by Anon
Mentor would take me to a quiet classroom, shut the door with the deliberate solemnity of somebody closing the lid on a coffin and put her notes on the table (which I scanned for a judgement, but noticed that she had given up halfway through the lesson).
We were like disappointed post-coital lovers. She looked up at me, shrugging with resignation as I squirmed.
‘How do you think it went?’
‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK. Don’t worry about it. It happens to everyone.’
‘I know. I just … really hoped that this time would be different.’
‘It will get better. As long as we can identify where the problems are. And it wasn’t all bad. There were lots of positives. Lots.’
‘Did you really think so?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘I’ll nail it next time’.
*
It didn’t help that my Mentor was the best teacher in the world ever. Every time I observed her I felt sick with envy. Like this one on Persephone and the Pomegranate Seeds.
The Starter was a brainstorm of tempting words (delicious, yummy, sticky); then she gave them a slice of pomegranate, and they had to fill in a grid to describe it, using the different senses; then she introduced examples of persuasive speech (AFOREST: Alliteration, Facts, Opinion, Repetition/Rhetorical Questions, Emotive Language, Statistics, Triples); then they had to spot the persuasive features in one of Obama’s speeches; finally, they had to incorporate the features into their own persuasive speeches, which they then delivered. She was calm and authoritative throughout; she never shouted or lost her rag, because she never needed to.
Lesson #15
Engagement Is the Best Form of Behaviour Management.
The kids felt nurtured, inspired, motivated and happy. The speeches were knockout. Even the most recalcitrant kids were giving expressive, excitable, almost articulate speeches, imploring us to eat the pomegranate (‘Don’t you wanna eat dis sticky, succulent, scrummy pomegranate? I know you do! Yeah you do! Did you know dat like 95 per cent of people in the Underworld said dey liked pomegranates? Go on! EAT IT, EAT IT, EAT IT!’)
Amazeballs. They say you know Outstanding when you see it. It was going to take a fuckload of work.
I decided to teach that lesson.
Lesson #21
It Is Very Difficult to Teach Other People’s Lessons.
We all did it. When you’ve got five minutes to plan, you just nick one of VP’s and change the font. But then you find yourself halfway through a lesson going, ‘What the hell am I supposed to do now?’
*
It started well enough. I told them that if they were good and didn’t call out or insult each other and kept their hands by the side of their desks and generally stayed still they could eat some pomegranate, which was actually even yummier and stickier and sweeter and juicier and more succulent than Haribos.
But everything went wrong as soon as I produced the pomegranate.
I didn’t want to pass it round – definitely a recipe for disaster – so I walked around with it, letting them have a good look. ‘Ugh, dat is butters!’ shouted Mercedes, as I genuflected before her, offering the pomegranate in a spirit of submissive piety, the red, succulent, juicy flesh a millimetre from her nose. VP appeared. Perfect timing. I tried to play the Obama speech. The video wouldn’t work.
Lesson #27
The Video Never Works.
When YouTube Finishes Buffering – Finally! – An Inappropriate, Loud Pop-Up Will Create Hilarity, Disruption.
They all became restless. Kieran offered to help and came up to the computer and tried to put on a grime video, so I waved him away, and he sat down in a sulk. I told them to get on with describing the pomegranate, but they said they couldn’t see it, so they gathered around the pomegranate and were trying to grab it and getting all sticky and messy. Suddenly, an explosion of violence from a computer game advert at top volume. They pissed themselves laughing, pink pomegranate juice dripping down their faces and shirts, as VP entered the classroom. Donnie and Mercedes were told to go to the toilet and clean themselves up. Slowly, the rest returned to their seats.
The Obama speech proved entrancing, so I followed the YouTube recommendations and put on a video of one of Churchill’s speeches after the Obama speech. When I said, ‘Who is that?’, no one knew. Kieran said, ‘What, the dog?’ Everyone fell about. Donnie and Mercedes returned from the bathroom as the bell went.
After the lesson, I cleaned up the sticky pink mess that was all over the desks. Mentor stuck her head in.
‘Can I have a word?’
‘Sure.’
