven-year-old Peter had sidled up to his mother and was shaking the hair out of his eyes with a flick of his head. He hovered there, standing first on one foot and then on the other. Louise finally noticed and stopped what she was doing, which was checking her emails at the laptop which occupied the end bench in the kitchen.

  She leant on the bench and looked at her son. He was a skinny, lanky boy who showed all the signs of being rock-star good-looking in about 6 years’ time. Now he was just skin and bone, with thick brown unruly hair.

  “Peter,” Lou asked in her most sensitive tone, “Do you need to go to the toilet?”

  Peter laughed. “No, Mum.”

  “Then why are you doing the pee-pee dance?”

  “I’m not!”

  “Oh, yes you are!” And Louise imitated his movements, hopping nervously from foot to foot as both her sons had done when they were little boys and didn’t want to interrupt what they were doing to visit the lavatory.

  “I don’t need to go to the toilet, Mum, thanks for asking.” Peter tried to reclaim ownership of the situation.

  “Well, what is it then?” Louise was giving him her undivided attention and they both knew that this could not last for long. Any minute now there would be an unavoidable appointment to be kept, or the phone would ring or someone would knock on the door, so Peter took the plunge.

  “Do you think you will get remarried?”

  Louise was taken aback, but had to admit it was a fair question under the circumstances. “Probably not,” she answered.

  “What about a boyfriend, then?” Peter didn’t sound at all nervous or upset, so although Louise naturally thought her kids might fear such an event, that didn’t seem to fit here.

  “Well, I don’t currently have a boyfriend if that’s what you mean.”

  Peter shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Duh, I can see that,” he said. “But do you think you might?”

  “I really can’t say, Peter,” said Louise. “One day perhaps. Wh
y do you ask?”

  “Well, it’s just that Braden sees his father every second weekend, and he has his stepfather at home with him all the rest of the time, and he is always doing fun things with both of them. I just thought it might be good if you got a boyfriend.” Peter’s eyes were wide with the reasonableness of this deduction.

  “So, you would like me to get a boyfriend?” Louise wanted to be clear.

  Before Peter could respond he was interrupted by James. “I wouldn’t!” James said loudly. He had overheard the conversation from his room, which opened onto the kitchen.

  “No one asked you,” said Lou firmly. “And don’t eavesdrop on other people’s conversations.”

  “I wasn’t eavesdropping – I couldn’t help hearing!”

  “You were eavesdropping,” insisted Lou.

  “You were, James,” Peter agreed.

  “So?” James decided to confess. “What if I did eavesdrop? This affects me, too.”

  “What affects you too?” Lou was confused now.

  “You getting a boyfriend!”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend!”

  James ignored her. “Peter, you have to think this through, man. You can’t just go saying things like that to her – you know how impressionable she is. It would be horrible if she got a boyfriend.”

  “Not necessarily.” Peter was hanging on to his point. “It could be good.”

  “No, it wouldn’t be good! Imagine it – some guy you don’t even know, telling you to do your homework and go to bed early, and saying that you should help your mother around the house more. And what if he moves in, and makes Mum stop cooking all the things we like so she can start cooking curries because he likes them.”

  “No one likes curries!”

  “Plenty of men love them!” James insisted. “No, Peter – believe me, we are on a good thing here. Braden’s situation might look good from the outside, but now he has two men bossing him around as well as his mother.”

  Louise noticed that now she wasn’t even included in the conversation. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or annoyed.