by Anon
‘PS3.’
‘Nah, nah, Xbox.’
‘Yeah.’
‘“Her heart was thumping.
‘“Click. The key turned.
‘“Clunk. The latch opened and fell to the floor.
‘“BANG!”’
‘Ah!’
‘What?’
‘Bang!’
‘Blup, blup!’
‘Man got bwuk up!’
‘Is it? She get shot?’
Three SMs have been past my door in the last minute on their Learning Walks. The more they look in, the more tense I get. The more tense I get, the more I shout. Time for some directed questioning.
‘So what kind of furniture does Pandora own? Anyone? Come on, we just read it.’
Come on, you cretins.
‘A wardrobe? A chair? A table? Kieran? Any ideas. Any. Ideas. At. All.’
‘Is it … umfing …?’
‘No, Kieran, it is not umfing. Anyone want to read on? No? OK: “The lid of the CHEST burst open and Pandora was knocked to the ground by an icy, howling gale. Then the most disgusting, revolting, slimy things poured out of the chest.” (What are the most disgusting things you can imagine? Don’t answer that.) “Death. Disease. Poverty. Misery. Sadness. And at the bottom of the chest … Hope. Fluttering. Away …”’
Giggling, sliding down chairs, beating the desks with their arms.
An SM intervened.
‘Be quiet! All of you! You, come here!’
Donnie was disappeared.
‘“Prometheus could not help the mud-people. He dangled from the cliff, wriggling and writhing, but he could not break free of his chains. The universe was filled with the sound of crying.”’
It had been a car-crash lesson. I had fundamentally failed to establish any authority. Quite the opposite: I had lost what precious little I had to begin with. And now it would take a Sisyphean effort to establish control.
*
The Year 8 Set 3s went the same way, and the Year 9 Set 2s. By the end of my lessons there were more kids outside the classroom than in, conspicuously filling up the corridors, dragging their pens up and down the putty between the giant panes of glass. Everyone who walked past could see I was a failure; this was compounded by the guilt I felt that I had now created so much more work for the SMs who would have to discipline the miscreants. I trudged disconsolately along the corridor.
HoD emerged from one of his lessons, with a throng of kids following him like the Pied Piper. When he stopped to speak to them, a tiny bunged-up boy looked up at him in awe and said, ‘What. Teacher. Are. You?’
*
A I opened the door to the Department, the smell of BO knocked me backwards. A scrum of kids was waiting for the detentions I had given that day.
Lesson #5
Your Quality as a Teacher Is Inversely Proportional to the Number of Detentions You Give: the Better You Are, the Fewer Detentions You Give.
I had given most of the kids I had taught that day a detention; ergo, I was a shit teacher.
Little Miss Outstanding looked at me smugly; she had to give only three detentions.
Yeah, but you’ve got that piece-of-piss Set 2!
The other teachers gave me sympathetic or patronising smiles. It’s very difficult to read teachers’ faces. The experienced ones have become so adroit at hiding everything behind their composed carapace, the fixed grin is often meaningless. I struggled to my desk, and opened the twenty-five emails that had arrived during the lesson. Students missing from lessons; schemes of work for the year; plaintive attempts to swap duties; the PTA fun run; the Head of HR’s pencil case was missing.
*
I had to get away from people. All I wanted to do was run out of the gates and not stop until I reached the sea, and breathe the fresh, hormoneless air gusting over the empty world.
A French NQT came in and collapsed on the seat next to me.
‘Ah feel lahk ze whole world just came in my face,’ she said.
Zackly, as the kids would say.
3
Go Toilet
‘Can I go toilet?’
‘Only if you ask properly.’
‘Sir, can I go toilet?’
‘You still haven’t asked properly.’
‘Sir, please can I go toilet! Sir, please?’
‘That is still grammatically incorrect.’
Student looks baffled and confers with confidante.
‘Is it that you want me to be more formal?’