‘What was going on in that lesson?’
‘I tried to teach your pomegranate lesson and it went pear-shaped.’
‘Bad luck.’
‘What did VP say?’
‘Not much.’
‘Formal Observation?’
‘Yup.’
*
The thing that really screws you with Observations is the marking. Every book has to be bang up to date, and when you have 120 books to mark a week, a few are bound to fall through the cracks. I spent so much time chasing kids for books. Every lesson I asked for them, and every lesson they forgot them.
I thought about walking around the estate, smeared in mud, dressed in a chaperon hood, banging a saucepan, dragging a cart full of exercise books, shouting, ‘Bring out your English books!’ (If you want to give them up anonymously, you can leave them in the big metal bin full of knives.)
The Set 1s were the worst. Not because they didn’t do the work, but because they did. Absolutely filled the pages. Couldn’t stop. Redid work, did extra; extension task to the extension tasks. Ten pages a homework. Tick. Tick. Tick. Level 7. Congratulations! Another fabulous story! Target: CALM DOWN. You’re ELEVEN YEARS OLD.
*
It was six o’clock on Friday and I still had all my books to mark from the week. There was no way I would usually work on a Friday night, but there was a Book Look on Monday. (First Prize: dinner for two at ASK Pizza; free tiramisu for a book with red or green pen on every page.) Tom had already marked all his books – he reckoned he had got it down to two minutes per book, the flash git – while I had done five in half an hour. Tom bundled out, saying, ‘See you in the Library!’ I couldn’t be arsed to mark; I was so tired; the handwriting was illegible; I could barely read any of the work; what I could read was dog shit. I sat there listening to the dripping coffee machine, daydreaming about a passionate embrace under a waterfall, when an email pinged.
An Invitation to a Formal Observation with VP.
Friday, Period 8, Rm 11. Year 7 Set 4.
Fuck. She knew that’s when the little bastards would be at their most feral. She could have come in Monday, Period 1, when they were totally lobotomised after a weekend of Grand Theft Auto. But no. She had to come when they would be bouncing off the walls.
I put my head on the pile of books. HoD patted me on the shoulder. ‘Time for the Library.’
5
The Library
It’s not really a library. Most teachers wouldn’t be caught dead in a real library. They just like to talk about going to the pub in front of kids and feel the illicit thrill of espionage. But the kids know the score.
Around 4 p.m., the kids charged around the corner, demob happy – tie around forehead, rucksack around neck – to be confronted by most of their teachers milling around outside the pub, laughing, flirting, rolling rollies and downing pints. The kids smirked, then dived behind cars in order to spy on us. They assumed that if they saw you having a drink with another teacher then you must be going out with them, so on Monday morning one of your class would pipe up, ‘I saw you in the pub with Miss on Friday!’ And then the rest of the class would go ‘Ooooooohhhhhhh.’
I struggled through the double doors with my three tote bags full of exercise books. HoD handed me a pint and shouted, ‘Come sing me a bawdy song and be merry!’ He was clearly steaming.
‘Get
that jumper off. Just chuck it in the bin. Drink that. There. You deserve it. Now. Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway?’
I attempted to remove my jumper, which crackled with static as it passed over my head, and pushed the tote bags under the table. Tom moved his bag out of the way, so I could sit, and put his arm round my shoulder.
‘Honestly,’ continued HoD. ‘Rocking up here. Walking into a room full of kids and expecting them to listen to you. Who do you think you are?’
He tore a packet of roasted peanuts down the middle and poured them into his mouth.
‘Why do you want to teach?’ he asked, spitting peanuts on my shoes.
‘Er … because I want to make a difference.’
‘Oh God, no. Please no. Anything but that.’
‘Oh, OK. Sorry, because I love my subject –’
‘Oh God, no. Please no. Anything but that.’
‘Oh, OK. Because I hate my subject.’
‘That’s more like it.’
He was momentarily distracted by Paula, the Teaching Assistant, who walked past. He planted a big squelchy kiss on her cheek, saying, ‘Y’alright, darlin’?’
‘Why do you teach?’ I asked.
