Primary School Confidential

by Woog

  Perhaps you’ve been caught at the side of the footy field or the swimming pool by some bore who insists on regaling you with details of the amazing achievements of her wonderful daughter. Then there’s your brother-in-law, who wants you to watch the entire soccer match his son played in last weekend, which he taped—ON HIS PHONE.

  Like all tedious people, the best way to deal with competitive parents is to look them in the eye and say, ‘Sorry, I have to go to the car and get something.’ And then go to your car, slip the keys in the ignition, and drive far, far away.

  THE TYPE A PARENT

  Here come the power parents, the ambitious, business-minded, multitasking go-getters who live to stick to a good rule. Often employed by large law firms or financial institutions, these parents quite often take on the position of the president of the school’s P&C. They are generally feared and loathed by the principal, who has to put up with their constant emails and general arrogance. Teachers dealing with Type A parents need to be on the top of their game, as they are a demanding bunch. Homework has to be distributed on the right day, or the world will end. Type A parents are the ones who will enter the classroom when you are in the middle of a mental computation workshop, and think it is perfectly reasonable to demand that you stop what you are doing and enter into a long in-depth discussion about their son’s literacy issues.

  ‘Why don’t you make an appointment to see me after school?’ the teacher might suggest. The Type A parent will pause briefly then recommence her questioning, all the while keeping one eye on the stock market movements on her phone.

  Hey, their time is more important than yours. Sit up, take note and thank the lord that you don’t have a classroom full of them.

  THE SEPARATED PARENT

  Children from what used to be called ‘broken homes’ are just like everyone else in the class—but the same cannot always be said for their parents, particularly those who are recently separated. Separated parents become pains in the arse when they bring that tension into the classroom.

  Fights and nit-picking should be left at the school gate. Bringing your super-hot new girlfriend to your kids’ kindergarten Christmas concert to parade in front of your ex-wife is not cool. Have a plan; let the teacher know of the joint custody arrangements, if there are any. And focus on your kids’ happiness.

  THE ENTITLED PARENT

  Have you ever pulled up at the lights and seen one those cars that has a sticker on the rear windscreen to let you know which school the driver’s kids attend? You know the ones. They’re usually on the back of a Volvo four-wheel drive, or maybe an Audi. Well, these parents spend tens of thousands of dollars a year to earn the right to drive around with that sticker.

  These are the parents who expect the best of everything for their kids. And fair enough; we all do. But while most of us will send our kids to the local school and play the hand we are dealt, the Entitled Parent has paid exorbitant fees and therefore has huge expectations with regards to the return on their investment. So they will happily turn up to the opening of their school’s newest polo field and give their approval to the colour palette chosen for the new archery targets.

  And when it comes to teaching their offspring, well, you had better be a Rhodes Scholar.

  THE ABSENT PARENT

  I dealt with a few of these parents during my short career in the classroom, and let me tell you: they are a massive pain in the posterior. A lot of time is spent chasing up notes and sending home reminders that little Johnny’s home reader has not been spotted for a whole term and could we please have it back. Or could you at least can send in $8.50 for its replacement?

  There might seem to be an overlap between the absent parent and the disorganised parent, but there is a crucial difference: the disorganised parent at least tries to stay on top of things; absent parents just don’t give a shit.

  THE TOO-AVAILABLE PARENT

  At the other end of the spectrum from the absent parent, you have the parent who is always around. They’re there for the morning bell as you carry your coffee across the playground to greet your class (this was before the introduction of policies that mean you are now sent to jail for carrying a hot drink near a child). They’re there as you walk your class to the classroom, ready to start the day. They’re there as hats and bags are put away. They’re there as the students file into the classroom and there as you take the roll. And, as sure as shit, as the afternoon bell blares out, there is that face again, peering through the window of the classroom, just checking out what is going on. The too-available parent is always the first to volunteer to come on the excursions, to do reading groups every day and to spend hours covering books in contact paper.

  Still, as I always say, we need all types of people to piss us off. And if you belong to one of the categories listed above, please adjust your behaviour—or rest assured that weary educators are discussing you in most unflattering terms in the staffroom at lunchtime.

  13

  FORGOTTEN VALLEY

  I was a fresh-faced twenty-two-year-old when I turned up to school for my first day of being a proper teacher. In retrospect, I realise that twenty-two is far too young to be given the responsibility of shaping and moulding young minds. I was far too green to be thrown in the deep end.

  But into the deep end I went.

  In 1995 I was assigned my first teaching job, a one-year contract at Macdonald Valley Public School, a small school near St Albans, just outside Sydney. And when I say small, I am not kidding; the staff consisted of the principal . . . and me.

  My charges were the infants department; yes I had a whole department of my own! My classroom was an old cottage and I had eleven students from kindergarten to Year 2.

  My boss, Mrs Chapman, was a firecracker of a lady; very open-minded and a bit of a hippy—which was probably quite a good fit for the area, as St Albans had its fair share of hippies.