‘Yes, all right then. Why not be more “formal”?’
‘Please, Mr Teacher, can I go toilet?’
‘No, you still haven’t got it.’
Student confers with confidante.
‘Please, Secret, can I go toilet?’
‘What?’
‘That’s your name, right? That’s what it says on the school email. Secret Teacher.’
‘Yes, but you’re still not asking properly.’
‘I am aksing proper.’
‘Asking properly.’
‘Zackly. Please, Your Highness Lord Mr Secret Teacher Your Most Excellency … Can I go toilet?’
‘You’re missing something crucial. Two things in fact: a preposition and the definite article.’
Student confers with confidante.
‘Please, Your Highness Lord Mr Secret Teacher Your Most Excellency … The bell’s about to go so you gotta let me go toilet.’
‘No.’
‘Allow it! I’m gonna go on the floor!’
‘See? You can use the definite article!’
‘Eh?’
‘You can say “the”! You said “the floor”! So how do you ask to go toilet properly?’
‘Can I go on the floor?’
‘Same construction. Just not “the floor”, but “the” …?’
‘Eh?’
‘Where do you go toilet? I mean, where should you go? Not on the floor, but in …’
‘Toilet.’
‘The toilet. So what you meant to ask was …?’
‘Can I go –?’
‘To …’
‘TO …’
‘The …’
‘THE …’
‘Toilet.’
‘Toilet.’
‘So put it all together and what do you have?’
‘OhpleasesirstopthisIswearIain’tlyingI’mgonnapee mypantiesjustlemme GO TO THE TOILET, Lord Sir Excellent Whatever.’
‘Hallelujah.’
*
I had this conversation about five times a day.
4
Learning Walk
My beautiful Palace of Light had morphed swiftly into an aquarium of angst. A Petri dish of pedagogic pain.
I was trapped in the Death Star. Stormtroopers were at my door all day long, zapping me, nuking me. I was brittle, impatient, fearful and strung out. Bare stressed, as the kids would say. I snapped and jumped down kids’ throats, which only exacerbated their goading of me. They could sense my fear, as I sweated and loosened my collar.
The SMs could smell blood from the other side of the school. They gathered, propelled by single beats of their tails, until they reached the coral in which the fat, feeble blowfish was stuck. They circled and prepared to attack, looking for any excuse – a head on a desk, a torso turned around, a giggle – whereupon the shark bared its teeth and tore chunks out of the child. And then a glare at me to acknowledge that chunks would come out of me later.
My Set 1s were fine; they just got on with whatever. My Year 8 Set 2s and my Year 9 Set 3s were still tricky, but at least they responded to the SMs, and most of them had parents you knew would give them both barrels when they got home. The Year 7 Set 4s didn’t give a shit. It was like they had arrived from a distant planet on which consequences did not exist. They didn’t have any notion of authority whatsoever, and didn’t understand that these SMs could do very bad things, like throw them out of school forever. There was little or no support from home, and without that, we were screwed. I’d try to cal
l Kieran’s mum and she’d say, ‘Call his dad!’ And then I’d call his dad, and he’d say, ‘Call his mum!’ Or they would try and turn it around and make it my fault.
Which of course it was.
Lesson #6
It’s Always the Teacher’s Fault.
All misbehaviour in the classroom, all academic failure, all failure of bodily functions, all failure of any kind is now the fault of the teacher.
*
VP was at the door of the Year 7 Set 4s the whole time, disappearing ne’er-do-wells. At the end of the lesson, I would come out, with my shirt untucked, tie askew, arms stacked with exercise books, still shouting at kids, squabbling with them as I walked down the corridor, passing the Jedi Knights with ten years’ experience. I was the spluttering tugboat to their majestic galleons. VP would watch my entire walk of shame. As I turned to enter my next classroom, she would raise her eyebrow, pucker her mouth, turn on her heel, and go to talk to HoD.
