The start of a new school year.
An exciting time for teachers with new stationary kits being bought (only the sparkliest of marking pens will do), new work clothes being ironed and new work goals being made, as we set out our expectations for the year in the hope that it can, and will, be better than the last. An expectation that, like learning how to shit gold, is never going to be achieved…
However, especially in Dubai, with a new school year also brings new school meat. And meat is definitely the best word to describe these new, fresh faced (most of them NQTs’) educators.
This is because current teachers across all levels of the school workforce look at them like a new charcuterie board to try, with there being many who lick their lips in anticipation, trying to decide who they want to try first and who they don’t want to try at all (and yes, in some cases I mean this quite literally). Who they will be adding to their plate and who will be getting left on the board. And which meats will they be coming back to for more and which meats will be getting thrown in the bin.
You see, with the turnover of teaching staff being like the turnover of UK Prime Ministers at the moment, and the workforce being mostly extremely sociable 20-30 year old’s, the injection of ‘fresh meat’ is, by many, a welcomed annual event.
The reason for this? Well, for some, it is seen as an opportunity to replenish friendship groups hit by career changes and moves back home; for others it is an opportunity to change friendship groups with their current tribe no longer being the one and, for the hopeless romantics, it is seen as a fresh chance to find love; with the announcement of a new male teacher in the school sending the single women into a frenzy as they wax, workout and make war against one another in the hopes of laying claim to this rare female teachers’ collector’s item.
Therefore, in celebration of our newest colleagues and to really highlight the mature and serious workplace that they have entered, the first week for many schools in Dubai – due to it also only being Inservice – has become fondly known as freshers week. I mean, when you add in the fact that most new teachers all take school accommodation and live in the same building it really is a matter of ‘if the shoe fits.’ Yip, Dubai teachers really are all Peter Pans’ that refuse to grow up…
However, I loved this fact. As who the fuck really wants to adult?
I couldn’t wait to dive into freshers week: to chug a beer keg, to wake up with new random WhatsApp group chats from people I had made best friends with in the toilets the night before and to hear all about the gossip in class, I mean at work, the next day.
But another reason why I couldn’t wait to dive into freshers week was because of my own unique situation. I had joined my school and moved to Dubai in April. The only new start at that time. And while I had made some really good individual friends, in fact some of the best, I still felt like my friendship tribe was incomplete. That there were still some key players to be added for me to feel content.
Would freshers week provide me with those players? Who knew. But I was excited by the prospect. Because, when it comes down to it, your friends are your family out here. Therefore, to be able to add to my family and to become someone else’s was a heartwarming idea that I didn’t want to miss out on.
And while engaging in freshers week may result in my family being completely made up of the drunken aunties and uncles of the world that refuse to grow up, usually being paralytic drunk by 5pm on Christmas Day, then so be it.
At least I would now have company when having to clean up my sick the next day from the side of the toilet…