  On the first day, she gave me a quick rundown on the local families and characters; to say this tight-knit community of a hundred or so people was diverse was a complete understatement. We had artists and hippies, actors and musicians, fundamental Christians and Ashram members. And given that the school only had twenty-seven students in total, it was not long before I knew them all. And they knew all about me.

  The village of St Albans was settled in 1842 and was an attractive spot for farmers to establish crops due to the proximity to the river, which made transport easier. But as railways were extended further west, it earned the nickname the ‘Forgotten Valley’. There was a pub, a courthouse and a police station; although in my time only the pub was still used for the role for which it was intended.

  At the end of my first day of teaching, I was confronted by a redneck father who looked a lot like Santa Claus (though his beard was much more impressive that Santa’s, and contained tobacco and food besides). He demanded to know my qualifications, which I listed, and then my experience, which I also listed: I had one day’s experience—and today was the day! Knowing what I know now, I would have told him to jam it up his clacker, but I was twenty-two, remember, and fresh off the boat.

  Well, didn’t I cop an earful!

  I fled to the principal, and I suppose I dobbed. Yes, I dobbed in a parent to the principal. This was going to make me hugely popular in the district.

  Mrs Chapman marched outside and gave the man a large verbal serve. You did not fuck with Mrs Chapman. She had no time for crap.

  It turned out that my tormentor—the first parent I got to know—was the local mechanic.

  I also got to know the school secretary. She was a lesbian who, it transpired, was having a raging affair with one of the school mums.

  The school may have been small, but I was learning some huge life lessons very quickly.

  I took up residence in the (deconsecrated) church house at Wisemans Ferry, which was said to be haunted by the ghosts of those buried in the graves that were dotted around it. In summer it was as hot as an oven, and in the winter the cold was almost un
bearable. (I used to stay one night a week in my classroom, however. Not for any great educational reason, but because I was twenty-two and obsessed with Melrose Place and I couldn’t get reception at the church house.)

  After school on Friday I would walk down to the post office and get a money order made out to the church for the sum of $90, which was the weekly rent. I would usually see two little girls from my class sitting outside the pub opposite the post office, eating a bag of chips and drinking Coke.

  ‘Hi, Miss Murphy!’ they would scream, waving madly.

  These two friends were in Year 1, with eyes that had seen way more than the average six-year-old. Both were street smart and cunning; they had to be. Their mums were almost always at the pub, and in an inebriated state pretty much all of the time.

  The two girls were as different as night and day. One was pale and blonde while the other had the most glorious dark skin and hair. They never got to school on time, but wandered in casually, usually about ten-ish. I had a word to Mrs Chapman, who gave the mothers a lecture on the importance of getting their kids to school on time. Punctuality did improve slightly, but I still kept a close eye on those angels. I gave them breakfast every morning when they arrived and made sure they each had a birthday cake on their special day. When you are a teacher, it is one of the most heartbreaking things to see the kids who are parenting themselves.

  My kindy kids were beyond divine. There were only two of them, but they were just so dear. The boy, Harry, was the son of a very well-known Australian actress and Dominique was a tall redheaded girl who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. She was a dreamer, while Harry was a showman who was able to throw the most magnificent tantrums I have ever seen.

  I warmed to him immediately. He questioned everything and loved science. When his mum had to travel up to Sydney to tread the boards at the Opera House, little Harry would come and stay with me (which I am sure is totally against some sort of Board of Education policy). I had such fond memories of him that I named my first son Harry.

  One day, a new family turned up. The father was tall and skinny, and the mum was very timid. They had a boy and a girl with them, both looking terrified, because up until that day they had been homeschooled by the local cult. Well, to be honest, I’m not sure whether it really was a cult, but everyone else called it a cult and I was ignorant. It was a big fundamentalist Christian church with a compound where families lived permanently. I don’t know—is that a cult?

  Anyway, the girl ended up in my class, and Mrs Chapman got the boy, who turned out to be as close to a psychopath as one could get without actually committing any murders. No bloody wonder those parents wanted a break!

  My favourite time of the day was the morning. I’d drive up the hill to school, park the car then pause to survey the scene. Forgotten Valley was the prettiest country you can imagine. On one side was beautiful, lush farmland; on the other was a wide peaceful river.

  Most mornings I had to shoo a few wallabies off the front verandah of my cottage/classroom and I would enter to be greeted with the smell of coffee and cigarettes. The teachers’ lounge was located in a garage out the back of my classroom, and Mrs Chapman would be there with an assortment of parents, puffing away and drinking huge vats of plunger coffee.

  I would spend the quiet hour before the bell rang organising my day. It was quite a challenge, trying to get everyone through the curriculum effectively, and it would have been impossible to do it on my own, so I had parent helpers. I made full use of the fact that I had access to some of the country’s finest talent; I had Harry’s mum teach drama, and none other than one of Australia’s most pre-eminent composers, Nigel Westlake, supported the music program. (He had two sons enrolled at the school.)

  My most reliable helper, though, was a woman called Swami Gurupremenanda, who took reading groups. She was a member of the local ashram and had recently left her husband and found herself. She rid herself of possessions and hair, and started a new life for herself and her three kids, of whom two were at our school. Swathed in orange, with her baby strapped to her back and heavily pregnant, Swami Gurupremenanda was the epitome of calm.