After another of my nightmare lessons with the Year 7 Set 4s, HoD called me in and closed the door. On his desk was a Lesson Observation form, with ‘Inadequate’ highlighted repeatedly.
There’s probably a P45 under that. I’m for it. I reckon I might not even make it past the end of the month.
‘I’ve just been talking to VP.’
Sinking. Shades enveloping me. Down into the Underworld.
‘She mentioned …’ HoD caught a smirk and inhaled sharply.
‘What?’
‘Well. Something slightly sensitive.’
What? What have I done? I left something on my computer. Didn’t I? My Facebook. Other websites I might have accidentally gone on late at night. Images of ghastly people doing ghastly things. Every memory I ever had. Projected in assembly. Head pointing at it with a red laser saying, ‘This is an example of how not to live. This is not a role model. You must avoid this man at all costs!’
‘You need to sort out your walk,’ he said.
See? Told you. Take a walk. You’re out of here.
‘I knew it.’
‘You did? I find that surprising. I wouldn’t have guessed it in a million years. Fucking funniest thing I ever heard.’
‘I’m glad you think it’s funny. I don’t. I thought I was just starting to get somewhere.’
‘Clearly not. Clearly we have fundamental issues to iron out. Cause for Concern, I’d say.’
‘Sorry, I don’t understand. Am I being fired?’
‘No, you bell-end,’ said HoD. ‘Your walk. Sort it out.’
‘My walk? What’s wrong with it?’
‘It’s too nonchalant.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh.’
‘Let’s have a look at it. Go on.’
‘Go on: what?’
‘Just walk to the door and back, would you?’
I gingerly stood up and walked to the door and back.
‘Yeah, see. Far too laid back. You’re nearly horizontal. You look like you’re about to lay your towel down and sunbathe. You need some purpose. Dynamism. A bit of va-va-voom. Watch VP. Copy her.’
*
I went back to the Department and opened up my email. HoD had sent me an image of a walking leg, annotated to show all the key muscles. Sartorius. Vastus medialis. Tibialis anterior. Rectus femoris. Vastus lateralis. Gastrocnemius. Soleus.
*
VP strode past the window on an unwavering, inviolable mission. I was just about to practise walking to the coffee machine, when Little Miss Outstanding waltzed in, balancing sugar paper covered in spider diagrams and Post-its. She looked flushed. Everyone was all over her: ‘Oh, well done you! Looks like such a great lesson! Can I borrow it?’
Pathetic.
Pathetic. Fallacy.
During the initial Terror, Little Miss Outstanding would run up to me after every lesson with the look of someone fleeing a besieged village. I would calm her down, and try to reassure her by telling her that, while the walls of our Death Star garbage chute were closing in, R2D2 was going to work out how to disable the system any moment. Now it was clear Mentor was taking a shine to Little Miss Outstanding. She had thought the sun shone out of her SMARTboard since she had done a lesson on Pathetic Fallacy in Macbeth. ‘Hubble bubble, storm and trouble’ and all that. Guess what, kids? Bad weather is OMINOUS. It makes you think BAD THINGS ARE ABOUT TO HAPPEN. She got ‘Outstanding’ for that lesson, natch. I told her I was happy for her and she said it looks like R2D2 finally rescued us, and I said, ‘Well, you at least. I’m still down the incredibly smelly garbage chute with the giant snake with the single eyeball dragging me under the sewage.’ She started patronising me, giving me loads of advice about how to improve and that pissed me off even more. I resolved to avoid her as much as possible.
She would come into the Department at lunchtime and say, ‘Coming to lunch?’ I would say, ‘Sure’, and we would walk across the playground together, and then just as I got close to the Canteen, I would bend down and tie up my shoelaces and tell her to go on ahead. Then I would sneak out of the side gate, walk to the manky Italian trattoria on the corner, order my toasted chicken escalope sandwich and take my greasy parcel to the graveyard. I sat there staring at the graves of Christians and Jews and Undecideds and think about the Montagues and Capulets, Pip and the convict, and all the people under my feet.