He laughed a deep, guttural laugh.
‘What else is there?’
‘Right. Zackly,’ I said.
‘Nuff said. Right? Am I right?’
I nodded. Even when it was terrible – which it was right now – there was nothing else I wanted to be doing.
‘Teaching is the nuts. Always was, always will be. You’ve been around the block. You’ve seen the vacuous dead world outside. And then you enter the classroom … and it’s just … Life! Curiosity! Learning! Laughter! Joy! Once you’ve been in that room, you can’t do anything else. I don’t care where. I could teach anywhere. Just give me a room, some kids, a book. Nothing like it.’
He threw the empty nut packet on the table and slapped his leg in appreciation.
‘But it’s changing so fast. I’m already a dinosaur. I don’t know if I can take it much longer. Look around you. See anyone over thirty? No, me neither. There’s a philosophy here. Get ’em young, burn ’em out, ship ’em off. You all have a three-year shelf life. Max. You’re just collateral. Utterly replaceable. I mean, teachers are just trouble after a few years, aren’t they? They get demanding and up themselves and stuck in their ways and sloppy and pregnant and change their priorities and lose focus and ill and dead and all that inconvenient crap. I mean look at this guy.’
He pointed to a fat elderly gentleman perched on a stool. Apparently, he had once been an SM, but I only knew him as the guy who drove the minibus.
‘This guy has been here since the dawn of time. You should see his Assembly on the Blitz. Eyewitness stuff. The kids have got their eyes on stalks when he tells them what he’s seen. He’s seen it all. Haven’t ya? It’s not changed a bit, has it?’
The old gent snorted.
‘Ah, the good old days, eh?’ HoD continued. ‘Don’t believe what you hear. It used to be great. No uniforms. No sets. Not much discipline. Yeah, it was rough round the edges. Kids from everywhere. From the local estate, the liberal middle classes, then the riffraff from the wrong side of the river. I’m not saying there wasn’t tension. You get all these local intellectuals and grandees who worry about the ruffians frightening away the nightingales. But we basically muddled along. Ah, it was magic.’
He drained his pint.
‘Now all I do is fill in crap just so there is some evidence that we are doing stuff. I should be having a conversation with you about that last shit lesson you taught and we should be filling this out.’
He waved my Lesson Evaluation contemptuously in front of my nose.
‘But you only saw the first and last minute.’
‘That’s enough for me. I’m right though, aren’t I? It was total arseshit. A veritable motorway pile-up. But it’s not important what I think. How do you think it went?’
‘Pretty shockingly.’
‘Good. No arguments there. What would you do differently?’ ‘Everything.’
‘Anything in particular?’
‘Less Chalk and Talk.’
‘Boom ting. Once upon a time, you could have got away with a lesson like that. In the old days, if you could charm them, that was enough. The Old Head would come round and as long as they weren’t swinging from the chandeliers, he would walk on. We would just read and talk. About anything. Fuckin’ quality. Can you identify when you lost control?’
‘Beginning.’
‘There you go. Get on top of them in the first five minutes, it will be fine. Lose them, and you will be chasing them around for the whole hour. Like a cat chasing a tissue in the breeze. And so it goes.’
He scrawled a couple of words and his signature and handed the crumpled form back to me.
‘Look, I’ll be honest,’ I wheezed, as the warm glow from the ale spread across my throat and lungs, ‘I’ve been really struggling. I mean, everywhere I look I see amazing teachers doing amazing things. And I can’t even get past first base. I can’t control the kids. They don’t respect me. I don’t see a way out.’
HoD nodded. ‘Don’t be intimidated by all the whizzbangery, OK? I don’t do any of that shit. Look, it’s all about doing just enough to keep the SMs away from your door.’
I struggled to put the form back in my unwieldy Progress Record folder.
‘I thought it was all about instilling a love of learning. I thought it was all about the kids.’
‘Good God, man, where did they find you? Summerhill? Look: you have to play the game. Would it be possible to do this job without this entire raft of bollocks? Of course it would. But they –’
He gestured wildly with his arm towards a region around his head.