  Her young sons both had swami names, and it took me a while to get the spelling right: Shreevidya and Krishnamerti. (But looking at that typed out, I fear I could be wrong.) They were vegetarians, and their diet must have been highly dependent on legumes, as they could produce the most eye-watering farts ever to hit a nostril. They also didn’t believe in medicines, so when worms were rife in the classroom, instead of being treated with Combantrin, Shreevidya and Krishnamerti (or is that Shrividya and Krishnamurti?) had to drink excessive amounts of salted water.

  One day, Swami Gurupremenanda and the boys didn’t turn up to school. The next day, they were back, with a new baby girl strapped to Swami’s chest. They’d had a teaching day at home the day before, watching their mum give birth on the rug. Then they just got on with the reading groups, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  The year flew by, and before I knew it, I was up to my armpits in Christmas concert preparations. Now, as any teacher knows, your performance for the entire year is judged solely by this one event. It all boils down to your end-of-year concert. Because I had such a variety of faiths in my class, I decided I was not going to do something Christmassy; it wasn’t worth the arguments. So instead my kids did a rendition of my old favourite dance song, ‘Walking on Sunshine’, while Harry’s mum helped me put on a play about education, now-and-then style. It was lame-o but the punters lapped it up.

  My last day at school was quite emotional. All the kids and their parents gave me gifts—even my little pub waifs had something for me. One gave me seventy cents and the other a half-empty can of deodorant. I accepted their offerings gratefully.

  I hugged Mrs Chapman goodbye for the last time and she handed me my reference:

  Ms Murphy has excellent communication skills that have been beneficial to the school, encouraging productive interactions between the staff, students, parents and community members.

  I’d loved my year in Forgotten Valley, but now I had bigger fish to fry, having bought a one-way ticket to London. Still, the memories of that first year of teaching will remain with me always. Recently, I checked Facebook to see what the Macdonald kids were up to. One of my kids had sadly passed away in a dreadful accident, which made me tear up a bit, but the others were doing well. It was great to have a sneaky peek at how those little faces grew up.

  14

  TO MISS WITH LOVE

  My second year of teaching could not have been more different to my first. Fresh from the bucolic peace of Macdonald Valley Public School, I was now standing outside a building that could easily pass for a prison. I had accepted a teaching assignment at Southwold Primary School, in the London Borough of Hackney.

  This particular school was as rough as guts, and I had been put in charge of thirty-three eight-year-olds. Despite the obvious challenges, though, I was as keen as mustard, my head filled with visions of Sidney Poitier in To Sir with Love. I was going to be the change that these kids were yearning for, the inspiration, the guiding light that would instil in them a lifelong love of learning. I was going to be that teacher they would remember for the rest of their lives. The one who would be mentioned in speeches in years to come, when my charges had gone on to achieve great things.

  The school was a few blocks from the bus stop, and I’d had to step carefully around syringes as I walked the cold, dreary route past off-licences and betting shops. The school itself was protected by high security gates. Three storeys tall, it was an imposing sight, with nary a trace of greenery to soften its forbidding exterior.

  Taking a deep breath, I entered the gates and made my way to the office, where I announced that I was Miss Murphy, reporting for duty.

  The lady behind the desk barely looked up from her paperwork, but just handed me a clipboard and asked me to fill out a form.

  ‘Take a seat,’ she said when I handed it back to her a short ti
me later. ‘Patricia will be with you shortly.’

  The school began to come to life, with small kids streaming through the doors. I was joined in the reception area by a large African woman, who told me that she had to inform the principal about a domestic dispute she was having with her partner, who was not to set foot inside the school ever again.

  ‘What the fuck have I got myself into?’ I was asking myself, when a kid burst into the office with what looked like a badly broken nose. He couldn’t have been more than seven years old, and he explained to the school receptionist that he had been smashed in the face by someone called Friendly. It turned out that Friendly was a girl in my class, and she had some anger management issues, but more on that later.

  The principal of the school was a woman of immense dignity. She walked down the corridor with an air that was positively regal. Stopping first to talk to my friend with the domestic issues, she said something along the lines of, ‘Not today, Evelyn. I just cannot deal with this today,’ before sending her on her way. She then turned to me.

  Standing up, I said, ‘Hi, I’m Kayte Murphy—the agency sent me.’

  She looked me up and down, then motioned to me to join her in her office. There, having introduced herself as Patricia Downey, she went on to explain some things about Southwold Primary School. Apparently, the school had an Ofsted inspection scheduled for the following term, and the class I had been assigned was adorable and delightful.

  Actually, she said the exact opposite.

  Of course, the term ‘Oftsed’ meant nothing to me, and I suppose it means nothing to you either, so let me explain: Ofsted was in fact the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. It was responsible for undertaking a thorough inspection of schools and childcare centres to ensure they were meeting the highest possible educational and administrative standards. Established in 1992 by Prime Minister John Major, the prospect of an inspection had struck the fear of God into the hearts of teaching staff the country over.