A Revolution On Canvas (Frerard)

43: goats

It was Bert McCracken's first day teaching at Bertfield High School. Considering the fact that he was literally named after the place, he felt as if he had that to say that he definitely deserved a place working there. However, in all honesty, he didn't have much else to say for himself at all. Really, he was just about the world's worst candidate for a teacher, but then again, Bertfield had never really had very high standards.

Brendon had given him a 'makeover' in order to properly disguise him as a qualified and responsible teacher, and not just a homeless man he'd bailed out of jail a week ago. Really, Brendon just had very professional methods when it came to hiring members of staff. He wasn't quite sure if he was much of a fan of the short bleached blonde hair, or if it was just how much of a shitty job Brendon had done with it, because he was a worse hairdresser than he was a teacher, and really, that was saying something.

Brendon had wanted him to start the very next day after he'd bailed him out, but Bert had eventually managed to convince him otherwise: arguing that he needed time to prepare, considering that he'd never taught anyone or anything before. Brendon had eventually given in, and Bert hadn't done any preparation at all, but he suspected that Brendon had guessed that much of him.

He'd spent the morning hiding away in the Geography classroom that was now his classroom - a whole room of students and things he was responsible for. He came to dread the moment when the first class of the day would start and he'd have to teach. He sat down at his desk at the front of the room and took a moment to award himself for being the world's least qualified teacher - it was that, but most certainly only that, which he had going for him.

He then took a moment to remember that he was being paid for this, and well, he just didn't quite know how to feel about that at all, because really getting paid for performing his job as badly as he was about to was pretty much crossing the line of fraud in his head. But then again, he had lived in the walls of a school for several years, and had spent that time, and many years before, as a drug dealer, so what was something that vaguely resembled fraud worth? Absolutely nothing.

He turned on the laptop he'd been provided with, finding very quickly that he wasn't at all sure how to work it, seeing as he'd been homeless for quite the time now, he hadn't actually properly used a laptop since Windows XP. He let out a sigh and opened his water bottle: finishing off the last of water instead of it, before producing a little bottle of vodka from his jacket pocket and filling the bottle up with that instead. It wasn't wrong and it wasn't illegal as long as no one noticed. That was how it worked, right? Right?

It was as Bert screwed the lid back onto his plastic bottle of really non-alcoholic 'water' that the bell rang, and the sound of students on the way to their next classes filled the corridors. He looked up at the ceiling and said a quick prayer to God before he downed some of his non-alcoholic water based drink and waited for his first class to arrive.

It wasn't until a minute or so later that Bert suddenly came to realise that he literally knew absolutely fucking nothing about Geography. Thinking on his feet, he pulled up trusty old Internet Explorer and did a cheeky google search for the wikipedia page on Geography. It was with his valuable and extensive research and planning that he felt much more comfortable and prepared to teach the lesson that followed.

Within two minutes, what Bert assumed to be the whole class had filled in: sitting down at their desks and looking at him like they couldn't figure out just what the fuck he was doing here, and honestly, Bert could relate - if they had any ideas, he really would be open to them. As one final student trailed into the class and sat down awkwardly on the edge of a desk, Bert came to accept that now was probably when he should start 'teaching'. He wondered if he should have brought up the WikiHow page for 'How to teach high school students' in the time he'd spent 'preparing', but it was just too late for that now, and he'd have to face the situation head on, even as severely unprepared as he was.