At least they’re under control.
What a lesson this is.
I picked up the paper on a bench, hoping to numb myself with stories of the real world. But I had long lost contact with such a place.
Celebrities I have never heard of were not going out with each other.
House prices expensive.
Weather. Pathetic.
Oh, and an enormous machine gun has been found in the bushes of the estate next to the school.
Outside is violence and peril. Keep the outside out.
I went back to school to prepare for another Observation.
*
I got into teaching because I was attracted to its secrets. It is not like everything else: everything – everything in the world – that is now public, emetic, exposed. It’s the last bastion of intimacy and integrity.
Teaching is a very private experience, whether you are teaching one or thirty children in a class. The teacher must establish a safe, impregnable dominion of trust within the classroom, in which the child feels protected, nurtured, understood, valued, and able to be themselves. This is a very delicate ecosystem, which is too easily disrupted. I’m not sure I ever really understood Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, which you learn about in the first week of teacher training, but maybe that’s what he was getting at. If it means ‘a zone in which we can communicate and grow and learn from each other’ then that’s it. The classroom is a sacred space. When anyone comes in from the outside, it feels like an invasion of trust. Neither the teacher nor the kids behave the same way as they do when you are alone with them with the door shut. Everyone performs, and the entire process becomes a charade. To many teachers, Observations are a false economy and the bane of their lives; others recognise that they are a necessary evil. We have yet to find another way of monitoring teachers, and helping them to improve. To be is to be perceived.
I was on two or three Observations a week; some ‘Formal’, some ‘Informal’. But we all knew there’s no real difference. The SMs come in and informally and casually hang around for five minutes, and then informally and casually report back to the Imperial Forces that you are Inadequate and need a Formal Observation. It’s like Book Checks. One minute they were ‘Book Checks’, the next ‘Book Looks’. What’s next? A Book Peek? A Book Glance Through One Eye? Doesn’t matter how you try to downplay it, you’re still invading my world.
Each Observation was with a teacher from a different discipline, who wanted something totally different from the last one. They basically had orders to make you feel like you were shit, but not so shit that you didn’t have the confidence to teach. So you hover around the
Inadequate/Requires Improvement borderline. Inadequate Man Requires Improvement.
*
I was getting marked down for any old shit – on 11 minutes, Mercedes looked at the clock; on 23 minutes Kieran did not seem to know what he was supposed to be doing; on 35 minutes Milosz had his hands down his pants; on 57 minutes Kieran didn’t seem to know what he was doing.
Of course he didn’t, Kieran never knows what he is doing! He has only just found the classroom for the first time, for Christ’s sake! I should be getting Outstanding for the fact that they all managed to find the classroom before the lesson finished.
Lesson #7
Your Language Will Be Infected by OFSTED Jargon.
It doesn’t matter that you are an English Teacher, a role model of erudition. Soon your language will be a Rattlebag of OFSTED rubric. When Friday night rolls around, you will utter, ‘That curry was Outstanding’, or perhaps ‘That curry was Required Improvement.’ And one day you will say to a child, ‘Your homework is Outstanding’, and you will realise that it means it has yet to be done. It is extant. Like a parking ticket. Or a dream deferred.
*
After the Observation comes the dreaded Feedback session, which is all about the self-reflection.
How do you think it went?
I thought it was turd. Did you? Oh, good. Well, there we are. We are in agreement then. I am turd.
*
It’s not about being perfect – every lesson is ragged in parts, you can never predict or control exactly how it is going to go – but a good observer knows that if the observed can work out what the problem was, then they can rectify it next time. If the observed simply shuts down and cannot take any criticism, then there is no hope of making any progress at all. It helps if the observer can be as self-deprecating as possible, and talk through all the mistakes they still make – because we all do, all the time.