‘They don’t understand that. They think they have reached Shangri-La on the raft of bollocks. As long as we all believe the raft of bollocks is the only route, you’ve got to get on board.’
I looked nervously around me.
‘Don’t worry. You won’t see them down here. Once upon a time, the whole lot of us would come down here on a Friday. It was mental. Just having a proper session and a right laugh. We used to have staff meetings down here. Now you won’t find a single one of those autobots down here. They’re not allowed. It’s seen to be unprofessional. Doesn’t fit the corporate ethos. They’re up there all night – they’ll be there all weekend filling in data, I guarantee it.’
He reached over and took another pint from Tom’s tray with a wink.
‘Stop stressing. Chill out. It’s all about teaching between the cracks. You find these precious cracks between the great monoliths of assessment and observation and OFSTED and the exam boards and every bloody other thing that is not about you there in that room with those kids imparting wisdom. Just give me a room and some kids. Seriously. That’s all I need. Once I shut the door, I shut it all out. And they love it. I give them time to reflect, look out of the window, get lost in a sunbeam, like Keats. Not much chance of any Negative Capability with all your gubbins flying around.’
‘Are you suggesting that for my Observation with Year 7 Set 4, I just say, “Look at this sunbeam”?’
‘No. You’ll get eaten alive. But understand that you will reach a stage where you can do less. And less, my friend, is most definitely more.’
‘That’s right,’ said Tom. ‘Watch this guy. You will definitely see less.’
‘Yeah, all right,’ replied HoD, testily. ‘I don’t do much with them. But, boy, do they work for me.’
‘That they do. I don’t know how you do it,’ replied Tom.
‘“The days that make us happy make us wise.” We have fun. They think reading is rebellious, which it is. Not necessarily the book we have to do. But the books I recommend they read on the sly at the end of the lesson, at break time, on the walk home. You are beginning a series of relationships. And relationships take time. I can see a good teacher within five minutes. You’ll win ’em round s
oon, the fuckers will peel away, and then you’ll be in clover.’
Ho6 burst through the doors in tears, and was soon enveloped in HoD’s bear embrace.
‘All right, love. Come here. What happened? Are they being beastly to you again?’
She nodded and drank fast as she wiped away her tears. She had just been observed for the umpteenth time that week with her Year 11s. The SMs were after her since her GCSE English Language results. Her Set 1s were predicted A*s and As, but were awarded Ds and Es. The SMs has told her they were going to come into her lessons for an indefinite period. They wouldn’t tell her which lessons. Every lesson would have to be ‘Outstanding’. It takes forever to plan and mark for an ‘Outstanding’ lesson; she would have to spend all weekend planning and marking and stressing.
‘Don’t worry. We’ve appealed about the results,’ said HoD as he handed her a pint.
‘Fuckers,’ she said. ‘I’ve been teaching since before they were at Accenture or Orange or wherever the hell it was. I had a meeting at 6 a.m. this morning about the appropriate length of girls’ skirts or some bollocks. I was just sat there looking up at them, and I couldn’t hear a word they were saying. All I could see were the annotated verses from Paradise Lost my Year 13s had stuck to the wall, and I imagined I was Satan plotting my rebellion against God.’
Tom told me to drink up. He had invited me to a dinner party with some friends of his. ‘Izzit dough,’ I said. I was flatlining teacher drunk: helpless, in desperate need of direction, capable only of uttering phrases used by kids: ‘izzit dough’; ‘bare jokes’; ‘gotta go toilet’.
Lesson #51
When Not Speaking in OFSTED Jargon, You Will Speak Like Your Pupils.
Somehow, armed only with this vocabulary, I was going to have to navigate a posho dinner party.
*
Tom and I staggered out of the pub into the cold dark night and weaved along the road.
The next thing I remember was walking into a plush second-floor flat. My first thought was ‘Yikes, Grown-ups!’ The guys were all chiselled and floppy-haired and wearing suits – not like M&S teacher suits, but proper Gieves & Hawkes numbers – while their wives were in elegant dresses. They stood with wine glasses in one hand, and ate canapés with the remaining hand, having adult, braying conversations.